Sunday, January 24, 2010

Don’t Make These Mistakes When Creating Google Adwords Ads

Building a Google Adwords Campaign is challenging, more so if you're just trying to make a dent in your target market. You can spend your time spying and figuring out your competitors, however, you will only gain marketing data from your customers when you put out an ad and focus on optimizing it. Nevertheless, this strategy also makes it easy to make mistakes - and some that can be very costly.

Perry Marshall wrote a book entitled "The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords" for people who need information on how to setup effective Google ads. The book contains strategies, useful tips and advice on Google Adwords starting from market research all the way to optimizing your campaign for better results.

The whole point of an Ad words campaign is to connect you or your business with your target market, turn them to visitors or audience of your site and get them to accept the value you are offering. Avoid these mistakes in order to have a successful ad words camapign.

1. Writing ad copy without keywords. Most ads I see only utilize keywords on their headlines. There might be a reason behind this, but in most cases, not including keywords in your ads' body would result in poorer ad performance.

2. Send traffic to your site's homepage.. Avoid sending your visitors to your homepage. In most cases, a homepage serves to guide visitors to the different contents of a site. Those who click on ads do so because they want to get more information referred to by the ad. However, visitors will often leave if they have to exert some effort in order to get what they want from a site. Give them what they've came for by directing them to a landing page listing your value proposition for them.

3. Using only broad match keywords in Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Broad match keywords are most useful in giving you a general idea about your market. Use the 'phrase match' and 'exact match' features in the tool to generate a highly targeted list of keywords that you can use both for your ads and your website copy.

4. Use of low-performing keywords. Understanding exactly what your target market is searching for will take some time, and you cannot always assume that people will be searching for your products or services using the same keywords that you may use online. You will need to generate a list of relevant and similar keywords using the 'synonyms' feature on the Google Ad Words Keyword Selector Tool to drill down on search results and optimize your campaign.

5. Stating your offer solely on the body of your ad. Make sure you emphasize the 'ultimate benefit' right away in the headline of your copy. Imagine that your reader/viewer is only reading the headlines; will they be compelled to click on the ad or read the remainder of the copy?

Friday, January 1, 2010

Understanding the Value of PPC Advertising Campaigns

There are many instances that websites do not get more traffic or appear on the top ranks of search engines in spite of the fact that they are keyword optimized. Many companies have landed in the top ranks of the most popular searches and this is partly due to the fact that they use the pay per click advertising method. Is using the marketing tool of pay per click advertising that effective?

The author of "Web Analytics", Avinash Kaushik, says that pay per click methods still hold a lot of weight in the internet world. Pay per click (PPC) is an essential part of search engine marketing and in combinations with proper search engine optimization (SEO) methods will bring high click-through results and can become a very successful online campaign, the author stated.

Pay per click advertising can be particularly effective when you're working with highly competitive keywords. Some companies are fortunate to work in micro-niches where there is very little competition for certain types of keywords. However, most companies work in well-established niches where there is much more competition for relevant, high-converting keywords.

Many people are not aware of the fact that they might be wasting their money generating keyword optimized content that is in fact ineffectual in getting to the top rank of searches. There are many keyword results that have thousand of websites linked to it and this fact may make it nearly impossible for your website to land in the first few pages of the search.

Using Pay per click advertising will take you out of the bottom ranks and land your website on the front page. Google and other major search engines categorize Pay Per Click results as 'sponsored listings'. Your targeted market types in your specified keywords and your website will either land on the first page of the search list, on the right side column of the page or on the top of the organic results.

The amount of your bid for your keywords will determine the position of your Pay Per Click. Let us say that you had bid a above average amount on a specific keyword that bring you to the top ranks of the search list, and those that have placed in a smaller amount will be found in the next few pages. The prime position gets awarded to the highest bid amount depending on the number of contenders for that spot.

Pay per click advertising methods can be a valuable component of your online marketing campaign, but it may take some time to fine-tune your strategy and attract the right type of traffic. You will need to conduct extensive research on what people are searching for when they purchase your products or services, consider alternative keywords and keyphrases that might lead people to your website, and review the overall cost per click using various tools available through the pay per click advertiser.

To get the advantage over competing websites and bring you the many benefits that come with it, you can opt to use Google Adwords or any other Pay per click advertiser. This marketing tool can be used even if you only have a small budget, and to get the most out of your money, try combining different ads and keywords that are relevant to your site.