Google AdSense and AdWords: Like Yin and Yang
Many websites include a section or two with “Google Ads” above or below it. These are ads that are displayed through Google AdSense. When you do a search on Google and see ads on the search results pages, they are usually AdSense ads.
AdSense – The Yin:
Google AdSense is a program that “detects” the content of a page or search. Find keywords on a web page or in a search phrase to determine the topic of the content. It does this by “reading” the page or taking a look at the search term that was typed into Google Search. You can “Feel” which ads in the system are relevant to the content or search for and display them, hence: “AdSense”.
Before ads appear on a page, AdSense searches its database of advertisers and finds ads associated with keywords on the page or in search. Now, AdSense must decide which of the thousands of ads competing for position actually show. To make this decision, AsSense analyzes the advertiser’s bids for the relevant keywords. Advertisers that have a combination of the highest bid, keyword relevance, and best click are shown first.
Google tracks clicks on ads, and advertisers pay Google the bid price for each click. When the AdSense ad is on someone’s web page, Google pays the website owner a portion of the payment for each click. The term “monetizing” your site refers to taking your existing site and placing ads like AdSense on it to make money (or finding another way to make money from websites). If you get 10,000 visitors and 10% of them click on an ad that theoretically pays you $0.75 per click, you’ve just made $750! It’s not bad to just copy an AdSense code (provided by Google) into the HTML of your popular website (if your site isn’t popular, learn about SEO (search engine optimization) from sites like AcmeWebResources).
AdWords – The Yang:
The other side of AdSense is AdWords. AdSense ads have lists of relevant keywords associated with them. Advertisers bid on each keyword to be placed on search results pages and on websites around the world. The words that will cause an advertiser’s ad to show are offered by the advertiser. When an ad matches the words on a page, the ads are displayed; like this: AdWords. AdWords is Google’s system used to place ads that are displayed on AdSense.
You can sign up for AdWords to pay for AdSense ads to drive traffic to your site. The first step is to register with Google. The next step is to associate keywords to associate with your site.
The idea is to drive traffic to your site by using relevant ads. The more relevant the ad is to your content, the more targeted your traffic will be. Compose your articles around your keyword list. Next, write an ad based on your keywords and assign keywords to the ad. You will bid on the keywords at the time you associate the keywords with the ad. If one of your keywords is searched for or relevant to a site, and you have a good bid and a relevant ad, your AdWords ad will show. Google only charges you when someone clicks on your ad.
Many competitors search for the most popular keywords, so prices per click can be quite high. It’s not uncommon for a click to cost $5 or even $10. If you have 10,000 ad clicks, after factoring in your conversion rate (the rate at which you convert visitors to buyers), you better be sure you’re earning more than your ad click costs. But it should never break your bank because you can set the bidding limits and the monthly budget.
What if you can’t pay $5.00 per click? Since the most popular keywords are very expensive, it is better to bid on less popular keywords because the cost per click is lower. Google currently has a minimum bid of $0.05 per click. If you can get them, you can lower your ad budget.
A popular site can make a lot of money, however, a lot of money and time can be wasted. To avoid waste, you need to learn as much as possible and get the right tools to do the research.
