Michael Knowles from MarketKing Consultants

www.marketking.net.au

"Getting the Most Out of Google Ads - Lesson 101"

Getting The Most Out of Google Ads - 101

So you've got a website and you've launched some Google Ads but customers are still not beating down your door? What's going on? Is your Google Ad reaching the right audience, are you finishing in the top five searches organically? Can you even see your paid Google Ad anywhere out there in cyber space? You need to be sure your Google Ad campaign is working and if you're paying someone else to manage it for you, you have to be informed to keep them honest. To understand how to improve your Google Ad ranking let's start with some basics. Here are some useful tips.

1. budget. Your Google Ad campaign is controlled by a budget that you set on-line. You determine what is your maximum spend per day in your campaign. As customers click on your ads, your money is spent. When your money runs out for that day, your ad stops appearing. So setting your budget will determine whether your ads appear for 5 minutes in the day or 5 hours.
2. key words - got to have 'em. Google Ad campaigns are based on key words, that you think customers will type into Google when searching for your products or services. You need to identify the set of key words that really represent what you are trying to sell and the way in which customers will search for them. You only need a good set of a dozen or so and typically they are expressed as short sentences eg: "Holiday Accomodation Perth"
3. time of day of listing. With Google Ads you can control the time of day, week or month that your ad will try to appear. You need to decide whether there is any relevance to your business advertising at night or on weekends. For example, if you were running a wedding planning business you might run your ads up until 11 PM every day of the week, but if you are in a B2B environment say trading in scrap metal it is much less likely that customers will look for you after hours. In some markets you might gain an advantage by advertising in hours when others are not.
4. "Quality Score" of key words. The Google search engine finds and matches key words according to their Quality Score. The QS is scored from 1 - 10 where 10 is fantastic and will come up with the most matches. The Quality Score of a key word is based on three factors - the expected Click Through Rate (CTR) based on historical internet data, the Ad Relevance - which is based on how well your ad ties in to the key words being searched and finally the relevance of the Landing Page - how well does the page that you are directing your traffic to, relate to the topic being searched. Key words with Quality Scores above 5 will rank higher more often in searches.
5. max. CPC. Maximum cost-per-click. This is the cruncher. This is your bid in the cyber space market place. Google Ads will tell you where your bid sits in the market. For example, Social Media Marketing is a hot topic at the moment, right? So you would expect the bid prices for these words in Google Ads to be high. That's correct. Today, if you bid around $4.00 for these key words, your link will most likely appear on the first page of Google when these exact words are searched. If you want to pay more in your Google Ads campaign about $6.50 per click will get you top page position for these words. So bidding above this amount should see your ad appear at the top of the Google search page.

That's Google Ads 101 but there's lots more. If it was easy everyone would be successful at it. Watch this space for future updates.