Google Adwords 101

You’ve probably encountered the word AdWords at least once or twice. You know it has something to do with Google. But if you were asked what AdWords is really about, would you be able to answer the question? If your answer is no, reading on will help you do just that.

Google Adwords 101

If you’ve conducted at least one search via Google’s website, then you have already seen Adwords ads. These are the text advertisements that appear on the results page of your Google search. For example, you’re looking up information on macro photography. You would very likely then type in the words “macro” and “photography” into the Google search box. Those words are called keywords and Google uses them as the basis to look for information on the Web.

Google publishes its findings back to you on the results page. On the results page there are also text ads relevant to what you typed into the search.

To get a clearer understanding of how this works, try to picture yourself as an owner of a business (in this case, a camera sales and repair shop) with a website. As a business owner, you need to let people know about your business and that means you need to advertise. Before AdWords, that meant you had to spend a huge amount of money on print, radio or TV ads. For smaller businesses it might mean making flyers and posters to be distributed in your area.

With Google AdWords, not only are you showing your advertisement to people who are interested in your product, because they used a relevant search term to see it, you are also only paying for surfers that actually click your ad, with clicks being as low as $0.10 for low competition words and $1 or more for high competition words. You can have your ads show to the entire world, a selection of countries, down to a specific region. If your a brick and mortar business, you can target locally, or internationally to bring in more customers. PPC (or Pay Per Click) is a great tool for the local small business to expand their customer base!

1. Keywords are what matters.

As in the previous example, when a person types in “macro photography” on Google’s search box, it means he is looking for information about the topic, hence, interested in knowing more. Google allows you to capitalize on this interest by giving you the opportunity to show the user your advertisement for your camera shop.

Knowing what keywords people will use to look up information allows you to address your ad to a more specific target.

2. Pay only when they click through.

The other great thing about Google AdWords is that while your ad may display thousands of times, you only pay when your ad is clicked. Unlike conventional advertisements where you have to pay FIRST before your ad is shown, Google charges you only when a user clicks on your ad to visit your website, that is pretty powerful.

Just how much is charged for every click?

Only as much as you want it to be, you set your maximum bid and you set your daily budget. Google has implemented a bidding system to “sell” keywords where advertisers, just like you, will dictate how much a cost-per-click (CPC) on an ad will be. The general principle being: the more popular the keyword is, the more expensive it can become. For example in this case, the CPC on a results page using the (more popular) keywords “macro photography” may cost 50 cents while the CPC on an ad appearing on the results page for the (not so popular) keywords “macro lens maintenance” may just be 10 cents.

A great place to learn about Google Adwords is Google itself. The Adwords Learning center has a huge database of training videos and guides and is completely free. Beware of Googles objectives though, remember, they want your money. Your success with Adwords is important to them, because then you’ll keep paying for it. However, this is secondary to their own goal of making more and more money.

Google Adwords is, for most internet marketers, a crucial component of making money online, simply because one can drive a lot of traffic to a website very quickly.  A very good training resource for ppc marketing (adwords) is Commission Blueprint 2.0. They helped a lot of people make money with 1.0 and now again with 2.0.

Questions and comments on this post, “Google Adwords 101″, are welcome.