Google Adwords: Using Pay Per Click Advertising To Drive Site Traffic

Google Adwords is a program that many ecommerce entrepreneurs are already aware of. For those new to ecommerce, you may have heard of Google Adwords, but may have not have had the time to research what it is about or even what it is used for. This post is for this latter group of people.

Google AdWords is a program that allows advertisers to purchase text and links on the Google search engine results page, partner sites, Gmail, or hundred of thousands of web sites that use Adsense. (the opposite of Adwords where site owners are putting ads on their site for others)

Many online retailers use Pay Per Click(PPC) advertising as part of an overall marketing strategy. The basic premise is you set aside a certain amount of money each month and you bid on keywords related to your products, niche, or website. Then depending on the amount of the bid, your budget, the quality of the ad, etc. Google will place your ad on its Search Engine results page or one of Google’s partner sites such as AOL and Earthlink (optional during your setup) whenever the keyword is used in a search of that corresponding keyword. The frequency of your ad will depend primarily on your budget.

You pay for the ad only when someone clicks it and visits your Web site. Each keyword has a bid price that
you pay for each click. The amount you pay for each visitor can be as low as 0.20, or as high as $80,
depending on the quality of your ad, your Web site, and the competitiveness of the market defined by the
word or phase (known as a keyword even though it may be several words long) typed by the visitor. Generally
the narrower your keyword phrase, the more targeted your site visitor will be and possible the cheaper the bid price.

Each text ad on the results page consists of four lines and up to a limited amount of characters per line

Line 1: Hyperlinked headline of up to 25 characters
Line 2: Description line 1
Line 3: Description line 2
Line 4: Display URL (aka link)

As an Adwords user, you can decide whether to link to your home page, or a specific landing page. An example of a landing page could be the product detail page (if the keyword is for a specific product), or it could be to a sales generation page, if targeting some other sales offer like a service, or sale, or coupon. You can also choose to show your ads to the entire world, or limit their exposure by country, region, state, and even city.

Other search engines like Yahoo, etc. have similar Pay Per Click programs and operate similarly. Pay Per Click advertising is not as effective as natural search engine placement, but it is a great option (if done right) for getting site traffic during the early days of your online company.

Google Adwords is easy to set up and use, but there are tips, and other things to consider before jumping in as you want to be as efficient as possible with your keyword selection and ads so you can maximize your return on investment on the click-thru’s. Ineffective Adword campaigns costs money and may not translate into increased sales. Also, Google Adwords is something that constantly needs attention. You need to continually manage your keywords, as well as test, test, and test again various ad copy, to find the best converting ads. AdWords provides some tools to help in this area as well. These tips and tricks are beyond the scope of this post, but keep tuned in as I will eventually get to some of them in future posts.