Setting up your Google Adwords campaign

[Published in Minding Our Business, January 2008 - Centre Wellington Chamber of Commerce][As of January 2008 the Centre Wellington Chamber of Commerce uses Minding Our business as one of its communication outlets, effectively replacing their newsletter The Business Eye]

This is a very quick introduction into Google’s Pay-Per-Click program Adwords, but Yahoo and MSN work in a similar fashion.

The start of every Adwords campaign is the building of a solid keyword list. The free Adwords keyword suggestion tool allows you to find variations on your major keywords. It will also give you an idea how many people are searching for these phrases, as well as how stiff the competition for the ads is. It can also help you to create a list of “negative keywords” – phrases that you do NOT want Google to show the ad for.

Once you know which phrases you want to advertise for, you need to determine how much you want to pay per click, and create ads. Yes, ads. Not just one ad, but multiple ads. You will want to group your keywords into several groups. Why? Because every group will have its own ads. And by making the ad groups smaller (less keywords in them), you are able to make your ad more targeted. More targeted ads mean more clicks on the ad, and more clicks means: more visitors. And Google will reward you with a lower cost per click!

It is recommended to create multiple ads per ad group. You can rotate the ads, and determine which one gets a better click-through rate. Look at your statistics, and keep on improving your results. Ultimately you may want to disable any keywords that do not provide a good enough Return On Investment.

Before you start your first campaign, though, it probably is worth your while to search online for something like “google adwords coupon 2007”; there are many advertising credits to be found. They can only work for your initial sign up, and are available for Yahoo and MSN as well. But, you will have to search for one that is still applicable – many search results may have already expired coupon dates.

And talking about free stuff: if you are interested in a free tool to create flash tutorials and screen recordings, then you will want to download the (probably temporarily) free Camtasia Studio 3 software. The company behind the software, Techsmith, is probably using this older version of the software to reach a new audience for its newer version 5, but it is good software – and I paid more than $200 for it 18 months ago! More information about how to get this free software can be found on www.nardokuitert.com/blog.htm.

For more information: contact your webmaster, or email Nardo Kuitert at nardo@u-cwebs.com.

Nardo Kuitert is an Internet Consultant with Fergus Website Development and Optimization firm U-C WEBS (www.u-cwebs.com). U-C WEBS also offers Internet advertising opportunities on www.ferguspages.com.

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