The Truth About Google Adwords

Posted by Aerion Miles on under Pay Per Click | 17 Comments to Read

Google Adwords is the advertising company owned by Google.  They have several different advertising option, and knowing which is right for you is key to your success.

Many people have wasted thousands of dollars on Google Adwords, simply through misunderstanding what was happening with their money.

Firstly you have both text ads and picture ads, but for the purpose of this article we shall ignore picture ads. 

Picture ads on Google Adwords are very expensive, and should only be used by very large companies, who probably know more about Adwords than me.

However if your doing Google Adwords text ads then you need to choose whether you want to choose to pay for clicks or for impressions.  It is always best to start of paying for clicks, and don’t change to impressions unless it looks more cost effective in your Google Adwords statistics.

CPC is the name given to bidding for clicks, while CPM is where you pay for impressions per thousand.

Google Adwords adverts are shown along the side of Googles search results.  They are also shown in what is known as content placements.  A content placement for a Google Adwords advert, could include your ad being shown on a blogger blog, or even in Gmail.

Whichever you are using, your success or failure will largely depend upon your choice of keywords.

A great tip to reduce your Google Adwords cost, is to use creative keywords.  Remember that you are choosing which keywords you want to bid on, and the cost involved in each click is directly proportionate to the competition.

If you pick a keyword for your niche that only a few other people are bidding on, it will be very cheap to get traffic.  Obviously the longer your keywords are, and the more obscure the less people will be searching for this term.

The best compromise is to bid on the cheap keywords that not many people are searching for, but use ten times the keywords. 

If you can get very cheap clicks, but using longer keywords results in less searches so less clicks, well then you simply use ten times the long keywords.  This way you still get lots of traffic, but at a far cheaper rate.  This is an example of using Google Adwords the way it is supposed to be used.

I’ll give you a short list of terms here, that you can add to the front of your keywords.  This should result in much cheaper traffic, but as I said, just keep adding these cheap Google Adwords streams, until the traffic is sufficient.

Keyword Extensions:

• How To
• Review
• Reviews
• What is
• Where can I get
• How can I get
• Where are
• What is (keyword) for
• What can I do with a
• Cheap
• Honest review of
• Buy
• (keyword) buy now
• (keyword) free
• (keyword) lessons
• (keyword) blog
• (keyword) review
• (keyword) tips
• (keyword) method
• (keyword) reviews

By adding these simple extenders to your keywords you will massively reduce the cost involved.  The trick is to get lots of different cheap keywords going, as opposed to one or two expensive ones.

Hopefully these tips will give you the help you need for your Google Adwords campaigns.

Why Using Negative Keywords Can Help Your PPC Campaign

Posted by Aerion Miles on under Pay Per Click, Website Traffic | 10 Comments to Read

If you have a PPC campaign currently running I’m sure you’re wondering about the negative keywords section.  A negative keyword, is a keyword which if entered will stop your keywords from showing up in the result.

The advantage of this type of keyword in your PPC campaign is that it can help you to eliminate wasted clicks from people who just want something for nothing.  Many people will search across the Internet looking for a free version of something which they know they will eventually have to buy.  The unfortunate effect of this is that because this type of surfing is so prevalent you can waste lots of money advertising to people that have no intention of buying anything.

In any type of PPC campaign your main interest should be your ROI (Return on Investment) and if there is a way to reduce the amount of clicks you pay for between sales, then this certainly needs to be investigated.

I found that in most PPC campaigns adding the keyword “free” and “free download” to my negative keywords list, caused a noticeable increase in my conversion rate. 

In case you’re wondering what a conversion rate is, it is the name we give to the amount of clicks divided by the amount of sales we made.    A large part of improving your PPC campaign revolves around various methods of boosting your conversion ratio, and while there are many different methods you can use I urge you not to neglect the negative keywords.

Another thing to consider when setting up a PPC campaign is that Google Adwords are not the only advertising company online, though they may pretend they are.

Another great company advertising via a PPC campaign is Bidvertiser, though their effectiveness will depend largely upon the niche you are in.  Overture is another provider of the PPC campaigns service, and many people consider them better than Google Adwords, though I think it really depends upon the niche you are in.

When trying to compile a list of negative keywords to add to your PPC campaign, I suggest you look at the other websites competing for your main keywords.  What you should try and do, is discover what the free alternative is to what you are selling, and make sure that those people are not coming through to your website via your PPC campaign.

Sometimes I have found it very effective to add my competitors name to my negative keyword list.    The reason this has been the case, is that they were looking for a particular product, and finding that I was not selling it, moved on after costing me one click.  By adding my competitors name to my negative keyword list, I found in some cases my PPC campaigns conversions improved dramatically.  Though in other PPC campaigns it turned out that my main buying traffic had actually been looking for a competitor’s product and instead decided to buy mine.  By blocking those keywords I had blocked my buying traffic.

The route to go with this will depend upon the niche you are in, but I advise testing as you could be leaving money on the table.