Setting up Google AdWords

A bit of a longer post than usual. If you’ve been meaning to start using Google AdWords but haven’t quite gotten around to it yet, this Quick Start Guide will walk you through 27 simple, baby steps. It’ll take about 15-20 minutes & you’ll be ready to start accepting new prospects & customers for a few cents a click.

1. Go to www.google.com.au/adwords
2. Click the big ‘Sign up now >>’ button, top right
3. Choose the standard edition itll give you a more powerful set of tools that will come in handy later
4. For now, we‘ll set up your account to cover the whole of Australia, but no other countries (we can change this easily later on if needed) so for now, just click Continue
5. Google should know that you‘re in Australia, so will fill out Australia in the ‘Selected Countries and/or Territories‘ column. If not, fix this, otherwise click Continue
6. Now you have to write your first Ad yep, I know, you haven‘t even joined yet! Google figures you‘re more likely to actually finish signing up AND use the service if it lets you write your Ad before you even start talking about credit cards (a very sensible tactic!)
7. First, write a headline. To do this, we need to know what you‘re going to be selling & to whom. Why is this important?
   It‘s the single biggest mistake advertisers make on Google & you‘ll see it everywhere once you know to look for it. Most advertisers use their company name as the headline. A customer searching on Google doesn‘t care about you or your company name yet… only that they can find someone that can help them. So show you can help, by using their words (or as many of their words as possible). For example. If they type ‘cosmetic surgery‘ don‘t use the name of your clinic as the headline. Use ‘Need Cosmetic Surgery?‘
8. So pick an area of your business. A fairly narrow segment of the products and/or services that you offer you‘re not trying to sell everything your company offers in this one little Ad.. we‘ll come to the rest of your offerings a little later. Jot down a few words that someone might use to describe these products & services and start to think how someone might go about searching for this. This will become your list of keywords which we‘ll enter shortly, for now just write them down on a notepad so that you know who we‘re targeting. Now go for it – write a headline for this particular product/service & again, don‘t worry… we can always come back & change this in a moment.
9. Write two description lines. These are the 2 lines where you show a searcher that you can help her. If you can, think of a benefit and a feature that your service offers & use these as your 2 lines. But be brief, you only have 35 letters to use on each line & yes, that includes spaces.
   You‘ll know when you‘ve used too many letters as Google won‘t let you type any more.
10. Display URL  this is the name of your website that gets displayed just underneath your Ad on Google.
    Two tips:
    - don‘t type the www. in front of your website‘s name
    - capitalise the words in your name
    So, you wouldn‘t use www.mydomainname.com.au, you‘d use MyDomainName.com.au it‘s easier to read & therefore gets more clicks!
11. Destination URL  this is the URL (the name) of the page that you‘re going to send the searcher to when she clicks on your Ad.
    Earlier we talked about choosing a narrow part of your business to promote in this Ad. Hopefully you‘ve already got a part of your website that describes this – maybe a page that talks all about this service.
    If not, don‘t worry, just use your main URL. But if you do, this is the place to tell Google about it.
    The benefit to the searcher is that she goes straight to the part of your site that talks about what she‘s after & doesn‘t get ‘dropped off‘ at your front door (your home page) & have to figure out on her own where the information she needs actually is!
    So go to that page on your site and copy the URL from the address page into this box. It should look something like: mydomainname.com.au/thisbit
12. Click Continue. Google will now check your Ad to make sure words are spelt correctly & to see that you haven‘t written anything it doesn‘t like
    For more info on these guidelines, go here: https://adwords.google.com.au/select/guidelines.html
13. Once you‘ve fixed any problems with the Ad, you‘ll get to the ‘Choose keywords‘ screen.
    Enter a few keywords (or phrases) that someone might use to find your product or service.
    You can enter just one, but if you can think of a dozen different phrases, that‘s great.
14. If you‘re really stuck, type your main word into the ‘Want more?‘ box and click search this will suggest more keywords for you to use. If any of these words are useful, click the ‘Add‘ link to the left of each word
15. When you‘re done, click continue
16. Welcome to the notoriously incorrect Google Price Estimator! It truly is very bad at making guesses about how much you need to spend, so use your gut & decide for yourself you‘ll change your bids within a few days anyway more on this later
17. For now, choose a daily budget. How much can you afford to spend attracting these additional visitors to your site?
    You may want to keep this fairly low for now especially while you test different Ads (more on this later too!)
    So pick a number you‘re comfortable with & one that won‘t melt your credit card! Maybe $25 a day? Up to you.
18. Now enter how much you want to spend to get each click, each visitor.
    This is very hard to know at this stage, so pick a price (say $0.20). Again, we‘ll come back & change this later
19. Now review your selections. If you don‘t want to get mail from Google, remove the ticks from the extra help area at the bottom of the screen & click Continue
20. Finally the ‘Set Up Account‘ screen!
    Do you use Gmail or another Google service? If you do, tick the top box & continue.
    If not, click the second box you‘ll see a new area open up just below.
    Follow the instructions & create your new Google account
21. Google will now send you an email to verify your account. Follow the instructions in that email & continue to log into your new Google account.
22. Before you do ANYTHING else. We need to change a setting on your new account that will make a big difference to the quality of the visitors you get. Tick the box next to ‘Campaign #1‘ & click Edit Settings
23. Change the ticks in the ‘Networks‘ so that just the ‘Google Search’ is ticked. Why? You don‘t want your Ad showing up on these search & content partner sites… at least not yet.
    We want to test a few Ads first & make sure we get the best possible keywords at the right prices, then we‘ll extend your advertising on these other networks.
    For now, they‘ll cost you money & reduce the effectiveness of your new campaign.
24. Click save changes to get back to your campaign screen
25. Now you can enter your credit card information, once this is entered, your Ads will start to show on Google
26. That‘s it you’re done. Celebrate. You‘ve just setup a new Google Adwords campaign!! And you‘re ready to start getting more visitors & making more sales
27. Now contact WebSavvy & we‘ll show you some tricks & tips to get even more customers without spending any extra money