Category: Paid Placement
Summary & Overview
Google search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. and is the most-used search engine on the Web. Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services. Google search was originally developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997. Beyond the original word-search capability, Google Search provides more than 22 special features, such as: synonyms; weather forecasts; time zones; stock quotes; maps; earthquake data; movie showtimes; airports; home listings; sports scores, etc. (see below: Special features). There are special features for numbers: prices; temperatures; money/unit conversions (“10.5 cm in inches”); calculations ( 3*4+sqrt(6)-pi/2 ); package tracking; patents; area codes; plus rudimentary language translation of displayed pages.
A Google search-results page is ordered by a priority rank called a “PageRank” which is kept secret to avoid spammers from forcing their pages to the top. Google Search provides many options for customized search (see below: Search options), such as: exclusion (”-xx”), inclusion (”+xx”), alternatives (“xx OR yy”), and wildcard matching (“xx*”).
AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue ($21 billion in 2008). AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
Sales and Support for Google's AdWords division is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the company's third-largest facility behind its Mountain View, California, headquarters and New York City office. Engineering for AdWords is based in Mountain View, California.
Advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click. When a user searches Google's search engine on www.google.com or the relevant local/national google server (e.g. www.google.co.uk for The United Kingdom), ads (also known as creatives by Google) for relevant words are shown as “sponsored links” on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results.
The ordering of the paid-for listings depends on other advertisers' bids (PPC) and the “quality score” of all ads shown for a given search. The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other relevance factors as determined by Google. The quality score is also used by Google to set the minimum bids for an advertiser's keywords. The minimum bid takes into consideration the quality of the landing page as well, which includes the relevancy and originality of content, navigability, and transparency into the nature of the business. Though Google has released a list of full guidelines for sites, the precise formula and meaning of relevance and its definition is in part secret to Google and the parameters used can change dynamically.
The auction mechanism that determines the order of the ads has been described as a Generalized second-price auction. This is claimed to have the property that the participants do not necessarily fare best when they truthfully reveal any private information asked for by the auction mechanism (in this case, the value of the keyword to them, in the form of a “truthful” bid).
Alexa Traffic Rank
#1
The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past three months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.
Setup Time
Google is a highly effective marketing tool but there is a significant learning curve involved if you are new to pay-per-click advertising.
While the actual setup of a Google AdWords account is quick and easy, setting up effective marketing campaigns will take additional time. Consider setting up a test campaign when you set up your AdWords account and then complete the Google training before going live with any of your campaigns.
Ongoing Maintenance
Your marketing campaigns on Google AdWords will require consistent monitoring to ensure your campaigns are cost effective and to ensure your leads are taking the desired action. Google AdWords is not a marketing strategy that you can set up once and ignore. With that said, Google leads are GREAT LEADS and you deserve to take the time to master this marketing strategy with the understanding that your education with Google will be an ongoing process.
Cost
Marketing costs on Google vary greatly as advertisers determine a set campaign budget that Google will not exceed. In other words, you decide how much you want to spend. With that said we consider Google AdWords an advanced marketing strategy and would advise you to educate yourself before launching an aggressive marketing campaign with Google as mistakes can be expensive.
Speed of Results
Immediate.
Basic Use
Important Google Disclaimer
Google is one of the best marketing mediums ever created. If you are serious about becoming a successful marketer Google must be a part of your long term strategy. That being said, there are certain things you must be aware of at the onset of your relationship with Google.
Google Adwords is slowly eliminating websites that are blatant sales letters for “make money” or “business opportunity” products. They are also cracking down on affiliate marketers in an effort to eliminate multiple websites with the same content. If you plan to market in the “make money” niche we highly recommend that you adhere to the following guidelines and recommendations:
Google is great for quickly testing your site or offer, but the trial and error learning curve on a fully implemented Google marketing campaign can be expensive. If you plan on using Google as your primary marketing strategy we recommend you have at least a $3,000 to $5,000 beginning marketing budget.
If you are going to market in the “make money” niche we suggest you have a high ticket back-end product to market. If Google is unhappy with your website content or if you are caught violating Google's terms and conditions they will possibly suspend your account, or even ban you for life from advertising on Google.
Keep in mind the following website requirements for marketing in the “make money” niche: Build your site on a blogging platform (Wordpress, etc.).
- Include a proper Navigation menu (top or side placement).
- Every page must be accessible from one link such as a “Home Page” link.
- Create and include a Google Sitemap.
- Create a proper keyword rich description of your site.
- Do not talk about money. Instead, your site should look like the personal site of internet marketer “John Doe”.
- Register your own domain. When choosing your domain name search your name first. Do not use the word “money” or refer to money in any way in your domain name. Consider something generic such as www.meetjohndoe.com or www.thejohndoeffect.com.
- Mask and forward your domain to your Wordpress (or other blogging platform) site.
- Have a proper headline in the proper SEO section of your site and have it labeled in the source code. Make sure the the home page of your website is content rich with lots of information.
- Include informative filenames for images (eg. my-new-black-kitten.jpg).
- Include plenty of outbound links (you can link to your favorite articles, pictures etc.).
- Do NOT include any redirects or links to ANY affiliate marketing offers or sales pages. If you wish to have an affiliate program attached to your site we suggest using a ”Contact Me” or “Work With Me” link.
- Have an opt-in email form (such as an Aweber web form) where your visitors can provide their email address in exchange for additional information. Be sure to tell them they'll receive an email confirming their interest in receiving additional information from you and that they'll need to confirm their subscription. In the confirmation email be sure to introduce yourself again and then send them another email with a link to the complete overview.
- Backlinks are how Google determines the importance of your site. Include a ”Link to me” button or widget so so other sites can easily link back to you.
- Get backlinks yourself by including your link in your social networking profiles and posts. Having high pagerank sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) linking to you is imperative.
- Use www.Lynx.com to see what the search engine spiders think of your site.
- Include proper Alt tags for videos, images etc. For example, an okay Alt tag for your puppy picture would read “puppy”, but a great Alt tag for your puppy picture would read “Dalmatian puppy playing fetch”.
If you do not yet have the technical skills to build a website with these elements you can easily have your own custom site designed and built just for you.
Important Google Update, December 2009
If you are a past or present advertiser on Google, you may be aware of their recent aggressive enforcement of advertising policies and guidelines. While some advertisers have been temporarily inconvenience by the ”slap” (i.e. their advertising costs have skyrocketed) some advertisers have had their advertising accounts banned for life. The following article does a great job explaining what Google has been up to.
“The Big Ban”
First things first let’s clarify a common misconception. AdWords is not banning accounts for no reason. They have a reason, and from a consumers (someone who searches on Google) perspective it’s a damn good reason. So what is the reason that Google is straight out banning accounts, not just campaigns, but accounts for LIFE.
Let’s look at what one current Google Employee posted on the webmasterworld.com forum.
“In keeping with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, we spend a tremendous amount of time and effort monitoring the quality of our search and ad results. As we've stated many times before, Google's primary focus is on delivering the best possible search experience to our end users. To help further this goal, we work with our advertisers in a number of different ways to help them design and run the best ads possible.
Unfortunately, some online advertisers continue to promote services and websites that do not help, and in some cases could harm, our users. For instance, these advertisers may offer free services that bait users into accepting hidden fees. Or these advertisers may attempt to deliver malware to unsuspecting web citizens. Regardless of the practice, these types of campaigns do not benefit our users and we therefore take steps to enforce our policies and prevent such advertisers from running ads through our systems.
Over the last decade Google has implemented a number of systems and processes to identify and disable ads that direct users to these offending websites. However, the ad disabling procedures have resulted in ongoing back and forth between us and these questionable advertisers as they try to outsmart our systems and processes. Therefore, we're being stricter with advertisers who deliver a bad user experience by permanently disabling AdWords accounts that engage in prohibited behavior.
Recently we began implementing this new account disabling. As a result, many advertisers who provide a poor user experience and have previously had their ads disabled will now have their accounts disabled.
We take our user, advertiser and publisher experiences very seriously, and remain dedicated to delivering only the highest quality advertising results to our users. We believe this new process of permanently disabling accounts will markedly improve the overall experience of our users, advertisers and publishers.”
Basic Action Steps
Google has put together extensive training covering everything from setting up your AdWords account to writing and creating effective ads to managing and evaluating the effectiveness of your campaigns. We highly recommend going through this training before you even set up your account.
- Google AdWords Training
http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/
We recommend going through modules 1 through 7 first. The multimedia training, which is broken in to small sections within each module, will take approximately 6 hours to complete but don’t let that intimidate you as most of the training sections are less than 10 minutes each. Google also offers the same training in text format.
- Introduction to AdWords (60 minutes)
- Getting Started with AdWords (56 minutes)
- Targeting (69 minutes)
- Costs & Billing (34 minutes)
- Tracking & Performance (85 minutes)
- Optimizing Ad Performance (44 minutes)
- The AdWords Toolbox (14 minutes)
- Sign up for a Google AdWords account:
www.adwords.google.com
- Launch Your First Campaign
Basic Tips & Tricks
Sample Ads:
Direct Sales Lead Ads
Tuesdays Are For The Beach.
Make It Your New Office.
Learn How From The Best.
Children Don't Forget.
Real Dads Don't Work 80
Hours Per Week.
Bug The Neighbors
Let Your Success Do
The Talking. Learn Here.
Why Struggle?
Money Equals Freedom.
Education Equals Money.
Ready For Change?
The Internet Is A Gold Rush.
Learn How To Mine It.
Stop The Excuses.
Our Community Is Making
Success Stories. Be One.
Work Where You Want.
The Internet Is The Ticket.
Learn The Skills Today.
Cubicles Suck.
Work Where You Want
When You Want. See How.
MLM Lead Ads
Want More Credibility?
An MLM Website Will Help
You Make More Sales. See How.
MLM Is Not Tough
If You Know The Secrets.
Learn Directly From The Pros.
Be A Diamond Faster.
Show Your Prospects That
You Are A Leader. Learn How.
Intermediate Strategies
Google also offers ongoing live training via webinar. These webinars cover both the basics as well as specialized topics. Check their live training schedule frequently for topics that interest you. Remember, this is a marketing strategy that will pay you huge rewards if you are willing to expend the time and energy to master it.
Intermediate Action Steps
- Understanding Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a tool that will assist you in managing multiple campaigns.
Complete module 8 “Google Analytics” in the AdWords Learning Center (15 minutes) to learn more and see if this tool would be appropriate for the management of your marketing campaigns. It is not necessary to complete the last module (module 9 “Managing Your Client Accounts”) unless you are interested in managing other advertiser’s Google marketing campaigns as a business.
http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/
- Attend Google’s Live Webinar Training
http://www.google.com/events/training/
- Tap into Additional Training Resources:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleBusiness
Intermediate Tips & Tricks
Advanced Marketer
While Google is widely considered the “grandaddy” of pay-per-click marketing, it is certainly not the only pay-per-click search engine out there. Mastering the basics of Google will equip you to easily move in to other pay-per-click search engines. These smaller search engines are great places to inexpensively test your ad copy in order to increase your click-through-rate and, ultimately, your conversions.
For an extensive list of other pay-per-click search engines go to the Directory at: www.payperclicksearchengines.com.
Additional Pay Per Click Services:
• LookSmart (Pay Per Click)
• Adknowledge (Pay Per Click)
• Yahoo (Pay Per Click)
• Bing (Pay Per Click)
• Pay Per Click Search Engine Directory: PayPerClickSearchEngines.com
Customer Support Telephone Numbers:
• Google: 866-246-6453
• Yahoo: 866-747-7327
• Bing (MSN): 800-386-5550
Disclaimer: Michael Wyrosdick is committed to providing you with the highest quality tools and resources to support your business. You should, however, conduct your own due diligence before purchasing any products or outsourcing any projects as Michael Wyrosdick cannot guarantee the services or products as provided by third party vendors.
Related Marketing Strategies
• Personal Branding & Positioning
• Directories
• Free Classifieds
• Ezine Marketing
• Newspapers
• Magazines
Questions, Comments, Feedback & Suggestions
For questions about the content in this Google training, please send an email to resources@michaelwyrosdick.com with “Google” in your subject
