When you talk about online advertising, Google Adwords is is certainly one of the biggest and most popular platforms. Google Adwords is a platform where people pay to display their ad anywhere within the Google Network. Adwords has become its main source of revenue, evidence of its effectiveness when trying to promote your product or service.
How Does Google Adwords Work Exactly
In a nutshell, Adwords works using keywords. As the customer, you pick the keywords that a person will use to search on Google and then make an ad that will appear for that keyword and similar terms when used in a Google search among other locations such as Youtube and partner websites.
Keep in mind that you are not the only one using that keyword for their Adwords campaign. More than likely, your competitors are also running their own campaign. When this occurs, you will have to bid against your competitor in order for your ad to be displayed. Here’s the kicker, your bid is not the only condition that needs to be met. Google also takes into account something they call Quality Score. To put it simply, Google evaluates how useful your ad is and how relevant is it to the keyword you’ve chosen and to the searcher.
Factors for Quality Score
This is basically the key to how Adwords works. Quality score has a huge influence on the cost and effectiveness of your PPC/Adwords campaign. Here are its factors:
- Keyword relevance to ad group
- Quality of landing page
- Click-through rate
- Ad text relevance
- Performance of your Adwords account (for users that have already run campaigns before)
Among these factors, CTR or click-through rate is the most important. When more people click your ads, Google will see that your ad is more relevant and useful to the searcher. Google will then reward you with a higher ranking in ads and will reduce the cost of your ads too. This is why it is important to make sure that you have the highest Quality Score possible in order to increase your chances of a higher return on investment.
SEO and AdWords Campaign
Because SEO is about getting your website listed in the top of the organic results for a keyword, it is naturally relevant to your Adwords campaign. When your PPC and SEO efforts overlap, you will know that you are doing the right thing. Your Adwords campaign will become more efficient when your website is optimized for your targeted keywords.
When you do on-site optimization, not only will it improve your organic search engine ranking, but it will also decrease the cost of your PPC ads. Think of SEO as your foundation for doing PPC/Adwords campaign.
On the other hand, Adwords campaigns, when done correctly, can also help with your SEO results because it boosts your website’s traffic. So, there’s a clear correlation between the two search marketing strategies. You have to keep in mind though that PPC/Adwords campaigns in no way replace SEO.
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