Pay Per Click-101 Chapter 2

"Pay Per Click-101"

Chapter 2

Optimize your keyword bids:

Just like the rest of this process, optimizing is real simple.

You will now see a page on your screen with 4 tab options on the right hand side. These options are: Summary, Keywords, Placements, and Ad Variations.

The first place I go is to the Keywords tab. You may already be on that tab, otherwise click on the tab that says Keywords. Listed on this page should be all the keywords we brainstormed and selected in the previous steps.

What you want is for each keyword listed, to have a green “Active” word under the Status column, and no other notes. If you have a small message under the “Active” word that says “Bid is below first page bid estimate of $35 or whatever dollar amount, then you need to optimize (raise your bid on that keyword.)

Check the box next to any keyword that has a below first page bid estimate note. My personal rule of thumb is that I do not pay more than $.50 for a keyword. If the note says below first page estimate of $1.00 or even $.80, I just leave it as is. You won’t pay that if someone clicks, your ad will simply show up several pages deep in the results for the $.20 you bid.

Now that you have checked every box that needs your keyword adjusted, you need to click “Edit Keyword Settings.” Always leave the “Default bid at $.20 and only change the individual keywords that need changing.

Inside the green rectangular box in the middle of your screen will be all the keywords you selected for change. In the open box with a dollar sign next to each keyword you will enter your new bid.

If the first page estimate says $.30 I will always enter just a few cents higher than that, like $.32 in this case. Then you must enter the destination URL again to the right of each new bid amount. Remember that URL is simply the web site address you want people to land on after clicking on your ad www.payperclick-101.com

Go through and raise each bid as needed and click “Save Changes.”

The only other tab you will need to worry about is the one that says “Ad Variations.” If at some point you wish to edit your actual ad, that is where you would go. Just click on the “Ad Variations” tab and select the blue link that says “Edit” to make any necessary changes to your ad.

If your ad is very popular amongst other bidders you may have a harder time getting keyword bids below $.50 for the first page. Sometimes you have only a few that are good, and you should brainstorm some more phrases to add to your keyword list.

Adding additional keywords to your ad group:

Above your keyword list you will see a blue link that says “Quick add” right next to “+ Add Keywords.” Click on the blue link, and brainstorm some more unique keyword phrases. Try to think as if you were the person searching. What would a real person write to get their information? Just be sure you always include the “root” keyword in each phrase to stay relevant to your ad.

Wash and Repeat…

Once you have brain stormed some additional phrases repeat the above steps to optimize each one for a below $.50 bid to get on the first page of the results.

In some cases, if I know a particular keyword is very critical to the success of my ad, I will pay more than the $.50 max rule of thumb. Even in the extreme case, I will never bid more than $.75 on any key word. Let the rest of the animals fight over it!

If this is your very first ad and set up of AdWords, you will need to follow some additional steps to complete the registration of your account. You will need a valid credit card on file. Select the pre-pay option. Also, I recommend setting your “Campaign Daily Spending Limit” to $5.00 for starters.

That means that Google will only show your ad or ads until your click costs reach $5.00 and then stop showing them for the rest of the day.

Once you have all of your keywords optimized and are seeing some good “click through rates” (CTR) then you can decide to slowly raise this daily budget to within your comfort zone.

Adding additional ad groups to your new campaign:

For the best learning process possible I recommend the following:

Click on the “Campaign Management” tab on the very top left of your page in green. Next click on the “Campaign Summary” tab. If you always follow that two step process you will get real comfortable with navigating around your AdWords account.

At this point you may only have one campaign listed here. Click on the campaign name.

There is a blue link listed above your ad group title called “New ad group.” Click that link, then select “Start with keywords.” Name this for your internal purposes only, no one else will see this. Click continue.

You are now back to the starting gates of where and how we set up your very first ad group. Simply repeat the entire process each and every time you set up a new ad group within your campaign. Stay with one campaign and multiple ad groups within that campaign to help better manage your daily spending limits.

You will see that after you have set up a few ad groups, it will become quite easy to build up a good size advertising campaign with multiple ads on multiple topics, all showing up on the first page of the search results for under $.50 a click!

If you can master Google AdWords, then Yahoo and MSN will be quite easy for you to set up ads on as well. Just follow the same principles we went over with selecting keywords relevant to your ad and landing page, as well as brain storming creative keyword phrases to stay on the first page of the results for under $.50 a click and you will be a star.

Guys Google does have a phone number although most people do not know that one exists. I have found it and you should write it down somewhere safe for future reference should you need to contact them directly at any point: Toll Free at 1-866-2-Google (866-246-6453) Press 2 to access AdWords, press 1 to enter your customer ID, press 2 if you do not know your ID number.

Also, Google has done some really great videos that very few people know about. Click Here to access them. Most of them are only around 5 minutes long and well worth looking at over time.

Continue to Chapter 3