How can I set up Google Adwords?

Posted by Alice Seba

Q: How can I set up Google Adwords?

A: Google Adwords is a pay-per-click program that allows you to advertise at an affordable cost. When creating your ad, you can choose various keywords. When someone performs searches with Google and uses one of those words, your ad may come up in the listings. With Google Adwords, you only pay for the ad if the user clicks on your ad.

If you would like to set up your ad, simply go to www.google.com/adwords. You will be asked for some information such as the URL you want the ad directed to. This can be your main page of your website, a specific page, landing page for a product or whatever page you choose.

You would then need to enter your keywords. For effectiveness, I suggest using a keyword research tool such as word tracker. This allows you to view how many people are searching for various search terms related to your product or service.

With Adwords, you can get very advanced and set up multiple campaigns. They also offer some great tracking features to help you figure out which ad works best. If you are new to Adwords, I wouldn’t worry about the advanced features just yet.

Google allows you to display three lines of text with a total of 95 characters with Adwords. Be descriptive as possible in your ad and let the people who see the ad know exactly what they are getting if the click on the ad.

Here are a couple of other cool features to help you target your ad to the correct market:

1. You can choose your location you want the ad displayed in.

2. You can choose a whole country such as the entire U.S. or a specific region or state or even a more localized area, city specific area. (For example: Orlando)

3. You can set up predetermined amounts of how much money you are willing to spend per click. This allows you to load money into your Adwords account once per month and have the campaign funded for the entire month.

Your initial investment is $5. After that, you will choose what you will pay-per-click. Remember, you are bidding against other people for top space. If someone else has chosen similar keywords and they bid higher, their ad will be on top of yours in the listings.

More on Google Adwords: