My Marketing Thing » Adwords

Google AdWords: The King and I

Megan — Tue, 25 May 2010 01:03:57 +0000

Have you heard people jabbering on about 'Adwords' and 'PPC' as if you should:

(a) know what they're saying, and
(b) care?

I know. 'Adwords' sounds like an uncreative copywriting agency. And 'PPC' sounds like an uncreative insurance company. But, surprisingly, they are neither of these things.

When the used-car salesmen of the internet holler 'Be on the first page of Google!', they are often referring to Google Adwords campaigns.

Google Adwords is one form of pay-per-click advertising (otherwise known as PPC).

What is pay-per-click advertising?

Unlike PPC, pay-per-click is exactly how it sounds. If someone sees your ad and clicks on it, you pay.

AdWords is a rather popular form of pay-per-clicking. Apparently Google made $20 billion from AdWords in 2008. What the advertisers made is another story…

What is Google Adwords exactly?

The Google Adwords ads are the sponsored link areas of a search results page (see the red circled areas below):

Adwords positioning

When talking about Adwords, people generally mean the ads on the right hand side column. So much of the AdWord ranking rant by search engine specialists is about being at the top of that column. King of the hill, top of the heap.

It's as if they don't want to be so bold as to mention 'the other place': directly above the search results (see the other red circled area at the top of the diagram). This spot is Google's royalty box.

Getting into Google's royalty box

Having your Adwords ad at the top of the search listings means you are smack-dab in Google's premium real estate. Ads go to this red-roped area when they have met an additional performance standard.

Like much with Google, this additional performance standard is shrouded in mystery. We do know, however, that it's something to do with the relevance of the ad to the visitor. This seems to be strongly determined by the click-through-rate (CTR) of your ad while it's sitting on the right hand side, waiting to be selected by the Google prince for a watlz.

How do you start this Adwords thing?

Go to Google AdWords
Set up an account
Pay the $5 account set-up fee
Create your ad
Sit and watch your money flow out

Giving Google even more of your money

Google allows you to bid on keywords that you want to activate your ad. It's kind of like EBay, but without getting anything tangible.

The higher you bid (i.e. more money you spend on a particular group of keywords) the more likely you will be placed at the top of the sponsored links column on the right hand side.

Some royal gossip

A good number of Google ranking specialists are now saying 'Beware of AdWords'. Why? Because Adwords is fast becoming the domain of large organisations with big Adwords budgets. It doesn’t take much to use up a more modest Adwords budget – which, of course, then makes it to harder to spin your ad budget into gold.

How high up you appear on the sponsored links list depends, in part, on how much you’re willing to spend on your campaign.

Why AdWords might NOT be worth trialling

If you are a small business and have only recently launched your site, try other ways to raise your ranking before launching into AdWords.

Even if you have been around for a bit (online) but still have low visitor numbers, be careful. Try getting your numbers up before going down the Adwords track.

Other ways to raise visitor numbers before launching an Adwords campaign

Read the previous My Marketing Thing posts on search engine optimisation:

If you choose to go ahead with this AdWords caper…

A successful AdWords campaign hinges on choosing the right keywords to put in you ad.

To choose the right keywords, it's best to embrace the‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ formula: not too broad (too expensive), not too niche (no one will search for it), just right.

Sound familiar? Yes I wrote about my Goldilocks keyword theory in SEO & Keyword research: Goldilocks meets the devil.

Obviously, many research keywords through the Adwords Keyword Tool. However, there are other keyword tools that may also be helpful. See the Goldilocks post and read the bit about different keyword search tools near the bottom.

How much does AdWords cost?

You can set a price limit per day, but have a popular keyword and your campaign can get very expensive very quickly.

For more information: Visit Google's pricing information here.

3 key tips to making AdWords work for you

If you are wanting to attract customers from a particular geographic area
incorporate the name of the suburb or city as a keyword to niche your campaign.
Niche by having an exact phrase only
Use brackets or quotes at either end of the phrase to let Google know that you are promoting a phrase (not a collection of single keywords).
To inspire the searcher to click on your ad
Offer a free e-book or free mini-online course – i.e. offer something attractive to your target audience that is free if they visit your site (by clicking on your ad).

Something many forget about AdWords campaigns

The Adwords campaign is designed to send visitors to your website. So having a great click-through stat is fine. But what happens when the visitor arrives to your site?

Do everything it can to make that AdWords visitor welcome. Tea, coffee, cake?

Make the most of their visit. Encourage them to contact you directly, subscribe to your e-news or buy something on your online store.

Once started on AdWords, then what?

Monitor how the clicks are going and make changes as you go. Keep refining your keywords and see if they're working for you.

Google gives you performance reports that include information on where your ads appeared, conversion rates, cost, etc. – so you don't have any excuses. You know the deal.

Have you done the AdWords thing?

If you have run a successful AdWords campaign, we'd love to hear (and profit from) your secrets.

If you have run an unsuccessful AdWords campaign, we are here as a sympathetic support group, poised to listen to your story…when you are ready to share.

This post was written by Megan Hills. Megan is a writer, cartoonist, marketing consultant who is wondering how to organise a coup d'etat against the leader of the free world: Google. Find out more about Megan.

SEO: True meanings and confessions

Megan — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:26:47 +0000

Let's start from the beginning. What does SEO really mean?

I originally thought it represented the names of the cars I have owned:
Sam, Eric and Owen
Certain people lacking social skills think it means:
Starship Enterprise's Oscillator

A small town in Croatia known for their philosophical bent believe it means:
some endless osmosis…
It's the acronym for the name of an unusual environmental group – who deny climate change – called:
Sun Earth Ostrich
The French insist that it means:
séance en oeufs (seance in eggs)

But today we are in the marketing zone. So here SEO means…..

…drumroll…

Search engine optimisation!

How exciting. All clear, then? No? Okay…

It's not a particularly warm and fuzzy term, I'll grant you that. But if you say 'I want to be on the first page of Google', you will be yelling the same SEO mantra as 99% of the people out there.

Where you appear on a certain Google page determines how many people will find you online. That's why being on the first page of Google is the prayer of the twenty-first century.

The big question people forget to ask…

Being on the first page of Google is all very well. But the thing people often forget to ask is this: the first page by what search words?

Type in 'My Marketing Thing' and I'm top of the page. Yay! But that doesn't help me if I'm trying to reach people who don't know about My Marketing Thing yet.

Type in 'marketing and Blink' ('Blink' is a book by Malcolm Gladwell talked about in an earlier post) and I don't have a hope in hell of being on the first page of Google. Why? Because the big publishers and distributors involved in selling 'Blink' have taken up that first page. And they will probably continue to for awhile yet.

Why do the big guys get the ranking?

The longer you have been around online, the higher your ranking is likely to be. The bigger you are (i.e. lots of traffic on your site and other people listing your web address on their site), the higher your ranking is also likely to be.

My Marketing Thing is relatively new and relatively small. So my ranking isn't hey-wow fabulous right now. Well, that's one excuse. There is another big reason why my ranking isn't so hot…yet. And I unveil it very soon – read on!

Happy news for My Marketing Thing

'Marketing coke cartoon' (an image related to my chat about Blink) got me on the first page. Yay! Okay, the likelihood of someone typing in 'Marketing coke cartoon' is much smaller than 'marketing and Blink'. But you do what you can.

One key SEO rule is: try to find niche areas, not highly competitively broad areas.

But we need to stop here for a moment. There's a confession I have to make…

My SEO confession

I would rather have interesting and creative un-search-friendly words than boring and predictable search-friendly words. Search-friendly words are known as 'key words' or 'key phrases'.

I really should have titled my 'Briefing your web dude' series as 'How to brief a web builder'. Why? Because who is going to type into Google 'Briefing your web dude'? No one. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

But I wanted the word 'Dude'. And Goddamnit, I was going to have it.

My stubborn creative soul does tend to fight this SEO business. But I do have some other strategies that might bring me that ranking without losing the fun bit.

Some shocking news about SEO

There are all manner of things that can apparently raise your page ranking, but….regardless of what SEO experts tell you…nothing has been actually proven.

Note: Apart from getting on the first page of Google via Adwords (pay-per-click advertising). But we will get to that in due course.

What's next?

The next post will give you (in a happy-go-lucky nutshell) the stuff that SEO experts suggest as 'the thing to do' to nab your position on The First Page.

Hey, it's good to know your options and play around with them. I've already used a good many of these babies.

Later I'll also share with you my secret strategy on how to avoid looking like a tedious key-word contortionist – and still get a place in Google's good books.

This post was written by Megan Hills. Megan is a writer, cartoonist, marketing consultant who begrudgingly admits that SEO is the devil we need to get to know (buy him a drink, ask about his weekend, that kind of thing). Find out more about Megan.