Adwords Basics-Beginner Tutorial

Adwords Basics

Google Adwords is an advertising system that can generate traffic for any website. You can basically deposit $5 minimum in a campaign and instantly get access to millions of people. That's the hype version, but in truth Adwords is not that easy, and in fact, it can be difficult to even know where to begin. Below you will find some basic information to getting started with Adwords. But first things first...

Thinking About Adwords

Before even thinking about using Adwords you need to concentrate your efforts in learning some of the basics.

Tracking

Once you have the ad completed, you will need to choose and track your keywords. After the campaign has been underway for awhile you will see some keywords as winners and others as losers. It is the losers that you will have to eliminate.

Your Conversions

If you can convert your visitors into buyer or into leads (depending on the type of affiliate program your are in) you will make money. How do you do that? This is where you will have
to concentrate on your headlines, your copywriting, your landing page design, etec.

Adwords- Your PPC Monthly Allowance

With PPC you will need a budget of at least $100 to start. This is important to remember, affiliate commissions do not come to you the moment you have made the sale. They will sit in your account waiting for 1) The hold time that is required for that affiliate, then 2) your total commissions will be held til it reaches the threshold of the affiliate brokerage firm has set up. It can be $25, $50 or even a $100 before they hand over a commission check to you.

With that in mind, if you are new to Adwords, keep in mind to NEVER spend more than you can afford to lose.

Google Adwords Advertising Rules

With anything you need to know the rules. The advertising policies are dependent upon the type of ad you want to create: Text, TV, Video, Audio, Image, Mobile. I will not go into
detail of all the different rules but center the rules around text ads. However, do remember this, Google adheres to these particular principles for all ads:

Represent your site-clearly and accurately

Emphasize your product or service through your ad

Working destination URL (It's checked by Google)

Proper Grammar

Capitalization on the first word only

No direct calls to action

No pop-up windows on landing page

No repeat symbols

If you have competitive claims in ad, must be supported on your landing page

Accurate display url

What can you not advertise on Google Adwords. The policy of what you cannot advertise on Adwords is rather large. So for you convenience and mine, I'll give you the links
for you to quickly skim over.

Adwords-Creating Your Account

Before using Adwords, you need to create an account.

1. Create an account with Adwords-If you have a Google Adsense Account you'll be able to use that account information for Google Adwords.
2. Select the currency you will use to pay Google
3. Verify Your Account- again if you already have an existing account with Google you'll be able to sign in. However, if you used a different user name and password you will receive an email from Adwords, with instructions on what to do next.
4. You will then need to set up your billing information. No surprise here, if you don't set up your billing information you will not be able to activate your campaign.

Create A Campaign

Once you have set up your account, it is time to create a campaign. You will need to determine the following.

Your Audience- what language(s) and geographical locations do you want to reach with your ad.
Network- Where do you want your ad to appear. In Google search results or on Google partner sites or Google Content (Google Content uses CPM).
Daily budget - How much are you willing to spend on average eachday for this ad campaign. Note: Your budget will determine how many times your ad will appear each day.

Bidding

You can have Google create the bids for you or you can manually set your own bids. As you can imagine, when Google sets your ads-it's high. So if you're on a budget, try setting your own bids manually. Google Adwords has several tools in which you can utilize.

Traffic Estimator - with the traffic estimator you can get an idea of the competitiveness of your chosen keyword(s), as well as, your ranking.

First Page Bid Estimates - This shows you how much you'd have to bid on a keyword to have it trigger ads on the first page of search.

If you are wanting your ads to be seen on Google search and Google partner sites than you will be using the CPC bidding process, if you are wanting to use Google Content only then you will be using the CPM bidding process. What is the difference between CPC and CPM?

A CPC Bid

CPC (cost per click) - here you enter the maximum amount you're willing to pay each time
a user clicks your ad. Again, your bid will determine how often your ad will show and in what position on the page it will appear. With CPC you can start your bidding at .01.

A CPM Bid

CPM (cost per impression)- here you enter the maximum amount you're willing to pay for each 1000 impressions your ad receives. The cost per 1000 impressions is set at a beginning bid of twenty-five cents (.25).

The next question you are probably asking is: "When do I set up a CPM campaign"?
Usually people have different goals in mind when they use the Content Network. You may want to consider using the Content Network if: 1) You are trying to increase awareness of your product and are not interested in clicks; 2) You are targeting particular ad placements; or 3) You want to increase brand awareness (FYI: image ads work well for brand awareness).

Writing The Ad

Your text ad will include:

A Headline (25 char long)- Your headline should grab the attention of your target market. When possible, try to use your main keywords from your ad group, because when you use these keywords, Google will put these words in bold. Bold draws the eyes to the words.

Two lines of descriptive text (35 char long). The first line should contain a benefit, the second line should contain a feature.

A display URL that shows your website address (35 char long)

A destination URL that will place the user who clicks your ad to where you want him to find the information that you referred to in the ad (1024 char long)

The key to the clicks is to engage an individual's curiosity or emotion. You can do that by:

"How To"
Claim trust-Recommended by, Guaranteed for...etc.
Offer instructions

Make sure your ad is focused. And most importantly, make sure you send them to a landing page that emphasizes the ad and your keywords that caught the visitor's eye.

Display URL Rules for Adwords

Google made some changes in 2010 regarding the presentation of your display URL within your Google Adwords campaign. Here is a quick outline of Google's Display URL requirements.

1. Your display URL must reflect the URL of the website you are advertising. The landing page URL should accurately indicate where the user will be taken too, if they click on your ad.

2. Keyword URLs. Keyword URLS are considered to be your destination URL. And the display URL must accurately reflect them.

3. Your display URL cannot be part of your ad text.

4. Your display URL must include your domain extension. (.com, biz, etc.)

5. If you destination URL is too long, they suggest using a shortened version, which could be your home page URL. This new rules cannot be ignored. If your display URL does not include the above additional information in your display URLs they will reject your ad. However, if they do reject your display URL, they will send an email that not only includes a rejection notice but also a suggestion for the display URL that they consider acceptable.

Changes to Your Ad Can Help Your CTR

These simple changes may improve your CTR:

"..." at the end of your last line. It means continue, you'll learn more. Most people want to learn more, right.
Capitalize-Capitalize all the important words in your Headline-leaving "a", "and", "the", etc. lower case.
Repetitive Keywords-repetitive keywords can decrease your CTR.
Leave the word "Buy" out of your headline. The word buy instantly puts a mental halt to anyone clicking the ad.
Don't ignore your Display Url-sometimes just tweaking the url for more description can draw the attention of the searcher.

Working With Ad Groups

Make tight ad groups with keywords related to your content.
separate your ad groups among search, and content. It will give you a better idea what is and is not working for you.
Include negative words (explanation below) in your ad campaigns. Negative words, will help to prevent showing your ads to people who shouldn't see them.

The bottom line is this, you need to work with your ads, experiment and test.

Keywords

Keywords is what drives the traffic. Your keywords will determine if your ad is triggered or not within the Google ads network. So it's important to be as keyword-specific as possible when describing your product or service. Which, is no easy task when you have only three lines to be specific in.

Once your ad is completed, you will know whether your ad has been approved for showing by the fact that your campaign will begin to run. If your ad is "Disapproved" you'll see that status indicated on the Ads tab of your Campaigns tab. It's also a possibility that you may also be notified by email.

Negative Keywords

When you sign up for an affiliate program, you have probably noticeed in some of your affiliate programs that some allow you to do SEM while others do not. For those companies that allow you to use SEM, they will emphasis that you use specific negative keywords. Why? This is to prevent you from bidding on the keywords that they want to dominate in their own Adwords campaign. Do you have to abide by your affiliate's suggestions. Yes, or you will find that you have been unceremoniously banned from their affiliate program.

So what are negative keywords? Negative keywords are basically words that make sure that your ads "do not" show for searches for those specific keywords marked as "negative".

Negative keywords are not only important for abiding to your affiliate program rules but can be helpful to getting you the traffic you want, as well as, avoiding the traffic you don't want. For example: the keyword "free" can draw so much traffic and no buyers that you will have exhausted your budget in a very short period of time. As you know, should know, or will know, free is a major calling card for anyone. Who doesn't want a free deal, right?

How do you know your negative keyword has been added? Google puts a dash in front of the keyword: -free.

Tracking Keywords

The next factor that you need to keep in mind is tracking. You're need to keep track of the keywords that are producing the results that you want. After your campaign has been running for a short time, you will quickly see which keywords are producing results, and which are not. For the keywords that are not producing the results you want-it's time to cut them from your campaign and save money.

Quality Score

Quality Score is an important measurement which affects your ad performance and costs. A quality score is assigned to each of your ads and keywords. Though there are other factors that go into the quality score the four major elements are:

CTR of particular keyword

CTR of all ads and keywords in your account

Quality of your Landing page

Relevance of your keyword to the ad you are using

What does a keyword's Quality Score mean to your bottom line? The higher the quality score of a keyword means:

The lower the price you pay for each click.
Eligibility to enter auction more easily and at lower cost
Ad position (Ad position is measured by quality score and cost-per-click)

Bottom line, your quality score will determine when and where your ads appear, the cost you will pay for the keyword, and finally, your ad position in search.

As you may have noticed the word "Relevance keeps coming up. Maybe you may have even asked, "What makes your ad relevant? Simple. If people click on your ad and your ad gives Google a higher click-through rate, your ad is relevant. Which means, you pay less for your keyword(s).

As you can see, there is a lot of information to learn. You can gently put your toe in the water alone, to see if you can succeed; or, if you're a little skittish about the possibility of losing a lot of money, it's time to search out a Guru to get some Adwords help.