Google AdWords - An AdWords Management Guide

Google AdWords is Google's search and contextual ad platform. In this Google AdWords guide, you'll learn:

• A more thorough definition of the program.
• Why it's important to you and to your pay-per-click and search engine marketing campaigns.
• How to get the most out of your Google AdWords account.

so what is google adwords, anyway?

Google AdWords is Google's program designed to enable advertisers to create ad campaigns on Google properties. This applies to

• Google.com
• Google's search syndication network
• The Google content network

This platform features various payment options:

• AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) - This system causes you to pay for advertising on a cost-per-click basis, paying only when searchers or visitors click on your ads.
• AdWords pay-per-impression - This model allows you to pay for every thousand impressions (also known as a cost-per-impression or CPM) of your ads. Impressions are the number of times your ads appear on a page searchers or surfers have viewed.
• AdWords pay-per-action - This model charges you on a cost-per-action basis. This means that every time a click on your ad leads to a conversion on your site (sales, leads, downloads, etc.). Note that Google's pay-per-action beta is ending, and that Conversion Optimizer and their affiliate network is the only way to implement this option.

Google adwords management: Optimizing your adwords marketing efforts

Much of creating a successful AdWords campaign can be accomplished by focusing on two key concepts:

• Relevance - Creating relevant AdWords keyword lists, closely related AdWords keyword groups, relevant ad text, and customized landing pages will ensure that you are directly targeting interested shoppers searching for your offering.
• Google AdWords Quality Score - Quality Score is an algorithmic grading system that gives you an overall "score" based on how well you do at creating relevant ads. Google offers pricing discounts to advertisers who create relevant, well-structured campaigns (this allows Google to improve the user experience for the searcher).

Of course, achieving a high Google AdWords Quality Score and creating synchronization and relevance within your AdWords accounts isn't easy. There are several factors you'll need to control to effectively create relevant, Quality Score friendly campaigns:

• Keyword Research
• Keyword Grouping
• Ad Text Creation
• Landing Page Optimization

how Google adwords tools can help you maximize your roi

WordStream offers a suite of AdWords software tools specifically designed to help you quickly and easily create relevant campaigns that enjoy high Quality Scores. The PPC software does this with a number of specific tools to help make learning AdWords easy.

Keyword Research for Google AdWords

The first step to achieving Google AdWords marketing success is discovering and targeting specific, relevant meta keywords.

Unlike the keyword tool offered by AdWords, WordStream's AdWords Tools not only instantly generates a highly relevant list of keywords with our Keyword Generator, but our keyword tools also automate the process of daily keyword discovery.

First, the software mines your log files to discover the keywords users have typed to reach your site in the past. This is far more effective than a tool like Google's Keyword Tool because it works directly with your site data instead of relying on generalized search traffic. A database like the one below is created:

Note that while the keywords are graphed to show you which key phrases drive traffic, the "x-axis" (the bottom line on the graph) goes on indefinitely. WordStream has discovered thousands of highly specific keywords from the log files of this customer; these are known as long-tail keywords.

Next, WordStream's Web analytics and keyword suggestion tool continually mine your website traffic to discover new keyword suggestions. This is the result of the software's JavaScript analytics package.

Grouping Keywords for Google AdWords

Next, having amassed a keyword database, WordStream enables you to manipulate that keyword database quickly and easily by automatically offering you optimal PPC management and workflow suggestions.

For this example we'll imagine we're running a used book store:

Here we see that WordStream has suggested a series of advantageous keyword groupings through its Keyword Group Segmenter. The resulting Ad Groups will all be closely related (because WordStream creates these groupings semantically) while simultaneously being highly relevant (because the terms have been mined from your own log files and site traffic).

This makes it exponentially easier to create targeted ad text and AdWords landing pages.

Additionally, you can expand your segmentation to create even more specific sub-groups, and can create multiple groups simultaneously with a click of a button.

Creating multiple groups and sub-groups leaves you with an organized tree of keyword groups:

This allows you to manage your keywords more effectively and gives you a place for future related keywords.

Google AdWords Ad Text & Landing Pages

The Google AdWords system encourages you to create ads at the Ad Group level. Additionally, it's generally a best practice to create a landing page for each group you create.

Creating semantically similar groupings is the only way to effectively target your ad to an entire group of keywords. WordStream's ad text tools are actually even more effective for this sort of customized messaging than dynamic keyword insertion.

What our Ad Text Generator does is take the most frequently searched upon terms in your Keyword Group, and suggest those terms to you as you create ad text for a given Ad Group:

Pictured above, we see WordStream offering ad text suggestions based on the amount of traffic being sent to this Ad Group from various keywords.

While it's important to create compelling ads and to test multiple variations of those ads where appropriate, WordStream is suggesting here various keywords that provide targeted messaging and Quality Score friendly text for your Ad Groups.

You can implement these same textual suggestions within your landing page text (with the most important keywords and key phrases becoming headers, less prominent keywords used in body copy, etc.) If you're concerned with API costs, use WordStream's export feature to transfer your keyword groups and adtext into your AdWords account.

optimize your Google adwords campaign management

You can utilize WordStream's tool-set free to get a better idea of how our keyword software can impact your AdWords accounts, and how simple AdWords management can be.

To get started with WordStream, you should:

• Try WordStream Free Today
• Request a Live Demonstration
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