Advertising With AdWords – Choosing the Right Keywords

Google’s AdWords and AdSense programmes are today being considered revolutionary in terms of being marketing mechanisms. Before, advertising people considered 50% of their efforts and money to be wasted on mis-targeted advertising. They liken it to dropping an atomic bomb onto an entire city, even if their “enemy” were only a small percentage of the population. This means buying airtime on television or radio, or buying ad space on newspapers or magazines are not only expensive–they are also inefficient. You get to reach everyone, including those who are not likely to be interested in buying your product at all. Imagine a pre-teen girl watching an advertisement for beer. That’s totally a waste of television airtime, indeed.

AdWords and AdSense are revolutionary because they know just what a person is interested in in relation to the context of the website being viewed or search being done. You would think Google’s some sort of wizard that can read minds, but it’s simple, really. Google looks our for keywords and key phrases and generates the text or image ads based on the keywords that advertisers are advertising for.

Choosing the Right Keywords

Successful advertising with AdWords entails choosing the right keywords. This is the most basic concept in contextual advertising, in that it’s the keywords that define the niche or topic you are aiming for, and ultimately the audience that you are able to reach out to.

You want to select keywords that are specific and correctly targeted at your intended audience. Here are some tips.

1. Use keywords that are specific. The Web has millions of users and they come from thousands of places around the world. Be sure to be specific in the keywords you are using, especially if you are servicing a geographic-bound market. If you are offering a specialized service, you should also choose keywords that reflect this. For instance, if you have a restaurant delivering pizzas in New York City, then instead of using “pizza delivery,” you can use “pizza delivery New York City.” If you offer a web design service for blogs, then instead of “web design,” you can say “blog web design.”
2. Use profitable keywords. Use key words and phrases that people actually search for. Otherwise, your ads will not appear at all. You can try using keyword search and comparison tools like the AdWords keyword tool or even Google Trends to see which words or phrases are more popular among Google users.
3. A rule of thumb. The keywords you use should be specific enough to make your ad read by quality and relevant visitors, but popular enough to get you good traffic volume.

Next: Writing interesting ad text.