Google Adwords Tutorial

Please remember Google Adwords is not a quick fix solution to your marketing, you need to spend time and effort learning how to use it properly or you may simply throw money down the drain on ineffectively targeted ads. Our google adwords tutorial should help you make the most of your marketing efforts using this great tool.

Step 1: Setting Up A Google AdWords Account

The first thing you need to do is set up a Google Adwords account, so head on over to http://adwords.google.com and open one now by clicking the try adwords now button. You will be talked through the set up but I will briefly go through the steps here too.

• On the first screen choose Standard Edition. It has more features that will make managing your campaigns easier.
• You will be prompted to create a username and password, if you have a google account already for something like AdSense, Google Mail, Orkut or iGoogle, then select that option, otherwise select the option to create a new account. Now if you do already have an account I would suggest you do use it since you will be able to see all your google account features with one login.
• You will now be taken to a screen to set your currency.
• The final step is verifying your account by going to your email account you registered with and clicking the link you have been sent.
• You should now be able to simply login to you google account and will see your adwords options.

Step 2 : Set up a Google Adwords Campaign

OK now you have your account up and running you will need to create a google adwords campaign. If you have chosen Standard edition as I suggested this tutorial will continue to make sense, if you chose starter edition you may not be able to easily find the options I am talking about. Now, if you want you should easily be able to upgrade your account to standard edition at this point at no cost. There will be a message in your account which will clearly offer the option to move to standard edition.

• Go to the Campaign Summary screen where you will have no campaigns yet, however, you will be able to click the option to “new online campaign” – this gives three options, “start with keywords”, “start with placements”, “help me choose”. I would suggest for your first campaign start with the more simple keyword campaign. You can go on to learn about the other campaigns later.
• On the “Start a New Campaign with Keywords” screen you will be given various options such as add a title, the ad group name and the customer location to target. This screen pretty much talks you through it, be careful to think about how you will organise your campaigns, for example, your campaign name maybe Hotels Leeds, then your Ad group names maybe budget, business and luxury. Take some time to think about all the settings on this page. Try not to get greedy, make sure your campaigns are highly focused. Remember you can run multiple campaigns to target different types of customers in different regions.
• Create the advert section where the magic begins. While it is tempting to be creative, your first ads should be relevant, keep it simple, think about what would make someone click your ad, and not just anyone, but a relevant someone.
• You want to list features and benefits that are strongly relevant to what your target market is seeking. The ad consists of a headline, two lines of ad copy, a display URL, and the destination URL (the web page the customer will actually see). Using gardening tools as an example, your ad would look something like this (click image to enlarge):
  

  Note that the ad mentions the keyword phrase “gardening tools” several times. This helps increase relevancy which will ensure that potential customers know your site contains the information they want. Google also rewards relevancy and may show your ad more often.

  Notice that the relevant keyword is used in the display URL. If your keyword is not in your domain name, it is very helpful to add the keyword here since Google bolds the keyword in your ad each time it appears – you could create a page on your website with the keyword in the URL.

• The next stage is to choose your keywords. The importance of choosing the right keywords cannot be overstated. This is where you can blow your budget in a matter of hours by being greedy and trying to target every possible word all in one go. While it is tempting to choose the keyword with the most searches, this is often not the most profitable and will cost a lot of money per click.This is the time consuming part of Google Adwords. Finding those gems of searches that get a fair few clicks per month but have few bidders so the price per click is low. You will be much better off with a less searched keyword that is more tightly targeted.
  
  Google provide a great tool for finding relevant keywords and how much the cost per click. Try googles search based keyword tool here. You can see an example below using the keyword phrase “gardening tools”. The example below, entering “gardening tools” presents several choices you might use.
  

  Choose your keywords carefully and keep your eye on the performance if the cost per click starts going up and you are getting little return your campaign will need tweaking.

• The next page is where you set your bids and choose how much you want to spend. Your bid is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each click on your ad. You want to bid high enough to place well in the listing but not break your budget all in one hit. DO NOT bid more than you can afford, start low and build up your bids, until you see how much it is going to cost you.

  You will need to enter your daily budget and your maximum cost per click. The cost per click (CPC) is the amount you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad.

  Take time to read the information on this page! Use the view traffic estimator on the page to see how much you will have to set your budget to in order to get clicks on your adverts. It is at this point you may find that this particular keyword campaign may cost a lot more than you thought and you may need to go back to the beginning and rethink which keyword you will target. If you have a low budget and are targeting a highly competitive search term at this point the traffic estimator may tell you that for one click on your search term it will cost you £4. Your budget will go pretty quickly in this case won’t it. This screen will look like this:
  

  You may change the CPC, up or down, and see what effect it will have on the estimated traffic. You may also add or change keywords and phrases later as you refine your campaign. With a combination of the googles search based keyword tool and the estimator above you can tweak your keywords and bids to try get the most out of your campaign.

The only way you get value for money is to spend time learning how to use all the tools google gives you in the adwords console, remember your competitors probably are, so you need to put as much effort in as them to be able to compete and even steal custom.

Remember to stay within your budget and to keep your ad copy relevant and your AdWords campaigns will be well on their way to being successful and profitable campaigns.

If you are interested in a free web design quote please contact us by telephone on 0113 2797731 or use our FREE online website quote form for a no obligation quote.

You may also like to read:

• A Guide to Google Adwords
• How Google segments the contents of a web page
• How to Optimize a Single Web Page For Over 15 Keywords and Get Ranked On All of Them
• Internal SEO
• SEO With Google Webmaster Tools – Part 1: Setting Up a Site

(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...