Advertising with Google AdWords

In the world of search engine optimization, there are two methods for promoting websites and getting ranked in the search engines for keyword terms and phrases. The first is natural, or organic, search engine optimization. Natural search engine optimization is a process that involves both on-page and off-page techniques in order to have your website ranked for certain keywords in the main list of results, as shown below.

Some of the on-page factors of natrual search engine optimization include meta tag formating, header tag formating, keyword selection and density, inter-site linking, and content creation. The off-page factors of natural search engine optimization include things like link building, directory submissions and press releases.

It can be argued that natural search results are initially more time consuming and potentially costly to acheive, however once a site is ranked for a certain keyword the results are longer laster and far less expensive to maintain.

Paid Positioning

The second approach to search engine optimization and online marketing is known as paid positioning. With programs such as Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, it's possible to acheive almost instantaneous results for any website. With paid positioning, a website will be listed in the sponsored results area of a search results page, as shown below.

There is a long list of benefits for a Google AdWords campaign.

Instant Traffic
When you create a Google AdWords campaign and activate it, your ads appear immediately, and can generate traffic to your site right away. No waiting for months to be ranked in the natural results.

Targeted Traffic
The people who click on your ad are already in the market for your products or services, so the traffic you get from your Google AdWords account is targeted traffic with a higher return on investment.

Cost and Traffic Estimators
Google AdWords provides tools that accurately estimate the amount of traffic you will receive at whatever level you choose to bid for a keyword. These tools eliminate guesswork and make your campaign more effective.

Controlled Budget
Google AdWords allows you to choose your own daily budget. So whatever level of marketing budget you have, you can still produce instant results with Google AdWords.

Pay Only for Results
With a Google AdWords campaign, you only pay for actual clicks to your website. Your ad can be displayed dozens or hundreds of times, but you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Total Keyword Control
Google AdWords has an extensive variety of tools and analytics to help fine tune your ad campaign to produce the most effective results.

Multi-media Ads
A recent addition to Google AdWords, advertisers can now display audio and video clips with their ads.

Conversion Tracking
It's easy to find out what keywords are producing results so you can focus your efforts on the most effective keywords and discard the ones that do not produce as well.

At Second Platform, we recommend considering a Google AdWords campaign to start your search engine optimization efforts, since such a campaign can produce instant results during the time it takes for natural search results to be acheived. Knowing the tricks of the trade for a Google AdWords account can be a daunting task, which is why we now offer a complete service for creating and monitoring a Google AdWords account. Find out more about our Google AdWords services.