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Google AdWords for small business

April 23, 2008

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Google and its child

As a search engine, Google’s primary purpose is to locate and organize that little thing known as the internet. Acting as the intermediary between information and the end-user, such as yourself, Google allows users to enter a search query and click search.

Google returns a multitude of resuslts: web pages, files, websites, images; these results are displayed on the left side of the page. Unlike other search engines, Google doesn’t accept pamyent to place websites higher in the search results.  However, Google does allow advertisers to purchase an AdWords ads which appear in parallel with unpaid results.

Why AdWords?

Each month over 80% of Internet users in the US view AdWords Ads…and this doesn’t even include the hundreds of millions of additional worldwide users! AdWords allows you to create simple, effective ads to display to people who are already looking for something related to your business. Gone are the days of irrelevant banner ads, Google has ushered in a new era of keyword-based advertising.

Let’s say you’re looking for some baseball tickets to the Mariner’s game, you’d likely search for "mariners tickets." In addition to search results, Google would display ads on top of and to the right of your search results. Say you’re buying media against the keyword "mariners tickets", you could be advertising directly towards individuals already looking for your products!

If this excites you, check this out…just recently, AdWords has branched out from solely internet advertisting to print, radio, TV, image, video and mobile ads.

 

But I only offer local products or services!

Great! It’s a common misconception that just because you offer local services and don’t ship products, you won’t see a benefit from an AdWords campaign. AdWords allows you you to target ads to specific geographic locations. If you were buying keywords for your massage business, users searching for "seattle flower shops" would see your ads, but users searching for "portland flower shops" would not. Not only will you appear on Google’s search pages, if selected, you would be eligible to appear on Google maps (maps.google.com) and any other sites that have opted into Google’s search network.


I don’t have a large budget to burn

One of the beauties of AdWords is the complete and total control it offers. You can run a media campaign without any minimum spending requirement. You set your budget, and AdWords works with you. By selecting different advertising models you control whether you pay for actual clicks, known as cost-per-click (CPC); or whether you pay for actual ad views, known as cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM).

You can run a successful campaign for $10 a day!

 

In closing

AdWords offers businesses an avenue to reach an audience that is highly relevant, and highly receptive. There’s no way I can cover all the features in a quick article. If you’re interested in pursuing an AdWords campign, feel free to do poke around at the Google AdWords site or send me an email.

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Google Adwords Updates Display URL Policy

March 26, 2008

Google recently announced a major update to their display URL policy in AdSense ads in an effort to further incorporate landing page quality to their bid and CTR algorithm which determines what position your ad appears and how relevant the keyword that you are buying is to your landing page.

What do I need to know about the updated display URL policy?

Based on feedback from both our advertisers and users, and consistent with our efforts to present relevant results, we’ll no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. These include, but aren’t limited to, redirects and vanity URLs. In line with our existing policy, we’ll continue to require that your ad’s display URL matches its destination URL (the URL of your landing page). This policy will be strictly enforced for new ads, regardless of previous exceptions. For more details about the current display URL policy, please visit https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47173

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Here are some other important aspects of the policy you may want to keep in mind:

Tracking URLs - Your ads will be approved if the URL of your landing page domain matches that of your display URL domain.

For example, the following would be acceptable:
• Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
• Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
• Landing page URL: www.google.com

However, this example would be unacceptable:
• Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
• Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
• Landing page URL: www.trackingurl.com

Sub-Domains

The use of sub-domains and additional text within the display will continue to be acceptable, provided the top-level domain matches the URL of your landing page.
For example, the display URLs below would be acceptable for the landing page URL of http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous, as the top-level domains match:
• sub.google.com
• google.com/extratext
• www.google.com/extratext

Quality Score

Note that changing your display URL may affect your ad’s Quality Score and ad position.

Keyword URLs

Keyword URLs are considered your destination URL (the URL of your landing page); your ad’s display URL must match its destination URL.

Next Steps

While no immediate action will be taken on existing ads, we encourage you to make the necessary changes to all ads within your account. This will ensure that your ads run without being disrupted by future disapprovals related to this policy enforcement. Visit https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6272 for step-by-step instructions for editing your display URL.

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I am a certified AdWords Professional

March 10, 2008

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I qualified last week and am now an AdWords Professional and our company, Add Three, is now an AdWords Qualified Company!

Those of you who are managing AdWords media campaigns should seriously look into the AdWords qualification. The training program offers a plethora of information, some of it will even be information that is new to you! The training program is 9 sections long, encompassing everything from initial signup all the way to the developer API. To become certified, you must meet some prerequisites:

  • pass the test with 75% or greater within the 1h 30min test window
  • have an account in good standing for t least 90 days 
  • for an individual, manage a 90 day ad spend of $1,000 or $100,000 in the US (this varies by country) 

As an AdWords Professional Google will offer you access to the My Client Center, API access, the Qualified Individual/Company designation, and some other miscellaneous perks.

Learn more about the program at the Google AdWords Professional page.

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