How 2 Use Google AdWords
How 2 Use Google AdWords
Do you have a website? Have you wondered how to use Google AdWords to increase traffic to your site? At a recent How 2 Tuesday event, Nicholas Bourdon taught us how. Nicholas is a sophomore at Babson and serves as the Vice President of the newly-established undergraduate organization Babson CODE. He took an “Ultimate Google AdWords Course” in December last year and presented his main takeaways at How 2 Tuesday.
As Nicholas explained, Google does not prioritize companies that will pay the most money to be a top “organic” search result. Instead, it now enhances customer experience by minimizing distractions and showing only the most relevant results to searches. In order for Google to determine that your website is an accurate search result, you must understand the basics of AdWords and how to strategically use keywords.
Nicholas shared some key definitions, beginning with the difference between a keyword and a query. A query is what a user on Google types in and searches, and differs greatly from person to person. Although two individuals could be searching for identical information, they likely use very different words and phrasing. On the other hand, a keyword is what you, the AdWords user, places on your website to grab the query that someone searches. Using keywords relevant to a person’s query encourages Google to direct them to your site.
An important metric within Google AdWords is the Quality Score. This is a rating that Google assigns based on each of your ads and keywords. The score is out of ten, and Nicholas emphasized the importance of receiving a score of six or above. If you receive too many scores between one and five, Google will limit where and how often your ads appear. Each keyword has its own score, making it easy to determine which drives the most traffic to your site.
He continued with more definitions. A common acronym is “SERP,” which stands for “search engine results page.” This is the page that appears when you search anything on Google. This page includes three ads on the top and organic results underneath. If you use keywords with good Quality Scores, your website will appear closer to the top. A site link is an internal link to a page within your website, such as to an “About Us” or “Contact Us” page. A site extension interacts more directly with the customer. Examples of extensions include a phone number or address they can reach you by. Utilizing both site links and extensions increase your website’s Quality Score because Google rewards you for maintaining a good site structure. CPC, another acronym, stands for “cost per click” and allows you to complete a cost analysis for each AdWord.
The presentation then moved on to describe keyword research, planning, and organization.
Keyword Research
- What is it?
- Understand your industry and common keywords used
- Approach to planning advertisement groups & campaigns
- Goals from it
- Volume estimates for industry specific keywords
- Estimated CPC cost analysis
- Understand how potential customers search for product/service
- Tools to use
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google suggestions
- Google related searches
- SEMRush.com (Gives you free metrics on organic search, paid search, backlinks, organic keywords, main organic competitors, and competitor positioning map)
- Ask people how they search for your product/service
Keyword Planning
- What is it?
- Mapping keyword bidding strategy
- Pay more for target keywords (such as “buy ___ now”), less for peripheral keywords which are somewhat relevant but not quite in your “bullseye”
- How to start: Make a budget, marketing plan, and timeline
- Goals from it
- Understand competitors
- Determine keywords with high/low buyer intent
- Content & keyword planning
- Tools to use
- Google Keyword Planner
- org
- Excel
- Google Docs
- Target keywords lead to your sales page; peripheral keywords lead to an educational page about your company
Keyword Organization
- What is it?
- Grab all keywords you want to bid on & sort into very tightly themed groups with 10 -25 keywords each
- Helps you streamline advertising process and campaign
- Can see which keywords are lowest and highest-performing
- Goals from it
- Theme can be in many forms:
- Funnel Level
- Relevance
- Buyer Intent
- Needs Based
- Action keywords, such as “how do I”
- Tools to use
- Excel or Google Sheets
- Organize the workbook with information including the advertisement group, keyword, keyword type (broad, phrase, exact), and the keyword’s Quality Score.
- Match types and negative keywords
- A negative keyword indicates to Google that you do not want your page to show in response to a particular query. If you sell a product, your negative keywords may include “do it yourself” or “how to build” the product you sell.
- Match types can be broad, a phrase, or exact wording that you want your page to appear in response to a query for. You can remove negative keywords from these match types.
- Excel or Google Sheets
- Theme can be in many forms:
- Grab all keywords you want to bid on & sort into very tightly themed groups with 10 -25 keywords each
Knowing how to select and use the best keywords will drive more traffic to your website than ever before. At the end of the presentation, Nicholas encouraged questions from the audience. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Babson Code, visit its website at http://babsoncode.com/ or Nicholas’ LinkedIn page, https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasbourdon/.