Introduction to Google Adwords

If you haven't heard of Google, you've probably been living under a rock for the last few years. Google owes is phenomenal success to providing effective indexing of the web, however it wouldn't make much money if that was all it did.

Targeted Advertising 

Google makes its money by providing cost effective targeted advertising which displays alongside its search results.

Let's say you want to book airline tickets online, and you're not sure where to start. You type in "airline tickets" in Google, and it will return a list of results sorted in order of how 'important' it determines them to be. Quite likely, you will notice along side the search results a list of 'sponsored links'. These are paid advertisements promoting a product or service that Google thinks are relevent to your search.

If you want to advertise online, these advertisements can be a very cost effective way to reach you target market. Google is by far the most popular internet search engine, so plenty of people use it.

The sponsored links work by allowing advertisers to create small text advertisements and then bid for a price for each click on advertisements for particular keyword combinations. In other words, if you own an airline, you might want to show advertisements when someone searches for "airline tickets", so you could bid for this keyword combination. You probably wouldn't want to bid just for "tickets" as this could be concert tickets, movie tickets or all sorts of things that are not really relevent. You can also bid for as many keyword combinations as you like, and set a different price on each one.

What about if you happen to be a regional airline (continuing with our airline example), and you don't want to show up when people are looking for international tickets. Google has got that covered too. You can specify that you only want your ads to display to people from specific geographical regions.

What it costs 

The cost to you as an advertiser depends on several things. Firstly, how much you choose to bid for your keywords. If no-one else is advertising using a particular keyword combination, you can set a low bid, and you'll still most likely be successful, however if you have lots of competition, you need to be prepared to pay more. You need to weigh up whether the cost added cost for clicks is worthwhile. Prices can range from a few cents to a few dollars per click typically. You can set a daily budget so that you never spend more than you can afford. Google simply stops displaying your ads when you reach your budget limit, then starts over the next day. You can also suspend your advertising indefinitely if you wish, without actually deleting anything.

Relevency 

Where the system is so effective, is that you only pay for when people actually click on your ads. Google does expect you to make your ads relevent, so if no one ever clicks on them, Google will stop displaying them after a period of time. This helps prevent spammers, so for example, if someone tried to advertise porn when people search for airfares, the ads wouldn't stay because they are not likely to get many clicks since they're completely irrelevent to what people are looking for. 

Making Adwords work for you

Google Adwords are something that you can set up yourself. All you need is a credit card and a bit of time. You will need to do a bit of experimentation at first to work out what keyword combinations work best to give you value for money. If you think it all sounds a bit complicated for you, Create IT can help set up the Adwords service for you. You need to remember this is not a set and forget service, as other people may be looking to exploit the same keywords as you. Google provides a wealth of statistics so that you can see how your advertising is performing. After the initial setup, you probably want to check things at least once a month, or you can pay a professional to do it for you.

Advertising on targetted sites

In addition to Adwords, Google also provides a service where you can advertise on selected sites that are relevent to your product. You need to be careful with this, as you pay per thousand ad veiws, NOT per click, so if you advertise on a popular site, but your advertisements aren't relevent enough or if the site is badly designed, you could spend quite a bit without getting any return. On the other hand, if the site is well targeted, you can have a captive audience. Back with our airline example, if you choose to advertise on a travel blog, the chances are there will be readers who are quite interested in purchasing airfares. 

Earning money with Google

You might be wondering how Google gains access to so many targeted web sites to display advertising. In addition to its services for advertisers, Google also offers the ability for web site owners to display relevent advertising on their sites and earn a commission for doing so. If you like to spend a lot of time online writing, then there is a good chance you could turn this into a source of income. Don't expect to earn a lot unless your site is very popular, but at least it may help pay the bills. Don't Cheat! Some people try to build sites just to load them up with advertising links to earn money without producing any real content. This may work for a time, but Google is constantly refining its systems to weed out sites like this. If you're not sure of your abilities, take a writing course.

Share