Paid Search is a great addition to your online marketing arsenal and should not be overlooked. Many online businesses do not look into it because of the expense, but it can be well worth the time and expense if you set up your account properly. Many small businesses that I talk to just jump into setting up their account and add outlandish keywords that will bring cost and never convert. I am going to show you the simple way to setup your account that will make it cost effective and hopefully will bring you a better click-through rate and hopefully a better conversion rate. Please make sure you have some type of analytics software installed on your site, Google Analytics will work just fine.
If you do not have a Google Adwords Account, sign up for one today!
Once you sign up for a Google Adwords account, it is time to start looking into setting it up properly and in the most effective manner. One of the worst decisions one can make is to just stick all your keywords into one campaign and ad group and see how it does. There is no way to track the results, so don’t do it. Let’s get started.
Campaign Creation
Each campaign that you setup will need daily budgets, so it is wise that you know your full budget for this program before you start creating them. You can change your daily budgets at any time if you do not have the budget numbers at this time. Setup the location of your campaign based on where you can ship your items to, so if you are in the US and can ship them all over the US, then choose this. Choose the network targeting that will best fit your needs. Google Provides a few choices between Search, Search Network, Both, and Content Network. It would probably be wise to just do both Search and Search Network because it will give you the best range. Do not setup a content campaign at this time as they are more work and usually less rewarding.
It is a good practice to create campaigns based off of the categories on your site. For example, if you run an electronics site and you have categories such as Accessories, Car Audio, Home Audio, Portable Electronics, Computers, and Photography, you should create campaigns for each of these categories. If you have a good brand name a a steady stream of traffic, then you can think about setting up a brand campaign as well. This is a campaign that only deals with your website brand name. You can also place promos in this campaign if you run them. Once you setup all the campaigns, we will move on to the Ad Groups.
Ad Group Creation
Ad Groups need to have different and compelling ads or creatives. Each ad group should be different based off of the subcategories of your site. Based off the example that we gave, your ad groups for the Car Audio campaign could be Speakers, Subwoofers, CD Players, Amplifiers, and Accessories. This will allow you to create a more targeted ad with better performing keywords. This provides you with the most control. You will need a max CPC rate for each ad group. This will be used if you do not put any CPC’s in for the keywords. Usually when creating ads for your ad groups, try to create about 3 for each ad group. This allows you to test different creatives and different call to actions. These are important things for each ad group. Once you find the best performing ad then you can pause the others if you wish.
Keyword Creation
Keywords are the most important part of your advertising. These are the words or phrases that you want to target in order to bring in traffic to your site. You do not want to be too broad, but also not so specific. The only time you want to be specific is when you have adgroups developed around specific products. Only companies that sell products that are recognizable by consumers should do this, like electronics. When creating keywords, you should have already done your research to see what keywords perform the best and what people are actually searching for. You can use the Google Keyword Tool to assist you with this. Try to pick keywords that have good traffic, but are not so popular that you will run out of money the first day of advertising. Stay away from terms like ipod, ipad, iphone, etc. If you have products for these items, then I would use different matches for these keywords.
Google allows you to create keywords with different match types. The most common is Broad. This means that if any part of your keyword ends up in a users query, then your ad could show up. Phrase match means that your keyword phrase has to be a part of the users query in order to be shown. Exact means that they user has to type in your exact keyword in order to see your ad. Broad usually receives the most traffic, Phrase next, and then exact. If you use ipod in your keyword, then I would use phrase or exact. This will minimize your costs.
For each ad group, you should create around 25-30 keywords with different variations. You can obviously create more, but you do not want to get out of hand. With a lot of keywords, it will be harder to handle the bidding and control the costs. If you take the time to really develop quality keywords, then you can see better performance in your account. The rule of thumb is quality, not quantity. There are many places that say if you have a lot of keywords, then you will get a lot of traffic. If you have quality keywords and use the correct match type, you can get the same amount of traffic with a lot less work.
These are the basics steps to setup your Google account. You may be able to find a nice coupon to setup your account and get $100 in advertising for free. These coupons are out there, but can be hard to find. We will cover tips later on how to create good creatives (ads) as well as more tips on how to create keywords that will convert. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know and we will be happy to assist.
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16. Jul, 2010 
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