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Calling Out All AdWords Newbies---Read AdWords Step by Step: A Guide to Building Successful AdWords Campaigns.

June 24, 2009

If you are new to advertising with Google AdWords and want some additional help setting up your campaigns, but cannot yet afford agency services, read Step by Step---a help guide to getting started with AdWords .

This workbook is a simple, easy-to-understand, 35-page guide that maps out the process of setting up your very own AdWords campaign from start to finish.

The book lays out in 3 fast chapters the processes of organizing your account, picking the right keywords, and writing targeted ads---all essential components to a successful AdWords campaign.

Each chapter is then broken down into simple steps that any beginner would be able to understand, along with a section of key terms and a helpful worksheet at the end to guide you through the setup process of your account.

First, let's start with the section on Organizing Your Account. This section really focuses on helping you, the advertiser, organize your campaign around your personal business goals, concentrating on one goal per campaign. After all, how could you hone in on a specific cost per conversion or certain ROI level for a campaign, if it had more than one goal?

That brings me to another aspect of this handy guide that I liked. Not only does it describe how to go about setting up your campaign, but it also lays out a sample campaign with various goals and how you would break these down into logical ad groups. This process is not so clear in the beginning stages of learning Adwords, so I think advertisers would find this particularly helpful.

I also found the second chapter on Picking the Right Keywords beneficial. If you have the wrong keywords or if your keywords are too general, you will never get your conversions at the right price (or you may not get any at all, for that matter!), so readers, this chapter is essential. It walks you through the steps from start to finish of developing and refining a keyword list and even provides you with links to the tools you will need for this research.

Chapter 2 has a helpful example showing you how to group your keywords, once you have created your keyword list. Many advertisers make the mistake of improperly grouping their keywords or making ad groups with too large of a keyword list, and this guide teaches you how to avoid these common mistakes. It even covers the importance of negative keywords and gives examples of some essential negatives such as "free" and "cheap" that many advertisers commonly make the mistake of not adding.

The final chapter, Writing Targeted Ads, walks you through a 3-step process of ad writing, giving you samples of poorly written ads in comparison with great ads, pointing out in each which parts of the ad are right, and which parts are wrong.

In essence, this short quick, how-to guide would be helpful to any AdWords beginner setting up their first campaign. I would not recommend it to advertisers who immediately want to spend tons of money advertising online, but if you want to get started with some basic campaigns on your own, this guide will give you knowledge you need to get started.

We've recorded a few more AdWords strategies and posted a six-minute video to help you get better results with your online advertising.

Posted by Katherine Anderson, PPC Specialist at 5:22 PM

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Filed under: Online Advertising
Tagged as: Pay Per Click

Comments

Leiderschap said:

Very nice, but to be honest I would much rather read your step-by-step guide than Google's.
As a newcomer who has read a substantial amount on adwords I am still fearful of being misled by Google into handing over the majority of my cash to Google that doesn't get a return for my business.

June 26, 2009 11:18 AM

Katherine Anderson, PPC Specialist said:

Thank you for your comment, we appreciate your trust!

I don't think Google's guide will be misleading for you, however, we do offer PPC Advertising Beginner Online Training to help new users get their account set up right from the start. It's not free like the guide, but you're welcome to read more about the topics covered at:

http://www.roirevolution.com/google-adwords/adwords-training-page.htm

I hope this is useful as you start your journey with AdWords.