Internet Advertising: Keeping It In Context

If you have a website, you’re probably pretty familiar with Google Adsense and the opportunity it provides for you to make money.  Adsense is commonly known as Contextual Advertising, meaning the ads that Google displays on your site are based on the content of your page. Google uses the same technology for their search engine as for their Contextual Advertising. Pretty nifty, huh? You may not realize it, but Adsense is not the only game in town when it comes to Contextual Advertising.  Yahoo and MSN come easily to mind. Other companies play the game too, and to get you to participate, some of the lesser known ones pay you a higher premium while offering respectable traffic stats. Google just happens to be the most well known.

Google AdSense has its roots in the old “Google Content-Targeted Advertising” program which they introduced back in 2003. Although this program was similar to the AdSense program we all know and love, there was no automated way of participating. Each webmaster negotiated a deal directly with Google, and websites that served less than 20 million page views per month couldn’t participate. Rats!

As Google grew, they began to see how much money they were leaving on the table by excluding the smaller sites. The little guys greatly outnumbered the sites serving over 20 million hits that were willing to serve other people’s ads. Google’s answer to that problem was AdSense, which has no minimum traffic requirements and is open to all sites meeting Google’s content requirements. So that means we all have the opportunity to make money with Adsense. As for realizing that opportunity…? Well, that’s a topic for another post. If you can’t wait, head on over to www.eCommerceGal.com/Adsense/index.html.

As a website owner, one thing you may not have considered is using Google advertising to get the word out about your site and increasing your revenue that way. Adwords is a great marketing method that can be quite effective for your business, if you can properly target your audience and maximize your conversions into sales.

With Adwords, advertisements for your business are posted on search results and on the websites of others. In a world where millions access the internet every day, this type of marketing can be really effective. It has the potential to generate lots more traffic to your website. A percentage of that traffic will likely result in an increase in sales for your business – the very reason for advertising in the first place, eh?

Adwords can be less expensive than other types of marketing because you only pay when a consumer clicks on your link from one of the websites you are advertising on. This is a great opportunity for new businesses, small businesses, those on a low marketing budget (ha! like who isn’t these days?) and larger businesses that are looking at ways to market their products or services while cutting out unnecessary costs. A word of caution, though: it’s still advertising, and it does cost.

Take a minute to look around at different websites on the internet. I’ll bet you can locate several sites that offer ad links for other businesses. You’ll also notice they look professional and attractive. If you’re ready to give advertising with Adwords a try, the process is pretty simple.

The first step is to go to www.AdWords.com and complete an application. Once you apply, your application will go through an approval process – usually pretty painless. It is important to use relevant keywords for your products or services as this is how matches will be made to relevant websites who will be posting your ads.Google Adwords offers great tutorials to help you select the right keywords for your business.

Google Adwords allows you to create your own ads just like you would for any other type of advertising campaign. The program allows you to format for specified languages and geographic locations. Once the ads are posted on various websites consumers can choose to click on the link and be directed to your website. This is the only time you will pay an advertisement host website. When you set up your ads, you will decide how much you are willing to pay per click on your advertisement. You will also have the opportunity to change and edit your advertisements any time you like. If the advertising is going well you might be able to increase the amount of sites you advertise on.

Adwords offers a great opportunity for you to advertise your business while not spending a great deal of money on it. It can be very effective because the internet is visited by millions of consumers each and every day. If you want to read more about Adwords, check out the multitude of Pay Per Click articles at www.eCommerceGal.com/PPC/index.html.

There is serious money to be made online. Don’t think the party’s over – it’s just beginning. But making money takes savvy, hard work and commitment, just like any other business.  Let me help you take some angle off your learning curve.  Head on over to www.eCommerceGal.com for some free tools and a wealth of proven techniques to make your business soar!

Good commerce,

ECG