Adwords is a popular internet advertising method which uses a “pay per click” system to bring extremely targetedvisitors straight to your website. Your Adwords account contains one or more campaigns, each including at least one advert, keyword list and maximum bid (which you can change from keyword to keyword.) After activating your campaign, your advert will be shown whenever someone searched for your keyword on Google (you can also have your results appear on other search engines in Google’s network as well as on relevant websites. Your position in the search results determined how high you bid for that keyword compared to other bidders – the higher you bid, the higher you will appear. The best thing is, if no-one clicks, you don’t pay a penny.

PPC & SEO: What's the difference?

If you’re wondering the different between pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO), let me explain. Search Engine Optimization focuses on optimizing your website to ensure it ranks well for your choice of keywords. Another major part of SEO is creating a wide selection of other websites who link to you. It’s a long term project which can take months or even years to see results and, depending on your sector, you could have millions of competitors all fighting for the top spot. Pay Per Click is like a ticket straight to the top of search engine results in an INSTANT, as long as you’re happy to pay a higher bid cost than other bidders!

Perfecting your campaign

Get your campaign right and you could see extremely positive results for your business. For example, if you set a bid cost of £1 per click and a total monthly budget of £100, you will be guaranteed to receive at minimum of 100 targeted clicks through to your website. If you turn 10% of those clicks into sales and your average sale is £40, your £100 Adwords spend will have turned into £4000 worth of sales.

But get your campaign wrong through poor research and poor management and your Adwords campaign can turn into a very costly mistake. Thankfully there are tools available from Google and other providers that will help you avoid making these mistakes. Google provides a Keyword Research Tool to allow you to make sure the keywords you’ve chosen are the best keywords for your businesss. It will help you think of keywords you might otherwise have missed! You might even find some keywords that are just as relevant, but have lower bid costs. You should also think carefully about “negative keywords”. These are marked with a “-“ before them in your keyword list and they ensure that anyone searching with those words will NOT cause your advert to be shown. This is ideal if you offer premium products, for example, as you could set your negative keywords to “-cheap” or “-bargain”.

The Perfect Advert

Once your keyword list has been perfected, you need to concentrate on perfecting your advert. It makes to have a separate advert group for each product or service that you offer. That will ensure that the perfect advert is shown for each user’s search and will increase the likelihood of your advert being clicked on. You can also make sure that these adverts are set to go to the correct page on your website. You’ll almost definitely find you get better results if you link to actual content pages rather than your homepage. Sometimes you’ll find that quoting a price on your advert will help you in two ways: it’ll discourage those who find the price to cheap or expensive and encourage those whose budget it suits!

Your landing page

A vital but often overlooked part of your Pay Per Click campaign is the quality and relevance of your landing page (the page that users are taken to after clicking an advert). A landing page that needs to be improved is often shown by getting plenty of clicks, but few or no conversion to sales. You should also make sure you have a convincing “call to action” on your landing page – something to make the user take action NOW, such as a time-limited product offer, newsletter sign up, form to book a sales consultation. Make your call to action as tempting and easy as possible for the user to complete.

Once your campaign is up and running, you can’t just leave it alone I’m afraid! You need to keep testing and trying new keyword combinations, advert ideas and landing page variations. You can have limitless keywords and adverts, so keep trying new ideas until you find the combination that works best for your business and budget. Always keep a close eye on the actual search terms visitors are using to come to your website, so you can add more negative keywords to your list if necessary.

Ultimately, the most important factor is your return on investment. If your campaign is costing you more than you’re generating in sales, it’s time to define it by checking your keywords, bids and landing pages.

The author is an internet consultant and web developer; offering a range of website services including Adwords account management & advice. This type of service can be useful, even if you just want a fresh pair of eyes to look over your campaign!