What is Google Adwords
Google AdWords is a pay per click program that allows you to advertise on Google's search engine as well as their partner sites and millions of other smaller websites. In Google AdWords you will create appealing text advertisements to convince people to visit your website and you will also generate keyword lists which tell Google when to display your text advertisement. These are the two things that determine how much money you will make online.
Sounds easy right? Two things stand between you and online success. Unfortunately not many people can master these two things because it is harder than it seems. Lucky for you, you're going to have a Certified Google Advertising Professional guide you through everything to make sure you succeed online.
I recommend you watch the following video by Google that tells you what Google AdWords is:
How Advertising on Google Works
Whenever you search for something on Google you will see something similar to the following picture:
Notice I have highlighted results in two different colors, red and green.
The green highlighted web pages are Google's organic search results. These are the pages which are displayed for free and are the web pages that most people click on when searching for something.
The red highlighted web pages are the Google AdWords paid advertisements. These advertisements are always shown to the right of the search results and are sometimes shown above the search results.The AdWords advertisements are Pay Per Click (PPC), which means that the owner of that advertisement pays Google a few cents every time someone clicks on their ad. The red sections are where your advertisement will appear when you sign up for Google AdWords.
I recommend watching this video by Google to get more information about where your advertisements are displayed:
Why would I want to Pay-Per-Click, when I can get free traffic on Google?
The main reason for wanting to pay for traffic is because it is very very difficult to receive free traffic on Google.
When you sign up for Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click advertising your advertisement will be displayed almost immediately in Google's search results (usually within 5 minutes). You can also decide which search results page you want your advertisements to appear on (the first page always receives more visitors than the other pages).
If you want to receive free advertising, you would have to own the website you were promoting. It would be really difficult to do otherwise. Then, you would have to optimize your website for Google and then submit it to Google to be displayed in their search. This may sound good but it can take up to 6 months and that will not even guarantee you a 1st page position.
Affiliate Marketing on Google AdWords
Contrary to what most people say about affiliate advertising on Google AdWords, it is not required that you have your own landing page or web page in order to advertise for another website on AdWords. Most people think they need to have their own landing page because Google doesn't allow two or more advertisements for the same web page to appear for the same search. This is not true. In fact, videos included in this guide prove this isn't true.
Here is how this rule works: when you create an advertisement for Google you are asked to enter two different types of URLs (web addresses). One is the Display URL which is the URL that the web surfer sees on your text advertisement and the other is the Destination URL which is the actual URL that the web surfer goes to when they click on your advertisement.
Google then looks at these URLs and compares them with your competitors URLs for each keyword in your keyword list. If there is another advertisement that uses the same display URL, Google will not display your advertisement because there is already another advertiser advertising the same website as you for that keyword. Google will only display your advertisement in place of the competitor's ad only if your text ad is better than theirs. Google uses an algorithm called the Quality Score (we talk about this later) to determine this. So if your quality score is better than the other advertisers, then your advertisement will always be shown.
There are two ways to always have your advertisement shown:
- Create your own landing page. If you do this your text ad's display URL will be unique, so your advertisement will always be shown. Unfortunately, using this technique requires that you know how to make a webpage.
- Optimize your advertisement so its quality score will be higher than your competitors. This is the best approach in my opinion.
How to Start A Google AdWords Account
If you're new to this and want to watch a video showing you how to sign up, then I recommend watching this following video:
Here's how to sign up:
Go to www.google.com and look towards the bottom of the page. You will see a link which says, "Advertising Programs". Once you click on that link, you will be taken to the following page:
Once there you should click on the link which says "Google AdWords".
You will then be taken to a page which looks like the following picture. I would recommend book marking this page or add it to your favorites because you will visit it often. Click on the button titled "Sign up now" to sign up for your AdWords account.
Here's a $50 AdWords credit for your Google Account. If you use this, you will receive $50 in free advertising. I've personally never used this because if you repeatedly use free AdWords credits you can get banned from Google. This also may not work for accounts in smaller countries.
After clicking "Sign up now", you will be taken to a couple of pages which will ask you how you want to set up your advertising group(s) with Google. As for now, we will just set up a dummy campaign, meaning that you are not going to advertise anything in this campaign. Why are you creating a dummy campaign? I am going to go over in extreme detail how to set up a perfect campaign later in this guide, but for now, I don't want you to worry about advertising, I just want you to have a Google Account.
After you hit the "Sign up now" button, you will be taken to a page where it asks you what type of AdWords account you want to create. Select the "Standard Edition" and click on the "Continue" button.
I recommend watching this Google video which gives you information about starting a Standard Edition account with Google AdWords:
After you hit the “Continue” button you will see a selection where it asks you to Target Customers By Language, choose which language you wish to advertise in (this should be the language the webpage is in that you're thinking about advertising).
In the Target Customers By Location selection you will select where you want to advertise. There are three sections; I would recommend the Countries and Territories selection for now.
Countries & Territories – This is where you will advertise in certain countries or territories. For example if I wanted to advertise in North America only, I would choose the Countries and Territories option and I would select the countries Canada, Mexico, and United States.
Regions & Cities – This is where you will advertise in specific cities and regions. This works best if you're advertising for a local flower shop or a furniture store located in one or many cities. If this was the case you could specify Regions & Cities and if you lived in the USA you could advertise in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia if the business was located in the North East.
Customized – This is where you customize where you want your ads to be displayed. You can choose very specific places to advertise…like certain cities, regions, etc.
Next you will be prompted to choose more specific areas to advertise, such as individual countries, regions, or cities. You will only need to choose one city, country, or region for the dummy campaign. Since I live in the United States, I chose “United States”.
When you hit the “Continue” button you will be asked to make the advertisement for the website you are promoting. Again, you can edit this later so just make a quick advertisement. If you don't know what to do, simply do the following:
Headline: "Search Engine Advertising"
Description line 1: "Learn How to Make Money Online"
Description line 2: "by Advertising on Search Engines"
Display URL: www.stevenholdaway.com
Destination URL: www.stevenholdaway.com
Don't worry, you're not even going to use this advertisement. Google just wants you to have something entered here before you can continue.
After you click on the “Continue” button you will be prompted to enter keywords, this can be edited later so just enter one keyword which is related to your website and hit continue. If you used the previous advertisement, just enter “steven holdaway” as your only keyword.
On the next page you will be asked to choose which currency you want Google to use to bill you. Select the appropriate currency, because you cannot edit this later. Then you will see a section where it asks you What is the most you would like to spend, on average, per day? This is your Max Daily Budget, set this anywhere from $8.00 - $10.00 and go to the next section (don't worry, you're not going to get billed this amount). The next section is What is the maximum you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad? This is your Maximum Cost Per Click. Enter $0.05 here and click on the “Continue” button on the bottom of the page.
Now hit the continue button and you will see a page which shows you all of the current settings to your Advertisement Group. Read through them and click on the “Continue to Sign Up” button at the bottom of the page.
The next page will ask you if you already have a Google Account. If you do, simply enter your email address and password and click on the button titled “Create AdWords Account”. If you don't have a Google Account look for a link on the page which says “Create a new Google Account to be your login to AdWords”. This will create a new Google Account for you.
If you don't already have a Google account it will ask you to enter your email address and a password, make sure this information is correct because Google will send you an email right after you create your account. After you enter this information, click on the “Create AdWords Account” button.
Google will now send you an email to the email address you specified which will contain a link that you will need to click on in order to activate your account. Simply click on the URL in your email from Google.
After you go to that URL you can log into Google AdWords using your email address as your User Name and the password you created earlier. Once you are in your account, you will need to specify a credit card for Google to use in order to bill you. Here's how to do this.
- Click on the "My Account" tab located near the top of the Google Account webpage.
- Once you are there, you will notice the following near the top of the page in your Google Account.
Click on the “Billing Preferences” link near the top of the page. This will take you to the appropriate location where you need to enter your credit card information.
You will be charged a $5.00 activation fee, but don't worry this is not a lot at all, most other search engines charge you much more than this. After you enter your credit card and personal information your account will be activated.
Beginners Introduction To Your New Account
If you're new to Google AdWords, the following information is an introduction for you to your new account. It will start off by giving you basic information and features of your AdWords account, but first I will show you how to pause the “dummy” Campaign you currently have active.
Pausing Your Dummy Campaign
Now it is time to pause the dummy campaign so you will not receive any traffic to it. To do this click on the “Campaign Management” tab. You will see something that looks a bit like this:
Notice that in the "Current Status" column in the picture above, it says "Paused". Unless you've already paused your campaign, the Current Status for your campaign will say "Active".
Remember earlier when I said to just choose one country, one keyword, and a basic advertisement and not to worry about it being perfect because I would get into that later in more detail? Well, now is the time to learn more information about those things. In the meantime, you will want to make sure you don't receive any activity in your account until you know how to properly manage it so 'pause' your campaign until you are ready.
It is fairly easy to pause your campaign. In the picture above, I put a red "X" and a red rectangle to help you know what to do. Just check the box next to your only campaign and hit the "Pause" button. This will pause your campaign.
Now that you have an account set up, you are ready to learn how to create a perfect Campaign so you can begin making money online.
Background Information with Your Account
It's about time that you need to know basic AdWords Account information such as definitions and meanings of keywords, campaigns, and AdGroups.
Keywords – Keywords are what people search for in Google. Whatever someone types into Google's search box is a keyword. If someone searched for “Google Money Pro” on Google, the keyword is “Google Money Pro”. If someone searched for “red hat with eBay logo” their keyword is “red hat with eBay logo”.
So basically a search query is a keyword. Whenever you have a keyword that matches someone's search query, you're advertisement will be displayed. So the more keywords you have, the better the chances are that someone's going to see your advertisement. This is why it's important to have keyword lists, which is basically a list of many keywords.
Text Advertisement – Text advertisements are pretty self explanatory. They are the advertisements you use on Pay Per Click search engines. Of course, text advertisements are only text, which means you can only use text (if you want your ad to be viewable to everyone, Google allows image ads but they won't be displayed to everyone).
AdGroup – An AdGroup is where you store your keyword lists and text advertisements in your Google account. Your keyword lists can contain a maximum of 2,000 keywords and you should have at least two to four different text advertisements in each AdGroup.
Campaign – A campaign is where you store your AdGroups. If you're selling computers, I would name my campaign “Computers” and I would name my AdGroups within that campaign names like “Dell”, “Apple”, “Gateway”, “HP”, etc. You also control your daily budget as well as what countries you advertise in from your Campaign settings.
Google Billing
If you live in the USA I recommend watching this video that explains the basics of Google Billing in the USA:
How AdWords Billing Works
Google will bill you for all the clicks you received once every thirty days. They may bill you sooner depending on your Google Credit Limit. This credit limit depends on your account's history and the limit can be anywhere from $50 - $500 max. Although they say your credit limit can't be more than $500, I have had a few charges above $2000. Also, unlike other pay per click search engines, Google will never bill you in advance. If you spend large amount of money every day, Google will usually charge you $500 multiple times.
Google also has a feature which will allow you to enter more than one credit card incase one of your credit cards cannot pay the bill for your advertisements. I would strongly recommend doing this, especially if you rarely check your Google Account(s).
Outside USA Billing
Google's billing outside of the USA is fairly the same as Google's billing from within the USA. Google allows two billing options which are post pay and prepay.
Post pay – Post pay is where you pay Google after you receive clicks and impressions. This is Google's default payment type.
Prepay – Prepay is where you pay Google before they advertise your website and before you receive any impressions or clicks (this is how Yahoo does their billing).
Google has two videos which talk about billing outside of the US. I recommend watching these videos to get a better understanding about how Google bills people who don't live in the USA.
AdWords Account Layout
Below is a picture/diagram that will help explain your AdWords account layout.
Basically, within an AdWords account there are campaigns that consist of AdGroups which contain keywords and text ads (your advertisements). It's not too hard to grasp, but it's much easier to understand when you see a diagram of it.
Google's New Advertising Policy
As some of you are aware, Google changed their advertising algorithm in July – August 2006. This change affected many advertisers and has caused several advertisers to drastically increase their bids or leave Google AdWords.
What happened?
Around July 12th, 2006 many advertisers noticed nearly all of their keywords were inactive for search in their campaigns. While normally (before the policy change) advertisers can raise their max bid $0.03 or so to re-activate their keywords, this was not the case anymore. Instead of seeing a note telling them to raise their bid a couple of cents, Google was telling them in order to activate this keyword they would need to set their keyword's bid to $1.00, $5.00, and sometimes $10.00 per click.
Why the new policy change?
Most people who were negatively affected by the policy change say or think that Google changed AdWords just to make more money. This is not true. Google's new change was intended to remove most of the undesirable paid search results from Google's Search Network.
Changes Keep Coming
In the beginning of October 2008 Google changed their display and a little bit of their policy. What they did is instead of making keywords with “Low Quality” scores inactive for search, they keep the status as Active, but require you to raise the bid to get on the first page of search results. They also changed the way they display your quality score. Instead of displaying it as a required bid, they now show it as a fraction between 1/10 (poor) to 10/10 (perfect). Don't worry if you're not understanding any of this right now, because you will shortly. To make things easier, I'm going to refer to keywords which are of “Poor Quality” as either “Inactive” keywords or “Poor Quality” keywords. Because if your keywords are “Poor Quality” they are usually pretty much inactive within your account.
Things to Remember
Please remember these two things before you start your account. Although there are things that are more important, these things can severely hurt beginner advertisers.
Obey Google's Rules
Google's advertising policies are very strict. They will notify you via email and/or by a message in your account whenever there is something wrong with your account or your advertisements. If you do not fix what they notify you about, then you may become banned by Google. Don't expect this to be a temporary ban either. If Google decides to ban your account they will not accept any of your payments from any credit card you enter. Each time you use a different credit card in a banned account, that credit card will also be declined by Google AdWords. If you ever use that credit card to pay for another AdWords bill, even if it is in an active account, that AdWords account will also become banned. If you ever do become banned, you will not be able to receive traffic to your advertisements, and you will need to call Google to get it fixed.
Don't Ever Completely Change Your Target URL (Destination URL)
If you are a beginner, or even an expert with Google AdWords, you should know that occasionally the website you are advertising for will temporarily go down. The absolute worst thing you can do when this happens is to quickly change your Text Ad's Destination URL to another website which sells a similar product.
Why shouldn't you do this? Even though switching websites will prevent you from having to pause your Account, it will make your Quality Score go to 0.0. Basically, your quality score is what Google uses to decide what you pay for each keyword, it keeps your keyword(s) activated, it ranks your advertisements, and it determines how often your text ad is displayed in Google Searches. Your Quality Score in Google is similar to your Credit Score in real life. You want it to be as good as possible because it saves you money.
By changing your destination URL, this will reset your quality score, causing your traffic to go way way down. If you absolutely have to change the URL, I would recommend pausing the campaign you don't want, and then create a new campaign. Then using Google's AdWords Editor (I'll talk about this later), copy all of your keywords to the new campaign you just created. It may take 5 minutes longer than changing your URL, but your Quality Score will be the exact same for your new Campaign as it would have been if you changed the URL in your old Campaign, PLUS your old text ad's Quality Score will not be affected, so you can later unpause that campaign to receive the same amount as traffic as before. (I'm sorry if some of the terms in this paragraph were confusing to you. I realize that I haven't talked about the Quality Score yet, but it is important that you know what not to do).
The only time(s) when you should change your Destination URL is when you have created a brand new campaign or AdGroup and you are testing new merchants and advertising new products.
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