Google AdWords

This is the first in a series of post looking at online advertising and increasing your return.

We’ll cover all the common PPC platforms, and ad networks and buying ad space directly.

This post starts at the most well known PPC platform, Google AdWords. Google started running this platform as we know it in early 2002 and it is now the dominant leader in the sector with a majority market share beating nearest rival Yahoo (previously named Omniture).

Let’s take a look at the Ad Words basics to get it up and running as quickly as possible.

After you have registered your account it’s a good idea to link it to your Google Analytics account if you have one.

First you need to perform keyword research. This means that you are looking for words and phrases that will lead targeted traffic to your site. There are a number of tools you can use to perform keyword research. My choice is Google’s Keyword Tool but there is a vast majority of SEO’s that use Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery.

You can read more about keyword research in our “How to do keyword research” post.

Next you need to write your adverts and bid on the keywords you chose from your research. If your budget is on the smaller side its best to go niche and specific when bidding on terms. I.e. bidding on blue suede shoes not just shoes. Doing this means the person clicking on blue suede shoes is probably looking for exactly that and you’ve got an increased chance of a sale (if you sell those blue suede shoes that is!)

You can read more about writing effective Google Ad’s in our post “How to write effective online ads” post.

If everything is done correctly you should be up and away. We’ll be taking a look at how to hone your ads and increase performance in the next post.

Google has a whole host of video tutorials here.

If you need and advice or have any questions I’d be happy to answer.

Remember Wampit target ads directly at your business niche so the more comprehensive your profile is, the higher the chance of click through.