Prepaid Advertising: Google Adwords
Eiledon Solutions, 11 Jun 2009
Posted under News & Articles » Promoting Your Website
You've just launched your website and you want to be ranked number one on Google right away for your keyword. Unfortunately search engines don't work like that. It will take 2 - 3 weeks before your pages are listed in Google, and aside from that, depending on the volume of online competition for your industry, you will need to do a variety of tasks to convince Google that your website is worthy of being at number one.
What is Google Adwords?
You might think of Adwords is the only way to bribe Google to rank you at number one. Adwords is a powerful pay-for-performance method of online advertising. Below is an example of a search for "Adwords" in Google. It shows paid results at the top and on the right as "Sponsored Links". The ads shown here have been written by the advertisers. Natural or "Organic" results are those that appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs) naturally.
The advertisers shown in the "sponsored links" areas above created the text for their ad's themselves, and have bid for the keyword "adwords". The bid amount is the amount the advertiser indicates they are willing to pay each time someone clicks on their ad. The more the advertiser is willing to pay per click, the higher they are ranked relative to their competition.
You have likely also have seen "Ads by Google" on many websites while browsing the internet. The ads you see on those pages work in the same way. The specific ads shown depend on the content of the page. For example, a page with useful information on travel in Cape Town might list guest house and hotel related ads.
Prepaid Advertising
We like to call Adwords "prepaid advertising". When you sign up you transfer an amount you are willing to spend to your account, and when potential customers click on your Google ad the fee is taken from your balance.
The cost of your Google Ad Campaign depends on the volume of competition for your keywords, the popularity of the keyword (ie. the number of times people search for it) as well as more complex factors such as the relevance of the content of your ad and of your web page to the keywords you are bidding for.
The Cost Per Click (CPC) can range from as little as R0.40 to R20 and more, depending on the factors mentioned above.
How Effective Is It?
If done right, your Google Ad campaign can be one of your more effiicient ad strategies. Results can be measured by going a step further - Adwords allows you to track "conversions". You place a conversion code (generated by Adwords) on your website, and over time Adwords will indicate your Conversion Rate (the number of visitors that become paying customers).
How Do I Get Started?
Visit http://adwords.google.com and follow the prompts. Adwords will guide you through the process of selecting your keywords, creating your ads, specifying a maximum daily budget and an overall budget for your campaign. Over time as your website becomes more established and gains "authority" in your industry, you might find that you are getting enough "organic" results to spend less on Adwords.
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