7 Common Adwords Mistakes Newbie Advertisers Make.

When introduced to Adwords for the first time I probably made all the mistakes in the book. Other adwords newbies have also asked me questions about their campaigns too and I've notices that they also make the same mistakes.

Lots of people are throwing away their money and making these common Adwords mistakes.

1. Not using a unique landing page for each adgroup - Most 'new to adwords' advertisers are direct linking. There is a right way and a wrong way to direct link. Direct linking can be ok for testing a campaign but only for that reason. You should always try to get a domain and make a separate landing page for each adgroup that is relevant to the keywords you are using.
2. Keyword dumping - Possibly the most common mistake is getting a large list of keywords that don't have anything in common with each other and dumping them all in one adgroup. If Google cant see any relevance they will give you high bids so if you're wondering why your keywords are all $5 and $10 then this could be the reason. Your Ctr will also suffer.
3. Not using negative keywords - Its possible that you're paying for keywords that you're not advertising under but Google is showing your ads for anyway. This means that you're paying for unwanted traffic and using negative keywords can save you a ton of money on clicks. Negative keywords tell Google not to show your ad if the person types your keywords along with the that negative. eg. your ad wouldn't be shown for "free adwords guide" if you chose to use -free as a negative for the adgroup 'adwords guide'.
4. Not split testing - When you're using your money to generate traffic then you must split test in order to get the best results you can. Split test your ads by making two and replacing the poor performing one. Split test landing page headlines, offers, call to actions, layouts but only changing one variable at at time. You will be able to see what is causing you to lose conversions and split testing can be the difference between a losing campaign and one that makes you $100 a day.
5. Advertising on broad keywords - 'make money' - possible the most common keyword advertisers try to jump on when they now start out. Broad keywords usually have a lot of traffic which is untargetted. This means wasted clicks and very low conversions. Instead try to use targetted keywords that are close to the end of the buying cycle. These are usually long tailed keywords that have less competition and thus you will pay less for each click.
6. Not researching the competition - If you're not researching your competition then you are letting them take advantage of you. Its like picking a fight with a blindfold over your eyes. Your competition is watching you - they're looking at what you're offering, they're looking at your ads to see how they can do a better one, collecting opt ins so they can take your potential customers and sell to them anytime and a lot of other things that you may not be aware of. Because they're looking at you they might be having a better campaign than you are and if you do the same you could end up being the winner in your niche.
7. Fighting for #1 - Studies have shown that the #1 spot is the not the best spot to be for conversions. If you want traffic then this may be the spot to be but conversions should be your main focus. Searchers usually click the first result they see and won't usually buy without checking out a few more offers. The best positions to be are usually positions 3 - 7 on the first page. If there aren't any other advertisers then this is the only excuse for being in position #1 providing that the keyword brings you money.

There are other mistakes being made but these are the most common. Correcting these mistakes can greatly improve your campaigns and increase your roi so if you're guilty log into your Google Adwords account right now and do something about it.

It also means that you would greatly benefit from reading Beating Adwords which will allow you to save a lot of money by giving you a solid approach to building winning adwords campaigns.

Google Ads For Free?

Yeah it all started with the release and hype of GetGoogleAdsFree earlier this year and they somehow tried to make people believe that you could actually get Google Adwords for free.

Most likely the persons who would want to get a break from having to pay their adwords bill would be people looking to save money. Well here's the kicker...

The system was designed for you to spend more!

Well if you are curious I would save you the trouble of having to purchase the product. In a nutshell the system has to do with offering ad space on your landing page or website and promoting your site with adwords.

This would mean that you would have to pay for the Adwords but you would pay with the funding from the advertiser who now has space on your site and sharing your visitors. So you see you are not really getting free PPC advertising but rather offsetting your expenses.

This method in itself is completely legitimate but the advertising of the GetGoogleAdsFree product is in itself very misleading. Who didn't think that there was some loophole you could use to take advantage of Google? I would put my hand up but to be honest it never excited me.

Some things wrong with this system though.

Why would you want to distract your customers further by allowing some advertiser to place a banner on your landing page? You will get lower conversions and you could use that space to capture email addresses in an opt in form.

Jeez, who the hell thought that was a genius idea?

Using Google Adwords Coupons.

More than likely if you're here at this blog then you have an adwords account already.

If however you are thinking about getting an adwords account then you might want to think about getting a Google Adwords coupon for when you sign up.

Google Adwords coupons allow you to get some free money for PPC so that you can do some test campaigns and try out adwords. Maybe you will burn through the extra credit before burning your own money but hopefully you will make some money off it and be profiting before using your own money.

You can do a search on Google for Google Adwords coupons or if you have hosting or know a friend that does some webhosts include them.

Don't ever buy Google Adwords coupons... its really amazing how some people make money off innocent people just because they don't know any better. Coupons are always free.

Conquering Adwords.

Conquering adwords was no easy task for me (is it for anyone), but after 2 years with one year which went absolutely terrible, I think I have finally done what I didn't think I could do - beat adwords.

When I started out I thought I could just put my link in, put thousands of keywords in an adgroup and call that a campaign. Well I would get sales but the $30 I would earn would have usually costed about $30 to get. But I was happy though until those sales dried up and I was just feeding Google dollar bills. This was around the time when the Google Cash method was popular.

Of course we know Google didn't like that and started slapping people. Ouch - thats when I quit.

Until this year when I joined the best membership site I would call home. Thats when I finally shook off the fear and went back into those waters...and it happened.

I was finally putting up relevant campaigns that were researched, with relevant landing pages, tight adgroups that matched my ads with a catchy headline and click pulling call to actions. I tracked landing page to merchant clickthru, assessed my click to sale ratio - tweaked and benefited from some nice roi.

I felt comfortable with Google again - I had conquered adwords.

I'm now here to help you do the same...