Google Pay Per Click Advertising Services - What is Google Adwords

Do you remember when you perform a search in one of the major search engines, sometimes there are these boxes at the very top and at the right hand side of the returned results of you query? Those results are called sponsored links, while the other results are called organic results.
Image Creit: Screenshot from my Computer
The ads in the black boxes are the sponsored links and the results in the red box are organic results.

So whats the difference?

The organic results are free, to the website owner. They did not have to pay for their sites to be listed there. They used SEO (search engine optimization) which is free. SEO is basically about onpage optimization, offpage optimization and interactivity of a website, I won't get into the details right now This is only the very basic aspects of SEO.

But on the other hand the sponsored results are paid results, meaning that the search engine you performed your query in is being paid when someone clicks an ads, by the website owners. And as listed before each major search engine has their own form of pay per click services.

The Google search engines uses a pay per click program called Google adwords.
Google Adwords

Back to the scenario. John explains to Francine all of the above and she decides to go to join the program.

So Francine sets up an account with Google Adwords and bids on her chosen keywords using some of the default settings. BUT and a very big but this is, Francine realized that for the generous amount of money she set as her budget, she was only receiving very few visits per month.

Once again she goes back to John and explains her problem to him. John then concluded that even though her keywords were extremely competitive, they didn't receive many searches per month. Therefore he then introduced her to the Google Adwords Keyword tool.
Image Creit: Google Adwords

The Google Adwords Keyword tool was created by Google to research keywords. This tool offers much important data about keywords; such as the amount of searchers per month, the consistency of those searches throughout the months, the average cost per click for an given keyword or keyphrase, the amount of competition per keywords etc.... This tool is an absolute must for all who plan to use Google Adwords. But don't worry it won't cost you a penny to research since its totally free!

Once again Yahoo and msn offer a similar service but since google is the most popular out of the three, I am mostly discussing their program.

How To Use The Google Adwords Keyword Tool

When you first visit the Google adwords keyword tool website, it will ask you to enter a caption. This is to ensure you are not a program try to fetch keywords automatically since this takes up valuable resources, leaving less for actual users therefore decreasing user experience. In the top left of the tool you will see a blank space under the heading 'Word or phrase (one per line)', this is where you enter your keywords.

Next to this you will see another smaller white space with the heading 'website', this is where you will enter the URL of your site for the tool to generate what it perceives as 'appropriate keywords'.

After choosing one of the two methods listed above, we will move onto the advance options by clicking the plus sign to the left of the words 'Advanced options' which is located under the word or phrase white box.


So lets customize our results!

If you only want to check information for keywords in a specific country, select that country from the list on the left. On the other hand if you are checking information for specific keywords of a certain language select that language from the list to the right.

We now move on to Mobile search. Check, 'Show stats for mobile search' if you are considering a mobile audience.

Let now move onto the 'Show results for' heading.

The 'All keyword ideas' setting will show all the different variations of the keyword that was typed in. The 'Ideas containing my search terms' shows only the variations that also include your original searched terms.

Lastly we move onto the 'Filter keywords' setting.

First, select what you want to filter from the drop down menu. Then select either the more than/equal (>=) sign or less than/equal (<=) sign from the following drop down menu. Finally enter your limiting number in the space provided.

How the above setting works is by for example if your want to filter 'Global monthly searches' (we will talk about this later) and find how many keywords are search for more than 2, 000 times in Google per month. Select global monthly searches, the morethan/equal(>=) sign and then enter 2, 000.


After setting the above, we are now ready to click 'search'. The results will appear below under the following default headings: Keyword | Competition | Global Monthly Searches | Local Monthly Searches and Local Search Trends from left to right respectively.

You can add more heading manually by clicking the button labeled 'columns' which is located above 'Local Search Trends' (the rightmost tab). A new window will pop up. Simply check the box next to the desired heading you want to add. In this tutorial we will only be adding the 'Estimated Avg. CPC' heading.

But what do these mysterious headings mean, keep reading to find out....


Lets start with the leftmost heading, 'Keyword'. This heading simply shows you the keywords that were found pertaining to your keyword search or website keyword results.
Next is the 'Competition' heading
This simply shows the amount of advertisers bidding on a given keyword. A full green bar represents high competition and half a bar represents medium competition (you can also check the competition by placing your mouse over the bar).

We now move onto 'Global monthly searches'.

This means exactly what it states. It shows the amount of searches globally for a chosen keyword using the GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE and the Google search engine only! This is commonly mistaken as the amount of searches per month from every search engine known to man! But remember it is not.

If you selected a specific country from the 'advanced setting' the local monthly searches will display the number of searches using the google search engine from that country.

The 'Local search trends' shows the consistency of searches through the year. Therefore it is best to pick a keyword with almost level bars as opposed to keywords with one or two 'spikes' thorough the year. You won't gain consistent traffic using these keywords.

Lastly, put most certainly not least is the cpc heading (cost per click). This displays an approximation of the cost per keyword click. So, of course this is extremely important when researching keywords. It is best to find a cheap keyword, which has an acceptable amount of searches.

Well Francine resets her settings and picks her keywords again. But she realizes that for the keywords she picks, she only get a very small percentage of visits shown by the Google Adwords keyword tool. And once again she confronts John!

John explains to Francine that she is only getting a small percentage of the searches because not everyone who searches will click on her ad. Also depending on the position of the ad it will also receive less clicks. So Francine did some research(finally) and found out that approximatively only 3% to 6% of searches click any of the sponsored ads in the side bar while around 8% click the ones at the top ones. So Francine checked her ad positions and worked out the percentage of searches she was receiving only to still find it was much less than she anticipated. So, well you can guess, she called John!

Francine explained once again what was happening, and John, according to what she said could not find the problem. So they decided to start from the top of keyword research, the Google Adwords Keyword tool.

Francine points out her chosen keyword to John and shows him the searches, after staring hard at the computer screen he started to chuckle. John asked Francine, what setting she used when setting up her Google Adwords account. He asked if she selected broad, exact or phrase. Francine replied exact. And there lied the final problem

After searching for keywords, depending on your Google Adwords account settings, you have to make an important selection from the left hand side of the Google Adwords Keyword tool. The settings are between broad, exact and phrase. By default the tool is set to broad. Below is a break down of what each of the options mean....

Broad

Broad match basically shows the results for related words to your keyword. For example when checking for red cars and broad match is selected, it will show you how many searches are done for free cars, bicycles, paint, purple cars etc. All the keywords that are somehow related to red or cars. This way you end up with a high global search volume but it doesn't represent the data for the exact keyword in question. This is where the exact match comes in.

But first a little more about broad match type:

If your Google Adwords account is set up for a broad keyword, you will receive more exposure since your add will be displayed for more keywords as opposed to exact match. Of course though, it will be less targeted than exact. For example if you are targeting blue cars and someone typed in red cars you add is eligible to appear. Most likely that person will not buy since you don't have what they are looking for, but you will still have to pay for that unnecessary click.

Exact

Exact match does exactly what it says! It shows how many people search for a specific keyword using Google's search engine. For example you type in flowers and select exact match this will show how many people search for flowers and flowers only!

So when setting up a Google Adwords campaign and you choose exact, this will make your add eligible to show up for only the specific keywords you entered. This is much more targeted than broad but of course you add will appear for less searches.

Phrase

This Shows how many persons search for your keywords in a phrase. For example if you type in 'computer parts' it will show stats for phrases like 'Buy Computer parts from best buy', 'Computer parts installation' etc.

If you chose phrase match in your Adwords campaign according to the example above, you add will appear to be more targeted than broad but less targeted than exact.