[dragonfly]

Right I'm seriously considering starting a Google Adwords Campaign. Can anybody give me some idiot proof step by step does and don'ts??

Our web site is listed below and we will shortly be adding cc payment as an option, obviously this all part of the same campaign, and the Adword stuff won't be live until the credit card orders are placed etc.

I've seen a recent thread mention privacy policy we don't have one, but we don't have mailing lists either. Should I add one. Similarly we don't have our T&C on the web page, should I add those? Both on one page okay?

[dragonfly]

Oh and I forgot to ask how do I get the sponsored links that are above the searches. (Usually just 2 or 3)

[Indizine]

You should read up on Admagic and Mike Seddon's posts about adwords. Trawl through the relevant forums to find out more.

[Dotwhack]

Rather a large topic area I'm afraid Dragonfly...here's some pointers but I stongly recommend reading up A LOT more before proceding down this route - if it's not done properly, it can be very expensive and achive poor results.

1) Think about the structure of your website and then consider the structure of your Adwords campaigns - basically Adwords has a top level campaign and then adgroups within that, keywords and adverts within each adgroup as an example a geographical area might be a campaign i.e Cornwall. Your adgroups might be products i.e. within Cornwall you might sell Pet food and Pet accessories (two sperate adgroups). Keywords within 'pet food' will relate just to pet food and your advert will be tailored to both Cornwlal and pet food offering. Sturcture is very important as it makes pay per click traffic very targetted and more likely to convert
2) When selecting keywords, remember to include negative keywords and consider whether you want broad match, phrase match or exact match keywords (further reading will be required on this)
3) Budgets -Google obviously likes you to spend loads regardless of results. Keep an eye on your budgets and don't always aim for position 1 on search results - position 3 can be just (or more) effective

Thats just some pointers, but there are lots more. If you have the budget for it, I'd consider getting a professional to at least set up your adwords campaigns for you - you can then either outsource management or do it yourself.

There are a few of us on here who offer this service - if you want more info just PM me.

Alternatively, I'm happy to answer any specific question you have as you do your research or set up your campaigns...

[dragonfly]

Okay some specific questions.

1) Is it worth putting T&C and Privacy Policy documents online?

2) How do you get in the top section, I can't find any reference to it in the docs I've been reading?

3) Most external links go to our front page, however one of our main selling points is online ordering. Which is on a page by itself. Is it worth creating a special adwords front page, that basically has briefer details than our main page but also has the online ordering on?

[Indizine]

If you sell online, the distance sellng regs dictate you should be showing your terms and conditions and a privacy policy.

[Dotwhack]

1) Yes you need to have both on your site as per Indizine's response
2) on some searchs Google displays sponsored links on left above natural search results. There is no way of knowing whether you're going to appear in these positions on down right hand side. Generally google's sponsored ranking process is based predominantly on the highest bidder being top although it is also supposed to base positions on relevance of advert and landing page.
3) The main aim of adwords is to take visitors directly to the page that is of interest to them (known as deep linking). You don't want to land visitors on pages where they then have to search around the site to find what they're looking for. Take them straight there. If possible land them on individual product pages. Some people create specific landing pages for adwords traffic - it's a way of tailoring the landing page to match the searched term and advert exactly.

[dragonfly]

Okay thanks guys, already got some work to do from that lot.

4) From what I gather the more specific my key phrase is the more relevant the advert is going to be, but also because there will be less generic demand it should be in theory cheaper. Think I got that right.

So if I had the following list

Same Day Courier York
Same Day Courier Leeds
Same Day Courier Harrogate
Same Day Courier

If somebody searched for a phrase like

Same Day Courier York Leeds

a ) would it get picked up, and b) would google sell you the cheapest option, or the most expensive?

would "York Same Day Courier" Get Picked Up?

[Generate UK]

Hello Dragonfly, there's some good advice on this page and there's plenty more available on the web. I have not got much to add apart from some key learns based on our experience with customers -

1. Keyword research is vital, perhaps the most important part of this process. Make sure the words are the ones your prospects might be using to search you.

2. Really think about what your objective is for PPC. Is it to capture prospect data, is it to sell, is it to get them to download a whitepaper? Once you're clear on your objective, make sure your landing page helps to achieve this.

3. Set a budget, decide how much you're prepared to pay for each click.

4. It is vital to keep an eye on your campaign and track it to ensure you can make changes where necessary.

5. We encourage our clients to have their ads shown in the search results only and not content pages.

Hope that helps a little bit.

Mike

[Dotwhack]

Originally Posted by dragonfly

Okay thanks guys, already got some work to do from that lot.

4) From what I gather the more specific my key phrase is the more relevant the advert is going to be, but also because there will be less generic demand it should be in theory cheaper. Think I got that right.

So if I had the following list

Same Day Courier York
Same Day Courier Leeds
Same Day Courier Harrogate
Same Day Courier

If somebody searched for a phrase like

Same Day Courier York Leeds

a ) would it get picked up, and b) would google sell you the cheapest option, or the most expensive?

would "York Same Day Courier" Get Picked Up?

And this is where you need to research broad match, phrase match and exact match keywords...