Have you ever wondered how the adverts you see on the side and top of your Google results page get there? Would you like a piece of the action?
These adverts are set up using
Google Adwords.
An advertiser selects relevant keywords that relate to the brand or product they wish to advertise. Research will have been undertaken to see the search terms that people would be likely to use if they were looking for your product or brand.
They will have chosen whether these keywords are set as a broad match or a narrow match. Broad tends to produce a higher volume of clicks but less relevance and can be useful for awareness and branding campaigns, whereas narrow matches are better for online sales and direct response campaigns as the user has to search for the exact term for the advert to have a chance of appearing.
The adverts that you see will have been created within Google Adwords and will aim to be clear and direct, include keywords, sell the benefits and entice you to click on them. The adverts can be designed to drive traffic to any part of your site that you wish. You tell Google how much you are willing to pay for a click on your advert and you will only pay if your advert is clicked on.
So how does the position of your advert get decided? Google will rank your advert based on a number of factors. These are the amount you have set as your maximum bid, other advertiser’s maximum bid for the same keywords and the adverts Quality Score. The Quality Score is an evaluation of how well your advert performs in regards to a specific keyword - how frequently your advert gets clicked on for that keyword.
Adverts can be targeted geographically as well and you can switch them on and off very easily allowing you to target specific times if you need to.
Google Adwords is really beneficial when used in conjunction with SEO (see our
Short Guide to SEO). It is able to target certain landing pages of your site and it allows you to test pages for conversion. It also guarantees you appearing above the fold on the search results – something which can take time using SEO alone.
If you fancy having a go with Google Adwords we’ve currently got some vouchers which we’d like to offer our clients, allowing you to run a campaign for free. Get in touch for more details.