Yesterday we went through getting started with adwords part 1, so if you read that and it all made sense. Good stuff, if not, there may be a thing or two in here for you anyway, i do recommend going back to part one however if you haven’t read it yet.

We have chosen our language, written a simple text ad and explained a few little reasons why we do what we do. Now it’s time to develop some keywords and finish off the account setup process.

Step 6) As you can see in the screencap below, Google gives a very simplified version of its keyword tool when you are going through your first campaign setup.

Any keywords you do get from this particular tool, aren’t really going to give you any insight into why you should be using them, other than a quick relevance check when you browse over them. So, instead of using this tool i’m going to ask you to load up the Google Keyword Tool Basically, this is using the same back end technology as the above tool, however its giving far more meaning to any keywords that you do choose.

The first thing you should do when you come to the keyword tool page is choose the specific country you want data for. If you are reading this guide, i will assume its campaign number one so stick to just one country for the time being. Select that country and then enter some descriptive terms about your website and business. For the sake of this example, lets keep going with the boston doctor theme.

Once you have entered the CAPTCHA code, you are going to be presented with a window which looks like this:

You may look at this and go “so what does this do for me?” but to understand the importance of this you need to understand the way it used to be. Basically, until a few months ago, you had to go and buy third party software which would quite often cost many hundreds or thousands of dollars, just to try and attach any meaningful figures onto your keyword research. Then Google released the current incarnation of this tool with accurate, country level keyword volumes and keyword research completely changed overnight.

Ok, enough of a rant there. Basically, what this is telling us is that as expected, the keyword Boston Doctors gets a good volume of searches and actually has relatively low competition. Which is fantastic as it means you are competing against fewer competitors and will ultimately pay less for clicks!

Next, i recommend scrolling down the list and picking out keywords which the tool is suggesting that are highly relevant to the specific business you are trying to advertise and you can do this one of two ways. Go through them one by one and click add on the right hand column, then download the list when you finish. Or you can go right ahead and download the entire list, then sort through the keywords in excel (I would recommend the second option)

One last thing i will point out with this tool, is to make sure that you scroll down the list a fair way and then go to the section that says “additional keywords to consider” this section is going to be filled with keywords that Google things are logically related to the terms you entered in the previous step.

The last thing you then need to do is take all of the keywords you chose and enter them into the text box on the Adwords page (Step 3 of 7)

Only select keywords which are highly relevant to the ad which you wrote earlier, remember that the ad must match the keywords you use to trigger it and also match the page you are delivering users to. So stay away from adding in keywords like doctors for the moment as they will eat up your budget.

Step 7) – The final few choices i will roll into one step as they are pretty self explanatory. You need to choose your currency, so for this example USD will do fine. Next Adwords is asking you to set a monthly budget, so go and calculate what you are willing to spend on search marketing and then enter about HALF of that figure into this field. The reason i say this is because you are still learning, no optimisation has been done and for all intensive purposes you may waste that whole amount with very few results. I also recommend that once you have setup your campaign you go in and set a daily budget which further restricts your spending (We will show that in another post)

Leave the last two check boxed ticked and then press continue.

Ok, you will finally come to a screen which is going to ask whether you already have a Google account. I will assume that you don’t, so click the button which says “I do not use these other services” and you will then have the chance, to enter your email address and choose a password.

Click on “create account” and viola, you are done. You now have an adwords account, have written an ad and have chosen relevant keywords based on volumes and relevance.

Our next educational step by step guide will focus on what to do after you have created your account and how to understand whether or not you are getting any real value out of your campaign. So stay tuned early next week for that one.

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Todays post is the first in a new series of educational, step by step guides which will help those just starting off with search marketing on Google to hit the ground running. I will throw a few extra steps into the process and give advice based on what you should be doing to start with a more optimised campaign, instead of a campaign which will get you a lot of irrelevant clicks and blow your budget like most adwords starter campaigns!

This guide is obviously aimed at those who are just getting search marketing running on their website. More advanced optimisation and development articles will follow.

Step 1) You need to load up http://adwords.google.com this is the homepage of the worlds biggest and most talked about online advertising program Google Adwords. You will see up the very top of the screen a link which says “Click to begin”, go ahead and click on that which will take you to step 2.

Step 2) Once you have decided to start the signup process, Google is going to ask you to choose Starter Edition or Standard Edition. Now, if i were starting a new campaign i would choose the Standard Edition however, lets go through the process of using the starter edition as there are a few different steps involved.

Click on the starter edition radio box and also on “i have a webpage” then click continue. (If you don’t have a webpage, we will be developing a simple how to guide shortly to suit your needs)

Step 3) The next thing Google is going to do is pop-up a little sub window which will ask for additional details. Let’s ignore that and get on with the signup process, so click continue without entering the additional information.

This next page is where you enter all of your target information such as location, language, keywords and other factors which will help to refine your advertising and ensure that you aren’t just throwing money away.

Step 4) So let’s choose our location and language, if your business is a local and geographically specific business such as a bakery or a doctor, this is probably the most important step. Make sure that you choose a specific region or at the very least your state. If your business is a countrywide or global, online business, then i would suggest choosing some of the major countries such as the USA, Canada, UK.

To start off with, lets simply choose the USA.

Step 5)Next, Google is going to ask us to write your very first ad! First, let’s enter your URL. The important thing to remember here is that this won’t always be your homepage. You should be delivering users directly to the most information rich, sales driven page on your website. So think to yourself “What is the page which would best sell and explain my product or service?” then enter that page in.

Next, we need to write your ad. The most important thing is to remember that there is very limited space with only 35 characters in the headline and 70 characters worth of description text. So each ad has to be to the point and if possible, feature part or all of the keyword you are targeting. There is no one, trusted way to write a text ad but i will give a few quick tips.

Step 5A) – Headline The headline is the most important part of your ad, this is the part of your ad that gets noticed more than anything else. Your headline should be to the point and feature at least one of your major keywords. Ideally you would write a variation of your ad for each major group of keywords so that they are all closely matched. To begin with, we are only writing one ad so lets create an example.

Let’s say you are a doctor in Boston and you offer services only within the Boston region. For this kind of account i would write a headline like: Experienced Boston Doctor or Local Boston Doctor You basically want to try and sum up the service you are offering within that small 35 character space.

Step 5B) Ok, now for the description this is where you can start to be more creative and try to differentiate yourself from other competing advertisers. I recommend going to Google and searching for a keyword like Boston Doctors for the sake of this example, look at what your competitors are using and then try to improve on it!

Try your best to include any points of difference between yourself and your competitors. An example descriptions for this kind of ad are: “Serving the Boston Community for 15 Years. Trusted and Professional”, Basically i think since its a medical industry ad, trusted, safe, reliable are all words which should be focused on.

Step 5C) Display URL, this is the domain name of your site which if you are lucky, will be highly relevant to your market. However one important thing to remember is that you can add a folder name onto the end of your display URL without it existing on your website. This extra bit of advertising space can be a great way of fitting in an extra keyword and making your ad more relevant.

For the example of a Boston doctor, your display URL might look something like this BostonDoctors.com/Advice or BostonDoctors.com/HouseCall – Take advantage of this as your competitors will most likely be. Anytime a user searches for a keyword, if that keyword is within your ad it will highlight in bold!

So that i don’t overload you with all of these things, i am going to leave part one of getting started with Adwords for today and continue on tomorrow. We will get more in depth into keyword research both using the Google tool and other resources.

Come back tomorrow for part 2 in this new series.

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