SEO Belfast

Google Adwords is a Pay Per Click advertising program. It allows you to advertise your service or product on Google. Sign up for a Google Adwords account, pay the small activation fee and you could have your website on the first page of Google in no time at all.

Figure 1 shows where you ads can appear. The PPC ads appear as ‘Sponsored Links’ on the right or sometimes above the main search results. These areas are marked with a red box, the main results are in the green box. To get listed in the green box ‘the organic results’ takes a lot longer and is a different ball game. So if your site is new then Google’s PPC program lets you advertise straightaway rather than having to wait in some cases months for your site to appear in the ‘organic listings’.

Figure 1

For the paid search PPC listings you can research and choose the keywords that you want your ad to appear for. So if you’re a dentist in Belfast you could do the keyword research and decide that you want your website to appear when someone types in ‘Dentist in Belfast’, ‘orthopedic dentist in Belfast’ ‘Dentist needed urgently Belfast’ or whatever you deem relevant.

Not only do you set the keywords you also can set the amount you’re willing to pay for a visitor. You have control of your spend and can set a daily budget. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. If they don’t click, you don’t pay.

You can set your ads to appear locally, nationally or internationally. So if you are a software company in Belfast, you might want to sell your software internationally, if you’re a painter in Belfast you might only want to target your services locally. It’s up to you.

Google Adwords isn’t simply a straight bidding auction. The more you pay doesn’t necessarily mean the higher your ad will be placed. You can pay less than your competitor and appear above them. The more relevant your ad, the better the campaign structure you use the more you’ll have in your pocket to invest wisely, and the more inquiries and sales you’ll get for your money. Appearing above your competitor doesn’t necessarily mean that your site will convert better. You need to find your optimal position. A few listings down might perform better than right at the top.

You can continuously test, monitor and tweak your campaigns to make them more profitable and effective. If a campaign isn’t working then you can simply stop it, there’s no ongoing commitment.

If you’re interested the Google Adwords learning center goes into it in alot more details. For businesses there’s no long wait to begin selling or getting leads online, PPC is immediate.