I’ve had a Google Adwords account for some time now and have tried running an ad or two before using some free Adwords credits but this will be the first time I am running an ad campaign for an int’l client.
I did some quick research on my own and must read quite a number of articles about running an Adwords campaign, yet I can’t say that I already know everything there is to learn about it.
From my understanding, it’s as simple as:
- Doing some keyword research. I use Overture Keyword Selector Tool as it gives me an exact figure of the number of searches in the previous month (though only for Yahoo). In conjunction to that, I also use the Adwords Keyword Tool just to verify if the search volume is relatively the same on Google.
- Create a good copy for your ads. Make multiple copies targeting different potential audience and different selling points.
- Optimize the landing page to adjust to the intended audience to maximize conversion. It could be in the form of newsletter subscriber, a registered member in the forums, etc.
- Set the daily budget and hope that there are no competitors in the targeted keywords.
- Watch and learn — wash, rinse and repeat.
Anyone have extensive experience with Adwords? Anything else I might have missed? My client’s targeted keywords are not competitive so I’m hoping for $0.01 PPC rate.
Darren Rowse asks “Do you advertise your blog?“.
Why of course, everyone does. Its just a matter of up to what extent people advertise their blogs. Most people want free advertisements so they sign up with blog rings, blog forums, traffic exchange programs. Others are a little subtle but they’re pretty effective with leaving trackbacks and comments on other blogs within their niche.
The better question would be, how much are you willing to spend to advertise your blog? Some people spend some money on running contests or sponsoring one. Others do direct advertising. A lot of us around here do that.
I once got $30 in free AdWords (last year) account so I used it to advertise my blog. JAngelo used to run AdWords and I often see his ads on Inq7.net as well as Marc during the first few days of the V7N.com contest. Same with Rickey for his Live @ USA podcast; used to see his ads around here for entries related to “pinoy/filipino”. I’ve also seen BryanBoy buying BlogAds over at XiaXue‘s blog and another Gawker Media blog (forgot which one). And those are ad spots in the hundreds of dollars.
More interesting to know though is how effective these ads are for their blog. If they earn more than enough from their own blog, I think it is wise to invest some of the revenues back to advertising and increase traffic.
[tags]adverts, advertising, blogads, adbrite, tla, adsense, adwords[/tags]
Just got another free AdWords voucher worth Php,2000 (~$50) today. I added it into my existing account but it didn’t accept it. I guess since I already have an existing AdWords account, I don’t need any free voucher for it anymore.
If you don’t have any Google AdWrods account yet and wanted to try advertising on Google for free, get them here.
Note; You may need to have an existing credit card to verify your account. They do want you to continue subscribing even after you’ve used up your Php2,000 credit.
Google has just re-branded Urchin and launched Google Analytics, a heavy-weight site tracking tool which it bought last March 29, 2005. The best thing is, it’s now free and seemlessly integrates with those running an Adwords campaign.
If you already have a Google account, you can go ahead and login at https://www.google.com/analytics to register your sites for the tracking system.
Urchin used to come with several of our servers back then, along with AWStats and Webalizer. However, Urchin logs are too large that it could very well clog up your entire hosting account, with all the detailed traffic stats it gathers and the reporting it presents.
I have disabled the built-in Urchin stats altogether on our servers, hoping that AWStats and Webalizer would be enough. But recently, both traffic stats tools are recording mostly spam referrals they’ve become useless altogether. Third-party stats like Statcounter, MapStats and MeasureMap came in handy and more useful for remote tracking.
We’ll see how everybody else fares with Google Analytics.
Update: Google didn’t expect the rush? “Thanks for stopping by. We are currently migrating existing customers to the newly improved Google Analytics service. This process will be completed later this afternoon. Please come back then to sign up for Google Analytics.”
While every blogger around might be familiar with Google AdSense, only quite a few are acquainted with (moreso, have actually used) Google AdWords. They’re fraternal twins, actually. While AdSense provides revenue for ad publishers like you and me, AdWords on the other hand provides the avenue for advertisers to market their products and services. And Google is the mother of all advertising machineries.
I was recently able to sign up for AdWords to check out just how powerful this program is all about. Once inside, you will be offered with a complementary set of tools to properly and efficiently run your ad campaign. It allows you to set how much you want to bid for a keyword when it is clicked and lets you choose how much you want to budget your funds on a daily basis. Lowest bid on a click is $0.05 but could go as high in the range of $80 for very popular keywords.
The Traffic Estimator approximates the CPC, average clicks per day and a potential budget for it if you want to be placed on top of the ads. These estimates are based on current advertiser rates. I tried keying in for “hosting” and it gave me numbers and stats in the double digits, proposing a daily budget that could buy you a brand new car if you want your ads to be always on top.
By using Google AdWords, one will fully understand the intricacies of Google AdSense. I will be posting more on the results of my experiment in the following weeks.
Wanna try AdWorks? I can get you a £20 free coupon. Just leave me a non-commercial email address (i.e. no Yahoo or any free email account).
Here’s the link: http://services.google.com/marketing/links/UK-OA-NETCRAF
