Pros and Cons of Google Adwords

Google is undoubtedly the largest search engine in the world. Having your business on the front page for all to see is a hot spot to be in and people are clamouring for it.  Google Adwords is a tool that allows this to happen for anyone. And it’s helping to drive traffic to websites and build small businesses up online.

What is Google Adwords?

Google Adwords is Google’s paid-for advertising service which allows you to post adverts of your business on Google to get a spot on the front page.  You will have seen them before, they’re small worded advertising pieces placed along the top, side and bottom of Google’s pages, faintly highlighted in yellow.

They work by responding to searches. When someone does a search in Google, the most relevant adwords adverts are selected and then auctioned by Googlebots to find out which is the most relevant to be shown on that search page.

What’s So Good About It?

• First and foremost, the greatest thing about Google Adwords is that it allows you to appear on the front page of the largest search engine in the world. Those who appear at the top of searches are the first thing that people see when they get their results back from Google. Even if they don’t click on you, they’ll start to recognise your name.

• It’s quick to set up the basics of Google Adwords. Although there are some in depth features to master, getting your campaign off the ground takes 15 minutes or so. You just input your details, work out your budget, write your advert and you’re ready to go. As soon as Google has approved it, it goes into the search engine. Quick as a flash!

• It’s good for all types of companies as it doesn’t have to be expensive. As you can set up your own budget on a daily basis, it means that you don’t have to worry about forking out more money than you have on advertising. If your business can only spare $20 a day, that’s all you pay for and when it’s gone, no more adverts come up for that day. It’s a great tool for working within your means.

What’s Not So Good About It?

• It can be a little restrictive as a tool. Unlike social media marketing, you only get a few characters to play with as opposed to whole posts with the potential of multimedia. With only 25 characters in the title, 35 characters over two lines in the body and 35 characters for the URL, you may find you can’t do your business justice in such a small space or justify the overall cost of such a tiny advert. For example, say you sell Ferrari watches, how can you set your Ferrari watch company apart from others selling the same product in a total of 35 characters? It’s not easy.

• It can turn into an expensive feat if you’re not careful. Google Adwords is ‘Pay per Click’. What this means is that you pay every time someone clicks on your advert; not when they buy something, or when they spend a certain amount of time on your site, when they click. Regardless of whether the click leads to a sale or not is irrelevant; so you need to work out as a company if your conversion rate is good enough to justify spending that kind of money.

• Additionally, there have been several cases where businesses have been running unethical sabotage schemes through Google Adwords. By continuously clicking on their competitor’s adverts, they run down their daily budget, with the hope of seeing them out of the game due to no traffic coming to their website, or just going bust from the advertising campaign.

• It eats away at your time as it can be a complicated tool to use and needs a lot of monitoring. A great deal of the process is attempting to understand which adverts work for your business and which don’t so you need to constantly review the adverts that generate traffic to your website, and that results in a conversion.

The overall point here is that Google Adwords is a tool, that used in the right way can be a great budget option for advertising and generating website traffic. However, you need to be prepared to spend a great deal of time on it, and when you need traffic fast, there are perhaps other systems which will ultimately get you there quicker.

Author's Bio: Emily Jenkins is a freelance writer who prides herself on her diversity in articles. Whether she’s talking about products from www.enzolifestyle.com or explaining the intricacies of needlework, she loves the challenge of writing like it’s her favourite thing. The other thing she loves is that now she has a whole range of topics under her belt, she can make it look like she knows everything in conversation!