– A Quick Guide 

A quick "How To" on starting up an an AdWords account. By no means exhaustive but it will help you look in the right direction.

1.    Get an understanding of how Google AdWords works.

The first place to look is the Google AdWords Overview. You can find this at https://adwords.google.com/select/

2.    Research your Keywords

Do your research and think of the keywords that are most appropriate for your target market. The keywords should be specific to your site or product. Use phrases as well as single words approximately 60% of searches contain 2 or 3 words and only 20% are single word searches.

Now that you have your primary keywords use a keyword research tool to find alternatives that you may not have thought of this will increase the number of keywords you have at your disposal. These tools can also show you how popular these keyword terms are and how competitive they are. Following are some online tools to start with:

• Google AdWords Suggestion Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox

• Overture Suggestion Tool http://inventory.overture.com/searchinventory/suggestion

• Wordtracker http://www.wordtracker.com/

3.    Create a Google AdWords account

Sign up to AdWords at https://adwords.google.com/select/. You will pay an activation fee of a few dollars from there you will be guided through the following steps.

• Localise your campaign – in this step you set the language and the countries you will be targeting with your campaign. Select English as your language and All Countries and your ad will show in all countries where the English language is the default setting.
• Create an Ad Group – in this step you create a group for your ads and name it. Design the Ad by entering the copy you have already written and then enter the keywords you have selected to trigger those ads. Specify the maximum cost-per-click that you are willing to pay for each time a user clicks on one ads from this group.
  NB: For maintenance purposes it is good practice to create a separate group for each main keyword or key phrase.
• Write your Ad Copy – keep the following points in mind when you write your copy. You have a maximum allowance of 95 characters (including spaces) or 3 lines. The Display URL must be 35 characters or less. The Destination URL can be any length you like (Google do limit it to about 1000 characters but you shouldn’t need that!) Use simple language and avoid typing EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS. You should have your keywords in the title or the copy to make the ad relevant to the search. Write different ad copy for each of your ad groups
• Enter your Keywords – put in the keywords you researched earlier. You should try and get between 10 – 20 alternate keywords for each of your main keywords.
• Select your currency – be sure to select the correct option here, it will effect both payments and billing. Once this option is set it is not possible to change it.
• Calculate the costs – Specify the your daily budget and the maximum Cost-Per-Click (CPC). There is a minimum daily budget you must commit to – but no maximum daily limit. Once you have reached your daily limit AdWords will stop showing you ads for the day.
  The Traffic Estimator comes in handy when you are working out your budgets. Make some changes to your limits and click Recalculate Estimates the system will calculate how much, on average, you will spend each day and in what position your ads will be shown. These calculations use real time data so they will fluctuate depending on what other users are doing at the time.
• Activate your account – put in your email address and choose a password to activate you’re account. Log in to your account and submit your billing information. Click Sign me up for AdWords and your ads will start running almost immediately.

4.    Monitor incoming traffic

Keep an eye on the traffic that AdWords delivers to your site and evaluate if the PPC campaign is giving you a positive return.  You can use unique tracking URLs to identify referred visitors.

To set up tracking URLs simply add the following parameter to the end of your URL: ?referrer=source. For example if your URL is www.mysite.com.au then your tracking URL will be www.mysite.com.au?referrer=Google.

The simply check your server logs and count how many times “Google” appears as the referring URL.