Getting the Most out of Pay-Per-Click Google Style

The success of any pay-per-click advertising campaign depends on how targeted the traffic to your website is.  Getting interested visitors to your site requires that you have a presence with your target market and that your website is there when they come looking.  Both of these opportunities are achievable through using pay-per-click Google AdWords campaigns.

As with most search engines offering pay-per-click, Google advertising is based on keywords.  You set up an ad and choose keywords and keyword phrases related to what people would search on to find your website.  AdWords even offers a keyword suggestion tool to get help with generating or growing your keyword list. 

You can control the specialization of your keywords from general, to phrase, or to exact matching.  Referred to as negative search, you are also able to exclude keywords popular but unrelated to your website.

Somewhat different from keyword search marketing, pay-per-click Google campaigns also offer content matching.  This is how you get your ad to run on a website using Google AdSense.  At the most general setting, content match applies a contextual targeting process to showing your ad, meaning your ad will run on sites in Google’s network that seem to correspond with your ad copy and keywords.  This setting, however, is quite broad. 

For more targeted options, AdWords now offers you the choice of picking your placement within their network, from category all the way down to specific pages within a website.  Similar to the keyword search, there are different levels of specificity you can achieve with content match to reach your target audience.
The final factor to consider when running targeted pay-per-click Google advertising campaigns is relevant ad copy.  Your ad copy is what compels people to click on your ad in the first place, so it needs to be geared toward your market.  Although Google will not automatically take care of this for you, they do offer a service to connect you with people who can.

How well your website converts visitors into customers is out of the Google AdWords realm (although they are willing to give you suggestions on this).  But, pay-per-click Google advertising can help you can reach the online audience you want, either directly, through keyword search marketing, or by interest, with content match.