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Author: John Mann Article source: http://www.selfseo.com/. Used with author's permission.
The very first thing to do before venturing into the Adwords™ arena is to brainstorm and come up with a list of as many keywords for your product as possible. This is definitely the most important step in the process. The larger your list of keywords, the better. One word keywords are acceptable but don't rely on them exclusively. Be creative. If you sell custom dog houses, don't use a single keyword like dog (doghouse might be OK) Use phrases like "custom dog houses" or "quality dog houses".
Find Relevant Words with Little Competition. You'll probably be able to think of 10 - 20 keyword phrases right off the top of your head but these are the same keywords that your competitors will think of. The more people that are bidding on a keyword, the more expensive it will be to obtain an ad on the first page.
Your goal is to find keywords that have relevance to your product but that have little competition. Google returns different results for singular and plural search terms. Also consider common possible misspellings of your keywords (is doghouse, above, the way it is normally spelled?).
Think Like Your Customer. In building your keyword list, you want to "get into your customer's head". What phrases might he be searching on? These phrases don't necessarily have to exactly match your product. If you're selling custom dog houses, your ideal customer might be searching on "gourmet dog food" in order to find a new entrée for Rover. Now, after seeing your ad pop up, he might very well decide to investigate getting Rover a new house to go with his new dinner! Be creative! How does your customer search for things online? Figure this out and you're on your way to making sales!
One other thing to consider is that Google offers 4 different types of searches or matching options. Because this is an important concept to understand, you might want to go to https://adwords.google.com/select/faq/account.html to see exactly how Google defines these different matching options:
Broad Match - This is the default option. If you include general keyword or keyword phrases-such as tennis shoes-in your keyword list, your ads will appear when users search for tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms.
Phrase Match - If you enter your keyword in quotation marks, your ad will appear when a user searches on the phrase tennis shoes.
Exact Match - If you surround your keywords in brackets-such as [tennis shoes]-your ads will appear when users search for the specific phrase tennis shoes, in this order, and without any other terms in the query.
Negative Keyword - If your keyword is tennis shoes and you add the negative keyword -red, your ad will not appear when a user searches on red tennis shoes.
Maximize the number of keyword phrases you're bidding on. After you're done brainstorming your keyword list, add the plural form to each and every singular keyword phrase (where it makes sense grammatically to do so).
Finally, include keywords in both quotes "dog house" and brackets [dog house] for all key phrases longer than one word. Use negative keywords where necessary. For example, if you're selling dog house plans, it might make sense to include the negative keyword -free so that your ad won't show up when someone searches for "free dog house plans".
There are a number of good resources to help you in creating your keyword list including Google's Keyword Suggestion Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox
As you begin to use the Adwords™ ad creation form, you'll notice one of the relatively minor annoyances to using Adwords™, which is that is that you are limited to 25 characters for the headline and 35 characters for lines 2 & 3 and 35 characters for the display url. You'll realize quickly that when you're creating ads, you'll be focused on writing snappy text that will reach out and grab your customers, not on counting characters.
Since Google doesn't let you know until you've used up all of the available characters for that line, things can get a bit frustrating. You have no advance notice that you've only got 3 characters left to use (and probably need 5!) and so you simply run out of space.
This is one of the reasons that we created Ad Word Assistant, software that counts characters as you type (among other things). Visit http://www.mannmadesoftware.com/adword_assistant.asp?adcode=ezinarticles to see all of the features and benefits of Ad Word Assistant.
Importance of Headline - The first line in the Adwords™ ad is the headline. You want to get people to click on your ad and visit your site and therefore the wording of your ad is critical. Your ad needs to grab someone's attention and compel them to click on it. One user gets very good results by being a bit offbeat with his ads. His headlines make his ads stand out from the pack and so he gets good clickthroughs.
For example, if he were writing an ad for a golf related product, his headline wouldn't read "Improve Your Golf Game" but rather something like "Does Your Golf Game Suck?" Now certainly that is offbeat, and some might say vulgar, but the point is, his ads are very effective.
Subsequent Lines - Lines 2 and 3 are more advertising lines, limited to 35 characters on each. You don't have much "real estate" to use with your ad, so use your words effectively. Line 4 is the visible url for the ad, which must be part of the actual url that you send your visitors to, but doesn't have to be the exact page.
Target Position #2 to #6 on First Page - Cost-Per-Click or CPC is the essence of what you're paying to run your Adwords™ campaign. Your goal is to have the minimum CPC that you can while still placing your ad in an optimum position in the search results. "Optimum position" is being on the first page, not in the #1 position, but somewhere between #2 and #5 or #6, depending on the economics.
First page is important, if at all possible. The #1 spot is generally not desired because quite often people will come to a search results page and click on the first two ads just out of habit. Be the second one they click on rather than the first one they leave.
You'll want to avoid paying "big bucks" for a click during the early stages of your Adwords™ career. Stick to the $.05 to $.10 keywords at first and see what kind of results you're getting. If you cannot get on the first page with a large number of your keywords, there is probably something amiss.
There are many stories of people losing money with their Adwords™ campaigns and most of these stories can be traced back to paying too much for keywords. Find the obscure relevant keywords that your competitors have missed. Be an Adwords™ success story.
Reading a good eBook about AdWords would be the next logical step. I have reviewed a very good eBook on my website:
http://www.mannmadesoftware.com/adwords123.asp Copyright © 2005 by MannMade Software, LLC All Rights Reserved
John W. Mann, "The Ad Tracking Mann" is the owner of
MannMade Software, LLC a software development company
specializing in software & eBooks for the online sales & marketing
niche market.
Currently John is in the process of writing an eBook titled
"The Definitive Guide to Ad Tracking & Split Testing" (due out Dec 2005)
as well as developing what he refers to as "The Best Ad Tracking Software"
called TBATS for short.
Anyone wishing to learn more about the eBook or TBATS should visit http://www.MannMadeSoftware.com/
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