In the previous post, “Basic Google Adwords Bidding” I told you how to bid on keywords with a new account when you don’t yet have any sales or conversion data. Once you begin to collect data, you can make better-informed decisions on how much to bid for each keyword. (Learn a detailed concept of bidding methods with a google adwords consultant.)

When you start your new account, if there are certain keywords that are spending faster than any others, it’s a good idea to lower your bids for those words. Otherwise, you may run through your budget very quickly because of a few keywords. Remember your number one goal: get as much traffic to your website while spending the least possible. When you are able to start tracking your conversions, you can then find which keywords are leading to the most sales and focus your bidding on them. You can also lower bids on keywords that aren’t leading to as many sales.

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I always recommend to anyone who is starting a new Google Adwords account to start slow and then work their way up. Here is a recommended process you can use to begin your own account.

Start by going to the Google Keyword Tool. Type in common keywords for your product or service. Then, you will see Google’s estimated cost per click. For example, if you looked up “dog food”, you may see that in the US, the approximate CPC will be $1.91. In a future post, I will discuss something called “head keywords”, like “dog food” and how they affect your competition compared to “long-tail keywords” like “cheap dog food online”.

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Bidding is one of the most fundamental concepts in paid search marketing, yet search marketers and clients need to know important facts. Like: how much should I pay per click, should I focus on ad position, should I purchase software or use Google’s conversion optimizer?

Many tools and software options focus on the math, predictive statistical analysis, to decide how much you should pay per click today to reach your goals. Those goals are usually conversions. Many people focus on the wrong things, like guessing or instincts in an attempt to reach the top position under the belief that if they are the first noticed, then they will get the sales.

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The biggest question everyone has before buying something or paying someone is: “is it worth my money”?

The same holds true for online marketing services: with so many companies saying the “right things” it is very difficult to separate the sweet-talkers from the professionals, and ultimately to hire a search marketing agency or consultant.

In the last three years that market has been getting very competitive and it is becoming more clear that if you don’t advertise online you are losing customers, and so you are losing money. This is why so many new online marketing companies and agencies are starting up every week, cold calling, hiring like crazy and just shooting on all cannons.

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“Results are relative” – don’t cheat yourself

If your client came with a product/service from your competition you could easily tell if it was good or not. However, when you move outside your realm of expertise it’s much harder to differentiate between qualities because you are not as “in” that market.

Often I find prospective clients that are “happy” with results and are reluctant to try our “Free SEM strategy session”, they believe “all is peachy in the online marketing department!” However, those who gave it a try quickly found out that their results could be a lot better and they are actually losing a lot of money advertising on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

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