Getting Started With Google Ads
We're moving into unprecedented times, with a lot of of us practically confined to our homes on account of the coronavirus pandemic. As a small business owner you may not able to operate your organization at this time. However, the enforced social isolation actually gives you the time for other useful activities that may result in your company returning stronger than before after the pandemic has ended. One such activity is to look at other means of promoting your business online, particularly through the use of google ads management.
What are Google Ads?
The basic idea of Google Ads is that when someone types a search term into Google, seeking a certain product or service, a number of ads are triggered. The resulting ads can have either for the top or the bottom from the resulting Search Engine Results Page (SERP). A click on the ad takes the prospective customer to some page of the website known as the landing page, the purpose of which would be to convert the lead you've just acquired into an authentic customer.
Google determines which ads showing and in which positions for the SERP based on numerous factors. These include the price you are happy to pay for that ad to be displayed per particular keyword. This is called the bid price since you happen to be bidding against your competition in order to achieve the specified position about the SERP.
The Google Ads Platform
Once you've made a Google account and signed into the Google Ads platform, it may look like rather daunting at first as so many options and features can be found. The first step is usually to create a Campaign, then within that Campaign you should have Ad Groups, the Ads themselves as well as the keywords you wish to target.
The Campaign
Google Ads Campaigns are often geographically targeted, particularly for local businesses servicing a specific geographical area. Within the campaign settings you are going to define your target area, your maximum daily spend and numerous other important criteria.
Ad Groups
You might have one or more Ad Groups within a selected campaign, and within each Ad Group more than one Ads which each point to the same website landing page. Within the Ad Group you define the bids for your keywords in this Ad Group although these could also be customised with the keyword level.
Ads
The ads themselves can take a number of different forms but a standard text ad has a squeeze page destination, three headlines and a couple lines of description. Not all the writing you define will necessarily see in the ad because exact format with the displayed ad is a Google's discretion.
The text with the ads should correlate closely with all the keywords inside the Ad Group and one in the options provided is always to include the keyword text from the ad itself. Your purpose is to get the attention with the prospective customer in order that they will want to select your ad after typing their key phrase into Google.
Keywords
Keyword research is at the heart of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising since the keywords are what the mark customer types in to Google with the result your ad is triggered. You may be able to think of numerous possible keywords relevant to your organization and you are free to incorporate practically as many keywords as you like. Keywords could be one or two words long (they're known as short-tail keywords) or they might contain multiple words or short phrases, in which particular case they are called long-tail keywords. You should make an effort to have a good combination of short and long-tail keywords. In general the short-tail keywords will be more competitive, causing a higher cost per click.
Landing pages
The one element of your campaign that is not defined from the Google Ads platform itself is the website landing page. This is the page on your own website which is the destination when an ad is clicked. Content in this posting should correlate closely while using targeted keywords themselves and also the text in the ad. The purpose of your respective landing page is that the potential customer would take whatever next step you happen to be after, as an example to make a booking, to accomplish a form, or call you. Ideally you may create a website landing page for each Ad Group, which clearly speaks to the customer's intent with all the keyword they have got entered.
Quality score
The prices you purchase your clicks will change in real time and can depend on quality scores defined per keyword by Google. The calculation in the quality score is based on the relevance from the ad triggered by that keyword, the squeeze page experience for the potential customer, and Google's estimate of how likely it is always that your ad will be clicked.
Performance monitoring
It's imperative that you monitor how your ads are performing regularly. Within the Google Ads platform you may be able start to see the exact text keyed in by prospective customers which has triggered your ads. You can make use of this information to construct out your keyword list with additional long-tail keywords. You also have negative keyword lists which are lists of keywords which, when included in the customer's search, shouldn't trigger your ad.
You can also start to see the positioning you've achieved for the ads for the SERP and you will use this data to discover whether you'll want to adjust your bids to provide your ads greater visibility. Of course you might also find your ads are regularly appearing inside the top position which means that you could be paying a lot of for those clicks. Through a process of regular review and experimentation, you'll be able to determine the best choice bid for each keyword.
This has been a top-level breakdown of the concepts and building blocks with the Google Ads platform. Hopefully it is often enough to demystify the theory and get you curious about learning more to ascertain whether this really is something you might want to feature in your online marketing arsenal.