The Entrepreneur State of Mind – MGR BlogIf you have been running a website for your business for quite some time, then you’ll know how important your Google AdWords campaign is to its overall success.

Google AdWords is a service that focuses primarily on keywords; when people type specific keywords into the search engine, your ad will appear (at the top of the search engine results page under the heading “Sponsored Links”, above the Google search results or on the right-hand side).

AdWords lets businesses set a particular budget for their advertising, paying only when Web users click on the ads. When the ad is clicked, the user is then directed to your website.

There are ways to further improve an effective AdWords campaign by changing campaign settings, which helps in optimizing your account’s performance and quality and enables you to attain better results:

1. Set realistic goals based on what you want visitors to do when they click through to your website. For example, you can use PPC to identify prospects by asking visitors to provide detailed information that will qualify them for future follow up. If this is your goal, compare the cost of a PPC campaign to other methods of lead generation. If your goal is making sales, you may want to set profit as well as revenue targets.

2. Identify the right keywords that attract clicks from “qualified” buyers. Avoid keywords that are too general. They attract a lot of traffic, which will cost you more, but not necessarily produce the best results. More targeted keywords produce higher conversions (for sales or leads) because they attract more qualified visitors. You will usually have less competition for more precise keywords, so advertising costs associated with this traffic will be lower. Use the Search Terms report to determine the things that Web users search for using Google that cause your ads to appear on the results page. For keywords that aren’t effective in leading you to your goals, you can modify the match type.

3. Keep your bids as low as possible, and don’t bid more than you can afford. Calculate how much you can afford to bid on keywords to guarantee that your ad campaign will be financially feasible. PPC advertising results can be measured. Statistics can be gathered from your Web server logs to determine the efficacy of an ad campaign.

4. Take better control of your ad costs. Remember that the price you pay for each click on your ad goes down when the keyword’s Quality Score goes up; its ad position also becomes improved. This should help you get a better grasp of the relationship between quality and cost in your campaign. After some practice and experience, you can then study performance data while trying out different bids and budgets to determine how you can get the most out of your investment in your AdWords campaign.

5. Test your campaign to ensure that your website produces the results you want. Before launching a full-scale PPC campaign, test a few highly targeted keywords and monitor your results. In a couple of days, you can gauge how visitors are responding to your website. You don’t want to spend money on getting traffic if your website can’t convince visitors to respond.

6. Set up your account in an organized manner. Be mindful about structuring your campaign according to product or theme, for example, so that you can effectively target ads. You must be able to monitor changes, quickly locate keywords, manage and edit campaigns, and identify the ads that yield the best conversions.

7. Carefully create your text ads. Be clear about the details of your products and services, such as promotions and prices. Encourage people to take specific action, such as call your number, sign up for your newsletter, or buy a product. Make sure to put a high-performing keyword in the headline or text for a greater chance of successfully optimizing AdWords ads.

8. Take steps to improve your return on investment or ROI. This can be done by utilizing Conversion Tracking, which lets you measure the number of people who actually sign up for things or purchase a product on your website. You can also set your campaign to send customers to a page in your site that exhibits the exact products in your ads. The convenience of easy navigation in your site is also a great motivator for a purchase.

Search engine advertising offers a cost-effective solution that can help build brand awareness, increase traffic to your website and boost your online sales. And, because you pay only if people click your ads, every dollar of your budget goes toward bringing new prospects to your company.  If you need assistance with your PPC campaigns, be sure to contact our SEO Team at MGR and we’ll help you get started with it and manage it for you on a monthly basis.  All of our programs are month-to-month and you can start and stop anytime you want.

Thank you for reading.  Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR)