AdWords - Google's Main Source of Revenue

The AdWords product was launched in 2000. Google AdWords offers pay-per-click advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads which are displayed on the top or right hand side of the natural search results.

Google operates many country-specific web sites and has a large number of visitors from all over the world. Therefore, distribution of ads can be done at local, national, and international levels. AdWords can offer the option to target users in specific countries, or those who are searching in particular languages. This helps you reach your target group more easily since Google can determine country location based on the user's IP address. Google users can also set their preferred language. So, for example, if they set Spanish as their preferred language, they get Spanish-language-targeted ads.

Specificality is not the only advantage of Google AdWords - budget controlability is another highlight. No matter what your budget, you can display your ads on Google and its advertising network. It is cost-effective as you pay only if people click on your ads which means every dollar of your budget brings new potential customers to you. There's no minimum spending requirement or time commitment.

Moreover, you can edit your ads and adjust your budget until you get the results that meet your specific needs. You can also display a variety of ad formats - text ads, image/banner ads, and enhanced text listings. Google, however, adheres to a strict advertising format: all listings are text only, with a title line of 25 characters and a product or service description with 2 lines of up to 35 characters each. Your URL is also limited to 35 characters.

Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Thus, in order to make the most out of the program, you must have a great keyword list and maximize the keywords by putting the right words in the right places.

Once you have generated a comprehensive list of targeted keywords and phrases that you believe will help attract your customers, you must create an advertisement which will attract them to visit your site. This message must crucially be effective, concise and descriptive, and attractive enough to drive sales.

Each account is evaluated after every 1,000 ad impressions are delivered on Google. If the Click Through Rate (CTR) for your account falls below a minimum CTR requirement, which varies by ad position, your ads will only be shown occasionally on your underperforming keywords. If your keywords still fail to improve, they might get disabled and you will have to refine your campaign to improve its performance and effectiveness. After that, you may restore full ad delivery to your account.

In the same way, if you achieve a high CTR for a very general term, you will potentially be spending a huge amount of money, which might not be effective since the term is very broad and not very targeted. The first step in narrowing the audience down to a more targeted group is to use the "Phrase Match" feature in AdWords. This limits your ad to those searches that include your search phrases in order.

To be more specific, use the "Exact Match" feature. This is particularly useful for increasing the CTR of ads with poor performance. This will save you from paying too much money for non-targeted, non-converting clicks. Using these targeting features will help place you into an elite category of Google AdWords users who have clickthrough and conversion rates at the top of their categories.

About The Author-- Jatupol Tanaruthai is CEO of Globlet, search engine optimization company based in Thailand. Visit Globlet's site at http://www.globlet.com

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