How to Pick the Right Domain Name for Your Business

Pay per click (PPC) advertising has become one of the main methods of driving visitors to a website.

PPC is a form of advertising where a client can bid on certain keyword terms. If a user types in the keyword into the search engine browser, then the clients advert will show up as a 'sponsored ad'.

Google is the largest of the PPC search engines and their PPC program is called Google Adwords or simply Adwords. If you take a look at the screenshot below, you can see that the user has typed in "business opportunities" as the keyword. On the right hand side of the search results page are the sponsored ads. These are Adword ads, in other words, people have paid to be there! You cannot pay to be in the organic search results.

You can pay to have your advert shown on the sponsored search results by opening an Adwords account and setting up an advertising campaign.

When you have setup a campaign, whenever a user types in a keyword search term that you have bid on, your advert will display depending on how many other people have bid on that term and how much they are bidding. It works by the maximum cost you are prepared to pay per click.

That is, every time a user clicks on your sponsored advert, what is the maximum you are willing to pay to get that click. It can vary from anything from 5 cents to $20 or more per click! (depends on the industry). In very competitive markets such as 'business opportunities' and where commission rewards are high such as 'personal loans', people are willing to bid very high prices in order to get a click or visitor to their site, because in their judgement, the potential profit far outweighs the costs.

If you are inexperienced, then PPC marketing can burn a big hole in your pocket. This course is not an extensive one on Google Adwords but will introduce the basics and some tactics you can use. So, use it with care!

First thing is first, you need to open an account. Go to Google Adwords and open an account. You need to create your first campaign on opening an account but you can make a dummy campaign and as soon as it is setup, you can pause the campaign or delete it altogether.

Before you start any campaign, you need to plan ahead.

So, we start yet again with our keyword research. This is extremely important with PPC marketing as it will save you both time and money! Here you really need to brainstorm a good list of relevant keywords, relevant to your product or service. Think of any and all phrases one might use to find your offering.

Now, once you have your list of keywords, you do not need to find out the competition data but you do need to find out what the demand is! The competition data using the free tools mentioned in the lesson about Keywords refers to the organic search listings, not the competition for the sponsored ads, this is a different animal altogether!

As for the competition, yes you do need to find out the competition but not the way you did it in the previous lesson. If you go to Google and type in the keyword of your choice, say "business opportunities" for our example. Now, at the bottom of the sponsored ads on the right side of the results page, you can see the link, 'More Sponsored Links'. Click on this and you will get a list of all the competition bidding on that keyword! In our example, for "business opportunities" there are over 100 competitors! (I did not bother looking at how many exactly). Now if there are so many people competing, it is likely to be difficult to get a decent position for that particular keyword and you would probably have to pay through the roof for it! So, for your keyword research to assess the competition, just click on 'More Sponsored Links' and see how many ads are there!

A quicker way would be to use software and this is where they come into their own. Ad Word Analyzer would be the one for this job. It gets a list of keywords, the demand, the competition, the number of Google Adwords competition and the top bid for a particular keyword! This is a great piece of software for Adwords and a huge time saver.

When you have your list of keywords, you need to group them together. So, keywords with a common word are grouped together.

For example:

Group 1 (business opportunities)
buy business opportunities
online business opportunities
business opportunities listing
etc

Group 2 (home business)
home based business opportunities
home based business
work at home business
etc

and so on.

Each keyword ad group should ideally not have more than about 25-30 keywords in them. Each of these keyword groups is called an 'Ad Group' by Google.

Once you have grouped your keywords, it is time to setup your campaign online. Log into your Google Adwords account.

You want to click on 'Create a new campaign' and select 'keyword-targeted'. You are then taken to the campaign set-up screen.

Enter the 'campaign name', then enter a name for this Ad Group (the grouping of keywords as mentioned earlier).

Select the language and then ensure 'Countries and territories' is selected. Select continue.

Next select the Countries you are targeting.

You are then presented with the following screen to place your ad:

The headline is very important. You need to grab the users attention. The body copy also allows you to pre-sell and entice your visitors. Take time to carve out a great ad. The ultimate function of the advert is to get people to click on your ad to get to your website.

Notice anything about the words in the picture above?  

Keywords!!!

Remember the ad groups you created earlier, that you grouped all the keywords with a common keyword together? Well, that common keyword you should place into the title and also into the ad description. This is very important!

It is important because it increases the relevancy of your advert and Google will reward you for that by lowering your costs!

Also notice the Display URL. This is the website address that will be displayed in your advert. Now, notice the Destination URL. It is different because this is the actual page the user will be taken to when they click on your ad. Having the root domain name in the 'Display URL' looks cleaner and more professional, that is one reason it is good to get a dedicated domain name as mentioned in a previous lesson (lesson 2).

When you are happy with your advert, click on continue and then you will be able to enter your keywords. Copy your keywords for that particular Ad Group, ideally no more than 25-30 or thereabouts, you may only have 5!

Click on continue and you then need to enter your Daily Budget. This is the amount of money you are willing to spend on your campaign. Set what you are comfortable with, it does not necessarily mean that you will spend it all. Perhaps to start with, put $5-$10.

You then need to enter your maximum Cost Per Click (max. CPC). This is the maximum you are willing to pay if someone clicks onto your advert. It does not necessarily mean that you will be charged that amount for every click.

The actual CPC depends upon the competition and how relevant your advert is to your keywords! Read this sentence again, it is important!

We make it relevant by putting the common keyword into the headline and main ad copy...amongst other things!

Once you have set your max. CPC you can click on 'Get Traffic Estimate' and Google will return the estimated number of clicks, daily budget spend and average ad position for the settings your have chosen. This will give you a rough idea of how your Ad Group may perform. You can manipulate the costs and see how that affects the outcome. Remember, this is only an estimate to give you an idea, it may not be that accurate. When you are happy with it click continue, then review your Ad Group and save it.

It is now live! Congratulations, you have just setup your first Adwords campaign.

You can then go onto setting up additional Ad Groups for the other keyword groupings within the same campaign. You may have many, many ad groups within a single campaign.

IMPORTANT
One last thing I need to mention. Click on 'Campaign Summary' on the tabs and then select the campaign by selecting the box and click on 'Edit Settings'. Go to where is says 'content network'. Ensure that this is unchecked. It will save you a heap of money!!

When you have a campaign up and running, have a good look around Adwords and really explore the site and different settings. They have a fantastic online tutorial which is very detailed and one of the best around! Click Here to See it.

Google Adwords is the main PPC engine, the other 2 main ones would be Yahoo! Search Marketing (or Overture) and MSN AdCenter , These are slightly less popular and you may get better results with these because of less competition and lower costs. There are lots other fringe pay per click engines but I would concentrate on the Big 3!

TASK

1. Open a Google Adwords account
2. Do your keyword research
3. Group keywords into Ad Groups
4. Setup a new campaign
5. Ensure you switch off 'Content Network' in the Campaign Settings
6. Complete the relevant sections and Go Live!!!
7. Keep a regular eye on your campaigns to monitor costs and also how many clicks you are getting. Adjust the settings/costings as necessary.

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