How to lower Google Adwords costs by 50%

Today I wanted to write something I discovered that is probably very basic to advanced users of Google Adwords, but if you are new like me I believe this will help you lower your Adwords costs up to 50% with minimal effort.

After setting up your website you will want to begin driving traffic to it as soon as possible. I am still learning how to get free traffic by using sound SEO (Search Engine Optimization) principals, but for now, using Adwords and PPC is the quickest way for me to do this.

After creating my Blog I went to Google Adwords to setup my PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign. I created a very general term to describe my campaign and began by entering only a few keywords to describe my Blog.

Almost immediately I noticed traffic began coming to my website from one single keyword and so I decided I would begin adding more advertisements and testing different keywords. Imagine my surprise when I found my most prized keyword had been disabled and the cost to get it back doubled? What went wrong?

I spent the next day trying to figure this out on my own but in the end I finally gave up and did what anyone should do if they want to know how to use Google Adwords effectively -- I actually went to Google Adwords Help page!

You should know something I am beginning to learn when dealing with Google - they are very detailed in their instructions about using Google Adwords and Google Adsense. You will not see long vague writings from employees of Google about their policies, nor will you find answers in the Adwords Help section that are unclear. As a matter of fact, if you call Google you will find that they say exactly what they have written in their own help pages and nothing more. I believe they go through great efforts to insure everyone is on the same page about how to effectively use Google Adwords. If they write it or say it, you should follow it to a "T."

I decided to go back to my campaign and start over. I wanted to follow their directions as stated and do nothing more. The first thing I did was to rename the name of my Adgroup to match the theme of my website and my keywords.

Next I went to my keywords and deleted all but one. I then went to my ads to edit them so they would match my adgroup name and my one keyword. I think this is where you really have to focus -- don't write cute little ads that you think people will respond to as Google will find it irrelevant and penalize you by increasing your minimum bid.

Now, after changing my adgroup name, deleting vague keywords, and rewriting my ads I worked on my Blog Titles. I wanted to make sure that not only the Title of my Blog pages were relevant, but the content of my posts matched as well. I went through each post and began editing and deleting long paragraphs that were not relevant to my Title.

It was only a few minutes and I noticed my Adwords keyword minimum bid had dropped by half and my ads began to run again. I also noticed that I seemed to be rewarded with my Adsense ads as well -- suddenly my Adsense revenue tripled for each click received on my Blog thereby reducing my overall Google Adwords costs! This is like receiving discounted or free traffic to your website just by following directions.

I did a lot of work to lower my Google Adwords costs by 50% but in the end it really came down to focus and attention to detail. By simply following directions it appears that Google has rewarded me with inexpensive traffic and higher Adsense payouts.

I will now begin to look at adding other products and services that are relevant to my Blog content and attempt to take advantage of this increased traffic.

Tools to prevent being banned by Google

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of my biggest fears in trying to be successful with Google Adsense is getting banned. I can't imagine putting month's and month's of work to build good content websites only to be banned for something beyond my control. I have only ever clicked on one of my own ads, and it was only because I was attempting to copy the ad URL and to block it from showing on one of my sites. I remember wondering if just that simple mistake would do me in!

I have been researching how people get banned over at http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=362372 and the consensus seems to be that either you are lying and have truly been cheating Google, or you were the victim of "invalid clicks."

I can't imagine why anyone would receive "invalid clicks" but I don't want to take any chances. Several of the guys at digitalpoint.com recommended a product called Adlogger. This software claims it helps with click tracking and click fraud prevention.

I am going to try out this product and will post my experience in using it. I am thinking that something like this could help in the event I am ever a victim of click fraud - at least I am monitoring my own sites and can notify Google if I ever see something fishy.

Google Analytics

I signed up for Google Analytics tonight and am very excited about this reporting tool. The signup process was pretty easy -- all I had to do was insert some code they provided and insert into the website.

I don't really have a lot to tell you about this topic tonight, but just wanted you to check it out for yourself if you want to see how powerful this is. Check it out at http://www.google.com/analytics/

I will report on my findings over the next couple of weeks.

Google Adsense displaying wrong ads

I have mentioned before that I am a small contractor in Arizona. I have a website for my business and recently decided to display Google Adsense ads to help offset the costs of advertising on Google Adwords.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I decided I would also setup a blog related to my website and figured I would display more Adsense ads there as well. I have been finding that Google has been pretty good at displaying relevant ads on my website and other blogs, but today the weirdest thing happened.

I went to my contracting blog to edit some of my posts and Google Adsense was displaying ads on travel and cooking?

I am not kidding. At the top of my Blog, Google Adsense was displaying ads on how to prepare Turkey, with my banner ads displaying ads for travelling to Turkey?

Well, being the quick study that I am, I quickly determined that Google Adsense was probably displaying the wrong ads because I did not have enough content on my post for it to know which ads to display.

To prove my theory I tested a couple of other posts with only a couple of paragraphs of content and there it was again - I got the same ads.

Now, I have no idea what tripped Adsense to display this content, but I do know that after I went to my posts and added/edited them properly the correct ads began to show. So, I guess the moral of this story once again is to make sure you post not only relevant content, but enough of it.

Whoops! After posting this article the Turkey ads have shown up here! I am absolutely laughing right now. I guess I am not quite as smart as I thought.

I have sent an email to the Adsense team and will let you know how they responded.

Here is the response from Adsense which basically just pointed me back to Adsense Help -

Since the ability for us to serve ads on your site depends on a number of factors, such as our ability to crawl your site, the content of each of your webpages, and the availability of related Google ads, Google does not guarantee that we'll always have relevant ads to display. If we don't have relevant ads for a given page, or if we haven't yet crawled your site, we may display public service ads or your specified Alternate Ads, for which you will not accrue any AdSense earnings.
Similarly, if Google does not have ads for an Adsense for search query, or if the query will return non-family-safe advertisements, we will not show ads.

So, maybe my posts just haven't been crawled, as this seems the most logical explanation -- although in some other posts as soon as I published the content the Adsense ads changed immediately.

Well, the verdict is in -- I just needed to be a bit more patient. I checked back to my post 15 minutes later and all the ads were displaying correctly again! Man, Google has it going on!

Lower minimum bids on Google Adwords

Something strange happened to me yesterday when using Google Adwords. I was going to my Google Adwords account and playing with some of the keyword bids. I wanted to see if I could lower my minimum bids to just below five cents and reduce some of my traffic costs. I had read of another guy who got a considerable amount of traffic at just three cents per click and wanted to give it a try with my account. I figured it couldn't hurt anything to at least try, right? My thinking was...bid a little lower on the keywords and maybe you can catch some people clicking on Google Adsense ads once they come to the Blog. This should result in some free traffic for my site, or possibly get me into profits by earning a bit more from Adsense than I pay for the traffic on Google Adwords.

Anyway....after lowering all of my bids to just a penny I saw that all of my keywords were now "inactive for search." Of course I figured I might see this as it would probably be near impossible to find any keywords going for a penny a click. I decided I would just put my bids back how I had them. What I did not count on was that my minimum bids on my existing keywords had now gone up?? One of my keywords that generated 95% of my traffic had now doubled its minimum bid? Huh?

What could have happened I wondered? Was this Google's way of punishing me for trying to squeeze more profit out of them? ; )

While it was tempting to just increase my minimum bid I decided to wait a day or two and try and optimize my Blog. I have read how Google's focus is to really offer a great user experience and they want websites and Blogs that are RELEVANT. I went through my articles, eliminating some of my writing tangents that led me away from the topic at hand, and trying to stick to the Title --I carefully read each sentence in my Blog and tightened up a few things. This is what I did:

I decided to wait a day or two before making a decision to increase my minimum bid. I thought about how the minimum bid may have increased because my Blog's content was not relevant to my Title, or the competition for my keyword was just a bit more competitive on that particular day during that particular time. I decided I would do what I could do to change the situation and began to detail my articles a bit more. I did little things like replacing incomplete words -- for instance; I changed "adsense" to say "Google Adsense."

While nobody really knows how Google rates a website, I can tell you that making these small changes resulted in my Blog being more relevant to my Title, resulting in the minimum bid for my keywords dropping back to their original values! That's a decrease of 50% in my traffic costs just by tweaking a few words here and there and being patient.

Oh -- I would tell you not to get crazy about this. Don't get cute and start writing ridiculous sentences that use your keyword over and over -- I believe the people at Google are pretty sharp and can see when someone is trying to manipulate the system for their benefit.

All I am saying is - write your content the way you want it to read. Once you are finished consider going back and sprinkling in a few RELEVANT keywords to make sure your content matches your Title.

PS --

Let me just ammend this article to say that I learned a few things tonight based in fact.

1. Google rates your ad against the URL and your set of keywords.
2. Your minimum bid is determined by how relevant your ad is to your website and your set of keywords. It is also determined by the keyword auction -- if there is too much competition for that particular keyword - and your ad is completely optimized it still may not show.
3. Give things a little time. Your CPC (Cost per Click) is determined the next time a user conducts a search for that keyword on Google Search so we have to be a little patient.
4. Don't edit your existing ad and set of keywords if it's working for you. I learned this the hard way today when I began adding non relevant keywords - within minutes my hottest keyword went to "inactive" and I would have to double my minimum bid if I wanted to continue.

Channels

I have been wondering about how I can track which websites are actually producing profits. Since I only have three websites this shouldn't be that difficult and I feel confident that Google has addressed this question somewhere -- it seems that Google has a feature called "Channels." Here's how it works:

1. Logged into my Adsense account here
2. Click on Adsense Setup
3. Click on Channels just below Adsense Setup
4. Click on the URL Channels link
5. Click on Add New URL channels
6. Enter in the websites you want to track that contain your Adsense ads. You don't have to enter in the http:// or www -- just enter in your site like example.com and that's it.

I wasn't sure if Google would automatically activate these links so I checked each box and clicked "Activate Checked" just in case.

I waited about 15 minutes and logged back in to find that it already showed the number of Page Impressions for each individual website, so I guess Channels is the answer.

This is actually pretty exciting stuff as I can see which sites are generating the most interest and work now on trying the various ad formats -- I have read that doing very simple things like adjusting ad color, blending ads, using text links etc all have a huge impact on the results. I will post my findings in another article.

How to get started with Adsense

Getting started with Google Adsense was VERY easy for me. As I have mentioned in my two previous posts I already have a website and own a small business, but I was interested in ways to work at home online. I began reading about Google Adsense and became very curious about how I could create websites or Blogs to make a living online.

I was reading for weeks about people who were making a great living offering valuable content to their online readers and placing small Google ads on their websites. Since I already use Google PPC (Pay Per Click) I wondered if I might not be able to offset some of my own PPC costs by signing up for Adsense and offering related Ads on my own website. I felt that my business offering was good enough and if my customer wanted to check out my competition I had no issues with it. I also felt that this could be the starting point for me to learn how Google Adwords worked.


If you are not familiar with this subject let me just explain briefly -- Let's say you were searching the web for "dog food" -- you clicked on a link anywhere on the page and began reading all about "dog food." Somewhere in your reading you see a Google Ad for Alpo and you click on the link -- the website owner is compensated for that click. Pretty cool huh?


Since I was interested in how to earn a full time income online I decided I would add Google Adwords on my small business website and see if there was anything to this whole Adwords thing -- I was surprised to find that I actually received a few clicks and even made a couple of bucks! This got me thinking and so I decided I would begin researching out some key niches I was interested in, build other websites or Blogs and see if I could do what the big guys are doing.

So, how do you get started? Well, I believe Google has made the process pretty simple. One thing you should be aware of however -- you have to offer something of value to your reader. You can't simply create a bogus website, sign up for Adsense and start clicking your way to big profits. This is obviously not something that offers any value to Google's readers and will get you banned from Adsense in no time!

Now, if you have an interest, hobby or business that offers something of value to Google's audience then simply go to Google Adsense and sign up. You can even check out a Google video tutorial by clicking here.

After clicking the Sign Up page you will be brought to a page that asks you to enter in your website URL. If you don't have a website I would recommend going to http://www.blogger.com/ and signing up for a free Blog. It gives you a little experience in VERY BASIC design and get you to take some action.

So, after you enter in your website URL or Blog address, you will then be prompted to enter in other information such as Language, Personal Contact Information, and how you wish to be paid.

You don't have to worry about incorporating a business -- Google will ask you for your Social Security Number and you can select Sole Proprieter. I even signed up to receive my Google payments to my checking account. If you are worried about giving out your checking account number just sign up for a second checking account with your bank and put in the minimum deposit of $10 or $20 -- this will help you sleep at night knowing if your personal information is ever compromised you will only have $10 or $20 at stake. I am not overly worried about the security issues as I feel confident Google could not have much of a business if they could not offer their clients an incredible amount of security.

Now, once you sign up for Adsense you will have to wait a day or two to get approved -- I have read other forums where some people claim they were approved in a matter of hours, but I think a day or two is the norm.

Once you are approved for Adsense you are now free to login to your account and create your ad format. Simply select from the various options on the screen and Google will display the code needed to display the ad. Once you have found the right look for your site you can cut the code (easy, easy - I promise) and paste it right into your HTML. If you don't know how to do this just cut the code and send it to your website designer. Google will scan your website for content and serve up ads that are relevant to your site! Oh, and if you use http://www.blogger.com/ you don't have to worry about any code at all -- just "Add Page Element" and select "Adsense." Google will take care of the rest.

Hope this helps in some way.

Can you have more than one website with Adsense?

I mentioned in my first post that I already have one website for my current business and recently added Google Adsense to my site pages. I really had no idea if I could derive any income from a website that specializes in Septic Installations and Repairs -- I mean let's face it, there isn't an incredible amount of traffic for this set of keywords -- and especially when I have to use geo targeting.

Anyway, I set up Adsense and monitored my site for the last two weeks. I had my website designer put the ads where they would fit in the best with my current design -she chose the easiest route which was to put the ads at the bottom of the pages! Obviously this is not going to generate much of a response, but I was surprised to see that I actually did get a few clicks and two of those clicks were worth .93 cents each!

Now, I know that this is nothing to get overly excited about, but think of the possibilities if you had a website or Blog with valuable content that could be shown worldwide! By the way, I do plan on reorganizing my website to put some text links at the top of the page.

I wondered if I could add Adsense to this Blog, or if I would have to go through Google's Adsense approval again. I was a little concerned that Google would reject my Blog for some reason but was surprised to find that I only had to sign in at www.blogger.com and add the adsense link -- that was it -- the system was able to read the content of my site and immediately threw up ads related to Blogging and Adsense. Pretty cool stuff and VERY easy to do.

One of the things I wonder about is how to know where my Adsense traffic is coming from? What if I setup 10 websites and place Adsense on each site? How will I know which site is the most popular? I actually found this answer by studying Google's feature called "Channels." You can read this in my next post.