by Justin Harrison

Google Adwords is the number one advertising option out there, and it’s become a symbol of the growth of the internet since the 1990′s crash. Adwords has evolved to offer advertisers a plethora of new options for generating revenue while giving search users accurate results. Largely due to Adwords, websites are no longer just gimmicks, they are viable businesses, but knowing how to use Adwords effectively is your first step to gathering traffic and making your website a profit center.

It only takes five minutes to sign up for Adwords (http://www.adwords.com) from your Google account. You can fund your Adwords for just $10. When you log into Adwords for the first time, one thing you will notice is that there are many options. Don’t start your campaign by playing with Adwords display options. Start your campaign by choosing your keywords.

That’s because the best campaign, at least at first, is one you keep in complete control. One of Google Adwords’ bells and whistles you should ignore at first is the option to start a simplified version of interface. This option takes away the demographic tools that make Adwords so useful in driving traffic to content specific to your site. At first, always keep control. Don’t look for easy ways to spend your advertising budget. And use your list of keywords, not theirs.

Where do you get your list of keywords? Start by brainstorming. Think of a list of keywords your customers would search for, making sure, of course, that they could find the content they want on your site. It’s OK to plug them into the keyword suggestion tool, but just because a keyword pops up that promises to bring lots of traffic, don’t pay for it, unless it matches your site. Many keyword suggestions will not be very useful for you, but anything that stands out as having a high search volume and low competition and also describes your services is a good place to start.

Even if the keyword selection tool suggests hundreds of high-search, low-competition keywords, keep your list to just 10 to 15. Using more than 15 keywords, you will have too much data to analyze as the results of your Adwords campaign begin to come in. You need to be sure your hard-earned ad dollars are being well spent. You can’t do this if you have too many keywords to track.

Most site owners who use Google Adwords set budgets on a daily rate. This means that if your budget if $100 a day, Adwords will run ads until your $100 is spent, and not run any more that day. The cycle starts again the next day, assuming there are funds or credit for your Adwords account. You can also set your campaign to run just certain hours of the day, if you think you will get more actual customers at one time of day or another. Or you can program your campaign to spend money evenly through the day. Be sure to set your demographic targets, city, state, country, continent, or world, appropriately for your sales goals. If you are selling bikini wax, for instance, you probably don’t want to run your ads in Saudi Arabia.

With Google Adwords, you have total control over how your ads appear. You control when they appear. You control how much you pay for a click and where your ads are displayed. As you learn to use all these tools in ways that drive your traffic and generate sales, Google Adwords will prove to be your most useful tool for growing your site and your profits.

About the Author:
Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

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