Let’s say you offer a service, such as criminal defense legal representation and your rate per hour is $300. Do you want prospects clicking on your ads and landing on your website who were actually looking for FREE representation? I doubt it.

Then how do you write your ads so that you get the most targeted clicks, without wasting money on those who either do not need your services or cannot afford your price? Hold on just a sec, here, because many times you can solve over 50% of your problems by bidding on the right keywords to start off with BEFORE you write your ad. That way, you ad does not show in instances where you are not clearly the solution that the prospect is looking for.

Let’s use another example to explain: Say you sell a book that has recipes for making apple pie. When doing your keyword research, you type in “apple pie recipes” in the keyword research tool of your choice and it “spits back” about 300 keywords related to apple pie. You blindly cut and paste those keywords into your Google Adwords campaign and you’re off to the races. But wait a minute…you didn’t really study those keywords, now did you?

If you had looked more closely at your keywords you may have noticed that the keyword “free apple pie recipies” was buried somewhere in that list. Upon closer inspection there were a few more undesirable keywords, such as “cheap apple pie recipes” and “downloadable apple pie recipies”. If your book is not free, downloadable, or cheap, then you definitely have problems. You have no idea how many times in real life that newbies and seasoned pros do exactly that – they get in a hurry and just cut and paste an entire list of keywords into their Google Adwords or other search marketing campaign and then wonder why they are doing so poorly!

Again, bidding on the RIGHT keywords may solve half of your problems – but what about the other half. Remember, you want as many clicks as possible, but only clicks from those who really want and can afford your product. So now let’s look at writing your ads.

In the apple pie recipe example, if your recipe book is $17, why not just say the price in the ad copy? Write a great ad, something like: “Need Apple Pie Recipes? Tasty, Homemade Apple Pie Recipes Only $17 Today” Maybe that’s not the best ad in the world, but it IS relevant and gets the point across. If the user was looking for something cheaper than $17, you’ve saved yourself a click and the cost associated with that click.

Yes, there are definitely times when you don’t want to put your price in an ad – especially if you have a great offer that seems expensive at first glance, but literally sells itself when your prospect reads your web page copy. That’s why it sometimes takes an Adwords professional to help you properly manage your Google Adwords campaign, helping you make the right decision and keeping you and your Adwords campaign balanced AND profitable.

Sometimes that punishment results in your website being removed from its index and search results. Other times, it may be an “adjustment” downward for your page ranking. Here is how Google puts it in their own words:

“Google may temporarily or permanently remove sites from its index and search results if it believes it is obligated to do so by law, if the sites do not meet Google’s quality guidelines, or for other reasons, such as if the sites detract from users’ ability to locate relevant information. We cannot comment on the individual reasons a page may be removed…”
(Google Webmasters/Site Owners Help Manual)

The “Google Slap” is mostly used when referring to cases where organic listings are penalized. Organic listings are free search results that appear below and to the left of paid ads; however, make no mistake about it; you can get “slapped” for running bad Adword campaigns as well. An example of having one’s Adword campaign being slapped would be where perhaps your ads were costing $3 a click and suddenly Google raised your minimum bid to $10.

Here are some of the common mistakes people make in their Adword campaigns that result in Google slaps:
-Poorly written ads with extremely low click-through rates
-Using too many broad-matching keywords, which really have no relevancy to the terms searched on; this will also result in low click-through rates, which will get you “slapped” with higher ad prices.
-Low quality scores, where there is no relevancy between the keywords searched on, the Adword copy, and the landing page.
-Using a destination URL that is not congruent with the display URL in your ad
-Deceptive advertising; DON’T do this.

There are many other ways to get yourself slapped, but I think you may be getting the picture. Now, what you REALLY want to get from Google is what is referred to as “Google Love.”

Google loves for its searchers to find what they want; in fact, if you can figure out a way to make sure that your products or services are exactly what a searcher is looking for, Google will LOVE you. It’s really that simple. Many people try to over-complicate this.

Google loves for its searchers to be happy and they will reward you will lower-priced ads if you can consistently and effectively make this happen. Many advertisers don’t know it, but the ads at the top are not necessarily the ones who are paying the most. The Google bidding process factors in something called a “quality score,” which is the great equalizer. Quality scores assure Google that an advertiser cannot simply “buy” their way to the top position without giving the searchers value in return.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather be loved than slapped – especially when we are talking about my Google Adwords campaign. If you follow Google’s guidelines, do your market and keyword research, and spend some time learning about effective Adword campaign management techniques, I promise that you will feel lots of love…and not only that…you will find yourself with a profitable Adwords campaign.

Organic listings are the results that appear BELOW and to the left of paid ads when you search Google for a keyword term that you want more information about. For example, let’s say that I was in an accident victim and needed to contact an attorney in Georgia. I may go to Google and type in something like “attorneys in Georgia”. If I lived in Nevada and was looking for real estate or if I wanted to move to Nevada, I might type in “homes for sales in Las Vegas”.

In both cases, ads would normally show at the very top of the page and down the right-hand side in Google. Any listing or result that is not an ad is called an “organic” listing. These are the listings that Google “thinks” you may be looking for (based upon the search criteria you entered in the box).

This is actually a very simple concept. Google wants to reward you for using their search service by serving up both relevant ads and also relevant non-ads (organic listings). Google wants to keep you as a customer by making sure they are giving you what you are looking for in your search.

Now why is that important to someone using a paid service like Google Adwords? Well, it is a well-documented, but little-known fact that as many as 70% of those using Google search DON’T click on the paid ads. To put it another way, if 100 people search for a service you provide AND you show up in the paid search results, only 30 of those people will actually click on an ad.

To make matters worse, of the 30 that do click on an ad, only a percentage of those will click on YOUR ad, as you are competing with other advertisers. And even if they DO click on your ad…does that mean you are necessarily going to get a sale or lead out of the click? No!

Wouldn’t it be better if your company were listed in the organic listings as well? If you are, not only are you 2-3 times more likely to get a click, but the click that you end up getting is FREE! Hey, while you’re at it, why not achieve the best of both worlds and be both in the free (organic) and paid (Adword ads on the top and right-hand side) in the Google search results.

So how do you get ranked highly in the organic search results? It is not easy, but it is certainly doable as we have proved over and over again. But what does this have to do with my Adword campaign, though? EVERYTHING.

A good Adword campaign…at least an Adword campaign that is professionally managed includes a strategy for making sure that the “landing” page a customer ends up on (your website) is relevant to what was actually searched on. Google wants to reward the searcher with what they are actually looking for. And the better your website landing page, the better the chances that it appears in the organic listings as well.

To say it another way, Google will reward you, the Google Adwords advertiser with a lower cost per click if your landing page is relevant to what the searching is looking for…and if your website is more relevant, wouldn’t it make sense for Google to present that page in the organic (free) listings as well? The benefit is DOUBLE. Lower costs per click when they click on your ad, and lots of potential free traffic as well!

No, it’s not easy to achieve high Google rankings, but if you haven’t given improving your landing page much thought or if the company managing your pay per click Adwords campaign has not concentrated on this aspect of your business, then I’m afraid your business is suffering…not once, but twice.

Let’s explain what broad match is by explaining ALL the different levels of ad control in the Google Adword program. There are actually three – they are broad match, phrase match, and exact match. When you “buy” a keyword you get to tell Google whether you want your ad to display, based on HOW that keyword is typed in.

If you choose broad word matching, you are saying that you want your ad to appear in ANY search that has that keyword in it – no matter how or where that keyword appears in the search box. For instance, if your keyword is “shoes”. Your ad will display when someone searched on “buy shoes”, “tennis shoes”, or even “horse shoes”. Of course, this is a good example where you would be losing money for broad searches on “horse shoes” if you did not cater to horses.

Phrase matching is where you choose a keyword phrase (more than one word) but tell Google that you want to show your ad only when the user types in that keyword phrase in the SAME ORDER that you listed them. For example, if you chose phrase matching for “tennis shoes” your ad will only show when the user types those two words in the same order. If someone types in “green tennis shoes” your ad will show. But if they type in “shoes for tennis” your ad will NOT show because the order of the words did not match the phrase that you specified.

Exact matching is where you tell Google that you only want your ad to show when the words match (surprise) EXACTLY. If we use the example above, but reserve “tennis shoes” as an exact match, then if a user types in “green tennis shoes” your ad will not show because it did not match exactly. They must type in “tennis shoes” in that order and nothing else for your ad to show. Even if they type in “shoes tennis” your ad will not show because the searcher typed them in the wrong order.

So why would anyone bother to use phrase matching or exact matching if these methods of ad control don’t always show your ads? Very simple. In many cases, testing shows that certain phrase matches and exact matches convert much higher than broad matches using the same keywords.

But why would you use broad matching at all? We use broad matching in certain cases where we are researching a market and trying to find which keywords actually work. Sometimes you have to be willing to spend a little money upfront in order to complete your research. In some cases, broad matching can work well if you know how to use “negative” keywords effectively, which is another subject entirely.

After all, you won’t know which keywords are converting unless you test many forms and variations, right? The problem is that most newbies and many pros start off with broad matching keywords and then they fail to analyze their results and make necessary alterations where low-converting broad keywords are deleted and high-converting keywords are used to find other high-converting broad keywords. Many times the campaigns are so unprofitable that they user is forced out of the Adwords business before they know what happened.

Of course, you can save a lot of money by using the research of your competitors and legally spying on them using stealth software that analyzes the keywords that your competitors used over a period of time. Even so, we don’t always 100% rely on a competitors research as we find 95% of the Google Adwords users are doing it all wrong to start with.

We still spy, but we do our own testing as well…and you should too. The bottom line is that you want to use broad matching, but know what you are doing when you are using this form of ad control, and by all means regularly monitor, test, and analyze your results. If you don’t have time to do this, then hire a professional Adwords management company.

But perhaps the most important metric – at least the one you need to know to absolutely dominate your competition – is the average lifetime value of a customer. Here’s why:

If you know the average lifetime value of a customer, then you can confidently bid higher than your competitors. To understand this concept, let’s use an example:

Let’s say that you are an attorney, and you are bidding on the keywords “divorce attorney”. And for the sake of discussion and for easy math, let’s say that the average cost per click is $25.

In the above scenario, if you get 20 clicks, then the total cost of those clicks is $500. If your sales conversion rate is 5% then you will likely convert 1 of those clicks to a sale. And if your average revenue per sale is $1,000, then for every 20 clicks or $500 spent on Adwords, you make $500 ($1,000 commission – $500 Adwords cost).

Well, given that scenario, your competitors may be willing to spend more than you. Perhaps they are willing to spend $30 or even $40 dollars per click. After all, if they can duplicate your conversion rate and your revenue per sale, then they would still be making a positive cash flow, right?

Here is where you can dominate them. They are only thinking about the next sale, right? Thus, they are looking at how much revenue that customer is worth today? In order to dominate them you need two things:

1. A forward-thinking strategy
2. Cash-flow

Let me explain. If you know your numbers AND you have sufficient cash flow, you can definitely beat your competitors and dominate them when it comes to Google Adwords campaign strategy. But in order to accomplish this feat, you need to know a key metric – that is the lifetime value of a customer.

First, let’s define the word “lifetime”. In this particular case, let’s call “lifetime” 3 years. (Yes, I know lifetime could mean much longer than that, but for many businesses, 3 years is a LONG time.) If you know that the average customer will spend $2,000 with you over a lifetime (in this case, 3 years) AND you have sufficient cash flow to play the “waiting game” then you can absolutely dominate your competitors because now you can afford to bid higher on certain keywords than they can.

For instance, your competitors may determine that the most they can spend per click is $40 because they are only thinking about the revenue from the next sale, but since YOU are thinking about the total value of the customer over a “lifetime” AND because you can afford to wait to earn that money, consequently, you are willing to bid higher than your competitors for certain keywords.

All things being equal, the good news is that because you know your numbers, in the long run your Google Adwords campaign will be much more profitable than your short-sighted competitors even though you are bidding higher than they are.

If this scenario seems complicated, then perhaps its time to hire a professional to manage your campaign for you, or perhaps it is time to invest some money and some time in learning your metrics and a better Adwords management strategy.

So what ARE the metrics that you need to know? For starters, you need to know the value of a click. How much is a click worth to you in Google Adwords or any other search networks? But wait a minute…to determine the value of a click, you ALSO need the conversion rate of your website. Then how do you define a “conversion”?

“Conversion” can mean different things to different people. For instance, let’s say you are selling toothpicks online. Maybe you are selling cinnamon and other flavored toothpicks. (Believe it or not, there are MULTIPLE sites that do exactly that!) For your business, you would most probably define “conversion” as a sale. After all, I doubt you would be trying to collect names and numbers of toothpick prospects for follow-up calls since the total cost of a pack of toothpicks can be less than $1, right?

But if you are selling real estate or expensive professional services, such as accounting work or legal services, a “conversion” for your business would more than likely be the collection of a name and phone number or e-mail address – or perhaps a phone call from the prospect since it is highly unlikely that someone would buy real estate or contract for professional service without a one-on-one consultation either in person or over the phone first.

No matter how you define a conversion, you must know your conversion rate. So after having determined what a conversion is for your business, you need to know what percent of those who land on your site turn into conversions. Let’s say that you have 100 unique visitors to your site and in the process you end up with 9 conversions. Your conversion rate is 9% (9 conversions / 100 visitors X 100).

Now in the case of the tooth pick company, if the average sale is $2, then 9 conversions means $18 in sales. For companies who define conversions as leads, you have to go a step further and determine which percentage of leads turn into sales and the average value of a sale. In the case of say an attorney with an average “sale” of $500, if you can convert 2 of those leads into paying clients, then those 2 conversions (or sales) are worth $1,000.

Armed with that knowledge you can now determine the value of a click. It’s easy. If you are the toothpick seller, each click is worth $2 ($18 in sales / 9 sales). If you are the attorney, then your clicks are worth $111 ($1,000 / 1 sale). NOW you will have a better idea of what you can afford to pay per click.

But those aren’t the only metrics that you need to know. To be truly successful, you need to know more than your cost per click. You need to know the cost-per-click-per-keyword that you are bidding on. You can track this by hand or you can use special software that does it for you, but you must know exactly what you are doing and how to use these tools.

If you feel like you are in over your head, then perhaps it is time to outsource your Adwords campaign management to a professional who can manage it for you. If you have already outsourced your campaign, but your Adwords campaign management company has not worked with you to determine your “numbers” then it may be time to find a new Adwords campaign manager or take back over the Adwords management yourself.

If this sounds like you then know this; You are not alone! 90% of the advertisers using Google Adwords today don’t know the first thing about building “Profitable” adwords campaigns. That’s right, I’d say that the vast majority of adwords advertisers are actually losing more money in adwords than they are making! Only a small percentage of advertisers have the ability to run profitable, money-making campaigns. Why? Is it because they spend more and bid higher for their clicks?

No, The key to running a profitable campaign in Google Adwords is spending LESS and paying LESS per click! You may ask, “Well why does Google keep on charging me more and more for clicks?” If you want to know why, the answer is because you fall into the 90% of advertisers who don’t know the steps to building profitable adwords campaigns. If you’re not applying the following steps to your adwords campaigns then you’re losing money and leaving a lot more money on the table.

Optimizing Your Campaign For Google

Are all of your keywords stuffed into just a couple of ad-groups? If so Google hates it when campaign is like this and determines that your campaign has 0% relevancy! I know, it is days’ worth of work, but you should take each keyword and put it into an adgroup all on its own. It will reduce your click cost by an incredible amount! If you don’t optimize your campaigns for Google you’re going to be “slapped” – meaning that Google will charge you insane amounts of money for your clicks and give your ads horrible placement. This is a crucial part of Google adwords management.

Optimizing your Ads for Google

The structure of your ads plays a major role in determining how much you pay per click. Google’s idea of a perfect ad has the keyword that was searched on showing up twice in the ad; once in the ad title, and once in the ad text. If Google see’s that your ad displaying for the keyword, “accident attorney” actually has the keyword “accident attorney” appearing in your ad title and in your ad text then Google is going to reward your ad for being perfectly “relevant” to the keyword that was searched on. You’ll get a lower click cost and higher ad placement.

Keyword Swiping

This step is very important if you’re serious about being successful in adwords.
Say you do some research and determine two particular advertisers are your top competitors in adwords. They have hundreds or even thousands of keywords that they’re successfully advertising under. This being the case… it more than likely took them many months and lots of money to build a profitable keyword list.

What if I told you that you could legally and ethically steal all of your top competitors’ keywords and advertise under them yourself? Meaning…that your competition spends all of the money trying out and testing which keywords work the best …and then YOU swoop in and LEGALLY steal all of your competitors’ tried and tested keywords? Why should you spend all of the money to build a profitable keyword list?

Split-testing your Ads every day

You know Google rewards good ads? If Google sees you have a great ad with a great click-through-rate, that ad will not only get shown more often, but will also decrease in bid price so that you pay less per click! After testing ads on a consistent basis you end up with super performing ads that not only increase your clicks, but also decrease the amount you have to pay per click!