Despite the so-called “Death of AdSense” (which happens to be a smart marketing ploy), there are still a few good success stories. At least, the marketers who carry the right beliefs within them know what they are doing to persevere and achieve desired results.

One of these correct beliefs is knowing how bid pricing works. Generally speaking:

1) If there are not enough ads to go around, that particular niche is too small to try.

2) If the “general economy” of the ads is rather low, avoid the niche too. That’s why there are high-paying keywords and low-paying ones.

3) If one site performs better than a similar one in AdSense clickthrough rates, that site will be served better paying and better performing ads. That’s how smart pricing works.

We’re sure Google has many secretive and subtle metrics to disqualify junk sites and the corporation insists on surrounding itself with webmasters who are committed to providing quality work.

Going back to point 2), no matter how genuine sites are in providing valuable content, webmasters need to know something about the state of the competition related to a supposedly high-paying keyword.

There is a general belief that “certain keywords pay highly” (granted), like bankruptcy, cancer, lawyers etc., but without research to back them up, such a belief does not stand on a foundation.

Google does not take from AdWords advertisers the maximum bid price they put in their account; this is important to recognize. For example, the first-placed ad may have a max. bid of $12, but the max. bid of the second-placed ad stands at only $2. The top advertiser does not always have to fork out $12 to maintain his ad in first place. Google Advertising works such that it has a sliding scale for the bidding process.

In other words, you bid on the keyword ‘bankruptcy’ and you decide that it is only worth $1.95 but you are willing to pay up to $12 against your competition. Then one day, your closest competitor’s bid is $2. Google will ante up 6 more cents on your behalf to keep you in the top position and continue to do so for as long as you can afford up to $12. Google sets these special perimeters when they set the account up for that keyword.

That means Google can only pay AdSense publishers as much as the next highest existing bid price. Then again, as you do your keyword research, Google only shows average CPC as the real numbers change dynamically. So it is crucial for publishers to appreciate the bid pricing gap between 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th-placed bidders to make an educated guess of how much they will be paid for certain AdSense ads.

With all that being said, AdSense is very much alive and well. The AdSense program is just an attractive incentive to make AdWords advertisers happy that their ads will be spread out with the help of publishers. Google Inc. can take down AdSense; it’s their choice, but it’s not helpful. Honestly, it’s the publishers’ fault that they abuse the system so the company fine-tune it…meaning, make sure the distribution of earnings is better deserved and justified to esteemed publishers.

Optimize Your Site For Google You could follow steps 1 and 2 and still get majorly penalized by Google. Google could very well be penalizing you because your website doesn’t contain the keywords that you are bidding on. Google expects to find each and every keyword you’re bidding on at least twice on your main web-page. Google wants to ensure that the site you’re advertising for is 100% relevant to the search a Google user made. Google is all about providing their users with information on exactly what they searched on and providing it’s users with perfectly relevant content. Another words, if Google can’t find the keyword that you’re advertising under anywhere on your web-page Google will assume that your website has little to do with that keyword and deem your site “Irrelevant” to the keyword searched on. What does that mean for you? This means you will now be punished by the Google gods and slapped with high costs-per-click as well as horrible ad placement.

You may ask, “How can I possibly make sure that my website contains all of the keywords I am bidding on? Using special tools and proprietary programming, we at AbsolutelyDominate.com generate special code to insert in strategic places on your website. NOW a customer searches on “injury attorney” and when they click on your ad, the words “injury attorney” magically appears in strategic places on your website. Not only the customer, but Google ALSO sees that your site is relevant to what was searched on. The result? The searcher is happy that they actually found what they were looking for and Google rewards YOU with a lower click cost and higher ad placement.

-Keyword Swiping This step is crucial if you’re serious about absolutely dominating your competition in adwords.

Say you do some research and find two particular advertisers that are your top competitors. Maybe they have hundreds or even thousands of keywords that they’re successfully advertising under.

That being the caseit more than likely took them many months and lots of money to build a profitable keyword list.

What if I told you that you could legally and ethically “steal” your top competitors keywords and advertise under them yourself? Meaningthat your competition spends all of the money trying out and testing which keywords work the best and then YOU swoop in and LEGALLY steal all of your competitors tried and tested keywords? At AbsolutelyDominate, we use special tactics and special software to do JUST THIS! Not only will you be bypassing months’ worth of keyword research, but by implementing the “relevancy techniques” we just talked about you’ll beat out your competitors under every keyword that they are advertising on! Yes, it’s sneaky but it’s legal, and crucially vital to dominating your niche.

Most people advertising in Adwords today don’t realize that they are losing tons of customers and leads all due to the fact that they don’t know the 7 Key things they must do to set up a successful adwords campaign. If you follow these 7 key steps to setting up your adwords campaign, not only will your ad show up a lot higher in Google, but you’ll also pay less per click than people advertising below you! Applying these 7 Crucial Steps will increase the amount of clicks you’re getting per day and at the same time decrease the amount of money you’re having to spend now!

Optimize Your Campaign For Google Are all of your keywords stuffed into one or just a few adgroups? Google hates it when campaigns are like this and determines that your campaign has 0 Relevancy! I know this strategy works, so for all of my clients I make their campaigns Super Relevant by taking each individual keyword and putting it in ad adgroup all on it’s own! I know, it’s days worth of work, but it reduces their click cost by an incredible amount! If you don’t follow crucial step #1 you’re going to be slapped! This means that Google will charge you insane amounts of money for your clicks and give your ads horrible placement.

Optimize your ads for Google The structure of your ads play a huge role in determining how much you pay per click. Just like in step #1 Google is obsessed with “Relevancy”. Google’s idea of a perfect ad actually has the keyword that was searched on show up twice in the ad; Once in the ad title, and once in the ad text. If Google see’s that your ad displaying for the keyword, “injury attorney” actually has the keyword “injury attorney” appearing in your ad title and inyour ad text then Google is going to reward your ad for being perfectly relevant to the keyword that was searched on.

Google is going to reward you in two ways, 1) by charging you less per click and 2) by giving your ad a higher ad placement! But that’s not all! Who searches on the keyword “injury attorney” will be more inclined to click on your ad because the actual keyword they searched on shows up twice in your ad! That means that by optimizing your ads you get more clicks, you spend less, AND you get higher ad placement! It’s a win win situation!

You might ask, “Well how will I ever have time to write a super targeted ad like that for every keyword I have? That seems impossible!” Well, if you don’t have time you should make time. My company write a super targeted ad for EVERY keyword that you have! It’s a huge load of work, but we’ve found it’s definitely worth it for our clients. Stay tuned for part 2 of this article series, on “Optimizing your site for Google and Keyword Swiping”.

YOU’RE REACHING TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE

It seems like the following advice is only for real estate people, but the idea applies in a lot of places. There are two kinds of people looking for your business:

1. A person who lives in your area (your city or state) who may type in “real estate,” or “dentist,” or “churches,” or “restaurants” and expects the results to be from that area-only. You be will there when he comes looking for you.

2. A person that may not be in your area at all (or else Google’s system cannot detect where he is), but is still asking for your particular area’s services. He goes to Google and searches by typing in “movers in Ft Lauderdale,” or “Ft Lauderdale real estate,” or “hotels Ft Lauderdale,” hoping to get Ft-Lauderdale-only results. He may be traveling on a particular holiday or planning a move or he may be an investor.

He may in fact be from Richmond. But he could be down in Jacksonville. Or way out in Texas. Or in Kentucky. Or Beijing, or Kayo. But he’s still searching on Google for you, and he identifies Richmond by name.

Either way, you want to be there, ready to open the door when he comes knocking.

REACH THE FIRST PERSON

Because you’re aiming at these two kinds of people, you can set up two Google campaigns for them, not just one. So here’s how. When you’re first setting up your campaign, select regional targeting.

Then you choose your country, followed by your state/province, and even a city or group of cities.

REACH THE SECOND PERSON

If you were advertising for real estate in California, you would set up a nationwide campaign. You would possibly even set up an international campaign, but with local terms like “Visalia real estate” and “Yorba Linda real estate.” After all, there just may be people from all over the country, and possibly even outside of the country, who are doing searches on these particular terms.

So you’d grab a map or a listing of cities from a web site and create a keyword set like this:

California real estate LA real estate Healdsburg real estate Villa Real real estate Santa Monica real estate Buy homes California Buy homes San Francisco Buy homes Bakersfield Buy homes Sausalito

To do this the best way, you would combine a large list of general keywords (the same ones you used on the regionally targeted campaign) with a large list of cities and towns, and then use a spreadsheet to mix and match them together.

Either way, you’ll end up with a huge keyword list: 95 percent of them will never get searches, and the other 5 percent may only get a few. However, it doesn’t cost anything to bid on these keywords if nobody clicks, and when people do click, they’ll only be five or ten cents. Not much traffic, but what you do get will be bargain priced. You should still buy generic keywords in your local campaign, but these local keywords in a nationwide campaign will bring very cheap clicks, mostly.

Your real estate Google account would be arranged like this:

Campaign #1: California Targeting Only Group 1: Real estate Group 2: Buy homes

Campaign #2: National Targeting-entire USA Group 1: California real estate Group 2: Buy homes California

Now you have both bases covered, and you’ll be getting as much traffic as possible for your local market. The key is that you’re not leaving out people in other geographic locations who may be seriously looking for what you happen to offer.

You can also use your business’s address or latitude and longitude, and target all searches within a radius that you select. Google even gives you the advanced option of choosing your own customized set of coordinates that you want to target.

HONE YOUR CHOPS ON A LOCAL TEST CAMPAIGN BEFORE YOU GO NATIONAL

An age-old advertising practice is to test ideas in a smaller market before you spend big bucks to try them out in a larger one. Nowadays, the risks of going national instantly if you have a good product may seem small because after all, you’re paying for one click at a time, you can set a daily budget, and you can turn your traffic on and off at will. But that doesn’t undo the value of trying your product in one small geographic area first.

For example, if you sell advice to investors, you might start just with investors in New York State. The advantage? You don’t need to worry nearly as much about your daily budget. If your cash reserves are limited, you can choose this smaller market to start off in, and if in the first few weeks or months it’s not profitable, you’re not forced to shut the entire thing down for fear of quickly going bankrupt. Make the sales process profitable in a smaller market, and then go national.

At that point, you’re able to take on the big boys in the worldwide market because you know that the mechanism works like clockwork in the small market, and every dollar you send out comes back with more dollars attached. This is also an excellent way to keep competitors from knowing what you’re up to, if they don’t live in the cities you’re targeting.

YOU’RE REACHING TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE

It seems like the following advice is only for real estate people, but the idea applies in a lot of places. There are two kinds of people looking for your business:

1. A person who lives in your area-your city, your state-who types in “real estate,” “dentist,” “churches,” or “restaurant” and expects that the results he sees will be area-only. You’ll be there when he comes looking for you.

2. A person may not be in your area at all (or else Google’s system can’t tell where he is), but is still asking for your area’s services. He goes to Google and types in “movers in Palo Alto,” “Palo Alto real estate,” or “hotels Palo Alto,” hoping to get Palo-Alto-only results. He may be traveling on holiday; he may be planning a move; he may be an investor.

He may in fact be from Richmond. But he could be down in Jacksonville. Or way out in Texas. Or in Kentucky. Or Beijing, or Kayo. But he’s still searching on Google for you, and he identifies Richmond by name.

Either way, you want to be there, ready to open the door when he comes knocking.

REACH THE FIRST PERSON

Because you’re aiming at these two kinds of people, you can set up two Google campaigns for them, not just one. So here’s how. When you’re first setting up your campaign, select regional targeting.

Then you choose your country, followed by your state/province, and even a city or group of cities.

REACH THE SECOND PERSON

If you were advertising for real estate in California, you would set up a nationwide campaign. You would possibly even set up an international campaign, but with local terms like “Visalia real estate” and “Yorba Linda real estate.” After all, there just may be people from all over the country, and possibly even outside of the country, who are doing searches on these particular terms.

So you’d grab a map or a listing of cities from a web site and create a keyword set like this:

California real estate LA real estate Healdsburg real estate Villa Real real estate Santa Monica real estate Buy homes California Buy homes San Francisco Buy homes Bakersfield Buy homes Sausalito

The very best way to do this would be to combine a large list of general keywords (the same ones you used on the regionally targeted campaign) with a large list of cities and towns. Then use a spreadsheet to mix and match them together.

Either way, you’ll end up with a huge keyword list: 95 percent of them will never get searches, and the other 5 percent may only get a few. However, it doesn’t cost anything to bid on these keywords if nobody clicks, and when people do click, they’ll only be five or ten cents. Not much traffic, but what you do get will be bargain priced. You should still buy generic keywords in your local campaign, but these local keywords in a nationwide campaign will bring very cheap clicks, mostly.

Your real estate Google account would be arranged like this:

Campaign #1: California Targeting Only Group 1: Real estate Group 2: Buy homes

Campaign #2: National Targeting-entire USA Group 1: California real estate Group 2: Buy homes California

Now you have both bases covered, and you’ll be getting as much traffic as possible for your local market. The key is that you’re not leaving out people in other geographic locations who may be seriously looking for what you happen to offer.

You can also use your business’s address or latitude and longitude, and target all searches within a radius that you select. Google even gives you the advanced option of choosing your own customized set of coordinates that you want to target.

HONE YOUR CHOPS ON A LOCAL TEST CAMPAIGN BEFORE YOU GO NATIONAL

One age-old advertising trick is to test ideas in smaller markets before spending big bucks to try them out in the larger ones. Nowadays, the risks of going national instantly if you have a good product may seem small. After all, you’re only paying for one click at a time, so you set a daily budget, and can turn your traffic on and off at will. But that doesn’t undo the value of trying your product in one small geographic area first.

For example, if you sell advice to investors, you might start just with investors in New York State. The advantage? You don’t need to worry nearly as much about your daily budget. If your cash reserves are limited, you can choose this smaller market to start off in, and if in the first few weeks or months it’s not profitable, you’re not forced to shut the entire thing down for fear of quickly going bankrupt. Make the sales process profitable in a smaller market, and then go national.

Then you’ll be able to take on the big boys in the worldwide market because you know that the process works in the small market, and every dollar you send out comes back with more dollars attached. This, by the way, is an excellent way to keep competitors from knowing what you’re up to, if they don’t live in the cities you are actually targeting.

Most people who advertise on Google Adwords today don’t realize that they are losing tons of customers and leads – all due to the fact that they don’t know the “5 Key Strategies” they must perform to set up a successful Adwords campaign. Those who follow these 5 key steps to optimize their Adwords campaign, not only will have their ad show up a lot higher in Google, but will also pay less per click than the people advertising below them! Applying these 5 crucial Strategies will INCREASE the amount of clicks you’re getting per day and at the same time DECREASE the amount of money you have to pay now!

Optimize Your Campaign For Google Are all of your keywords stuffed into one or just a few ad-groups? Google hates it when campaigns are like this and determines that your campaign has “0% relevancy”! I actually make my campaigns Super Relevant by taking each individual keyword and putting it in an ad-group all on its own! If you do this it will reduce your click cost by an incredible amount! I recommend that at first you take your keywords and knit them into very closely related ad-groups.

I recommend a free Adwords platform “Adwords Editor” that has a special, easy-to-use tool for organizing keyword called the “Keyword Grouper”. If you don’t properly organize your keywords then you’re definitely going to be “slapped” – meaning that Google will charge you insane amounts of money for clicks and give your ads terrible placement.

Optimize your Ads Correctly- The structure of your ads plays a huge role in determining how much you have to pay per click. As with strategy #1 Google, is obsessed with “relevancy”. Google’s idea of the perfect ad actually has the keyword that was searched on appearing twice in the ad; once in the ad title, and also once in the ad text. If Google see’s that your ad displaying for the keyword, “injury attorney” actually has the keyword “injury attorney” appearing in both your ad title and in your ad text then Google is going to reward your ad for being perfectly relevant to the keyword that was searched on.

Google is going to reward you in two ways: 1) Google will charge you less per click, and 2) Google will give your ad a higher ad placement! But that’s not it! Whoever searches on the keyword “injury attorney” will actually be more inclined to click on your ad because the actual keyword they searched on shows up twice in your ad! This means that by optimizing your ads you not only get more clicks and spend less, but you also get higher ad placement! It’s definitely a win-win situation!

You may ask, “Well how will I ever have time to write a super targeted ad like for every keyword I have? That’s impossible!” Trust me, if you utilize this strategy it will definitely pay off! I am such a firm believe in this strategy, that I actually write a super targeted ad for EVERY keyword. It’s a massive load of work, but it definitely pays off for my clients in the form of less ad-spend and MORE clicks! Optimizing your ads pays off!

Optimizing Your Site for Google Even though you follow steps 1 and 2 and still get majorly penalized by Google. Google could be penalizing you because your website doesn’t contain the keywords that you are bidding on. Google expects to find each and every keyword you’re bidding on at least once on your landing-page. Google wants to make sure that the site you’re advertising is 100% relevant to the search a Google user makes. Google is all about providing its users with information on exactly what they searched for. Google wants to return its searchers perfectly RELEVANT content.

If Google can’t find the keyword that you’re advertising under anywhere on your landing-page Google will automatically assume that your website has little or nothing to do with the keyword and deem your site “NON-RELEVANT” to the keyword searched on. What does this mean for you? This means you will now be “punished” by the Google gods and “slapped” with high costs-per-click as well as bad ad placement.

You might ask, “Well, how can I possibly make sure that my website contains all of the keywords that I’m bidding on?” Using special PHP programming you can actually make a special code and insert it in very strategic places on your landing page. This will make the keyword searched on appear on your website to make your site be 100% relevant to the keyword searched on. This special technique is known as “Dynamic Keyword Insertion”.

NOW…. a customer searches on “injury attorney” and when they click on your ad, the word “injury attorney” magically appears in strategic places on your website. Google ALSO now sees that your site is relevant to what was searched on. The result? The searcher is happy that they actually found what they were looking for and Google rewards you with a lower click-cost and higher ad-placement!

Keyword “Swiping”- This step is crucial if you’re serious about absolutely dominating your competition in Adwords. Say you do some research and find two particular advertisers that are your top competitors. Maybe they have hundreds or even thousands of keywords that they’re successfully advertising under. That being the casemore than likely, it took them many months and lots of money to build a profitable keyword list.

What if I told you that you could legally and ethically “steal” your top competitors’ keywords and advertise under them yourself? Meaningthat your competition spends all of the money trying out and testing which keywords work the best and then YOU swoop in and LEGALLY steal all of your competitors’ tried and tested keywords?

Not only will you be bypassing months’ worth of keyword research, but by implementing the “relevancy techniques” in the steps above you’ll beat out your competitors under every keyword that they are advertising on!

Yes, it’s sneaky but it’s legal and crucial to dominating your niche in adwords. The best way to get in on this keyword espionage is by utilizing a special spy tool called “KeywordSpy”.

Split-testing your Ads Daily- Did you know that Google rewards good ads? If Google sees you have a great ad with a great click-through-rate, that ad will not only get shown more often, but it will also decrease in bid price so that you pay less per click!

In other words, the better your ads are, the less you pay per click and the more traffic you get. It’s extremely important that you write two ads for each ad-group or keyword and then split-test the ads against each other. Now you can see for sure which ad out-performs the other. Once you find the best ad, delete the “loser ad” and write a new ad in its place. Then test the new ad against the winning ad. After testing ads on a daily basis you will end up with high performing ads that not only increase the amount of clicks you get but also decrease the amount of money you have to pay per click!

When you see that your competition has large amounts of traffic and you barely have any be aware that they are most likely using PPC advertising. This is one of the most effective forms of marketing around and is used by many. If you are not taking advantage of this promotion you are leaving money on the table.

When you adopt PPC advertising, you shall have to pay for a service that shall show your ad on relevant websites. Your ad shall appear as a link placed as a banner either across the top or along the side of the webpage, enabling viewers to see your ad but without this interfering with the content of the site that they are viewing.

The important component of PPC advertising is its ability to provide targeted marketing; thus, your ad appears only on websites that are similar or relevant to the products or services that you offer. This targeting is usually defined and fixed through the match between keywords and other related factors, and allows you to receive traffic that is already known to be interested in what you offer.

One of the great things about PPC advertising is that you only pay if your visitor clicks on your ad. If your reader does not take action you do not have to pay. On the other hand if your reader does indeed click through to your site you will pay whatever you bid for the keyword. If you want to keep your budget in check try placing a daily cap on expenses and of course monitor clicks.

When searching for PPC engines you will most likely opt for Google Adwords. Google Adwords will give you the best service and your ad will get the best exposure. Added to this is the fact that those who use this service will be already searching for products and services. This makes them far more willing to act on your advertisements.

PPC advertising will help you to promote your website and distinguish it from the competition. However to really take advantage of this method of marketing be sure to understand exactly how it works and how it will help your business. PPC advertising can be very profitable only if you know how to use it.

Google search engine advertising is the fastest way to get a reasonable return on investment. Google never pushed the service that hard, or by some accounts, at all. Coming to light as it did only when some users got a notice from Google that they intended to turn on the content network by default, leaving your campaign open to hundreds, possibly thousands, of impressions on websites that have Google Ads on them. This is not search-related, but contextual.

PPC advertising began by having companies bid on keywords that related to their sites. Companies with higher bids would appear first in paid rankings. PPC is not too complicated. Simply put, it is a bidding process for keywords and the prices of the keywords are determined by the strength of the demand for those keywords. PPC users have been running AdWords campaigns for years that are dedicated to achieving maximum exposure for the committed ad spend.

Google even claims that 13 hours worth of video is uploaded every minute on YouTube. The most current internet marketing news is how YouTube has released PPC (Pay-Per-Click) service that enables YouTube users to have their videos appear at the top of the search results on YouTube for keywords they choose in their ad campaign. Google AdWords pay-per-click accounts have content advertising set to default in the initial account creation process. Content ads have their own targeting tools and bids are more flexible, giving higher costs and poor conversion rates when search ads are shown as standard.

Advertisers have used it to make creative ads that get their brand and product messages to their audiences on the Google content network. Admittedly, the problem with having an ad that has a great CTR is that it gets a lot of clicks! Unless your traffic converts into sales, it is hard to turn a profit on your Google Adwords ads. Advertisers with self-managed signup accounts are subject to a $5 activation fee that will be deducted from any promotional credit. Advertisers with assisted signup accounts can apply the promotional credit and receive free ad clicks after their Jumpstart prepayment balance is depleted. Promotional credits are available at various places online.

Pay per click form of advertising is well accepted by advertisers and to earn good sum of money from it companies offering PPC services are consulted by advertisers. Pay Per Click spotlights your business to potential customers, and turns browsers into buyers. And the best part is you only pay for the customers who actually visit your business Web site.

Google assumes the more clicks to your ad the more relevant it must be. Co-incidentally the more relevant ads they have the more clicks and the more money. Google doesnt want you to be profitable, because in that case they are not making as much money as they could. This is the reason, why sometimes you got a really successful campaign, which has been making you money for 5-6 months, and then suddenly one day you log in to your account and see bids like $10 and $15 per click. Google evaluates also the relevancy of the displayed ad in order to position the Adwords-ads. The more clicks your ad receives, the higher it gets listed.

Google has a more than three-quarter market share. Also, PPC advertising is one of the best ad forms for marketers who want many metrics to track campaigns. Google Analytics is great for tracking those conversions that result in a sale. Although when you track the sales directly”how many orders actually came in”it doesnt always line up exactly with what Google Analytics tells you. Google Adwords is a great method of getting your objectives done and making your site successful. Just remember, it is very important to try and maintain a low click through cost when trying to target the appropriate customers.

AdWords is an online advertising platform designed to help businesses of all sizes use the web to find new customers by delivering relevant ads when users search for specific products and services. Adwords is going to cost you quite a bit of money in the beginning until youve settled down upon your most effective keywords. AdWords is still one of the best ways to test new campaigns and drive thousands of people to any website. But pay per click marketing is not as lucrative as it used to be.

Internet viewers see your ad when they type in a search word or phrase related to your business. Search Engine Optimisation is another very good way of getting visitors to your site. This is a more long term strategy and involves getting your site accepted in the natural listings.

YOU’RE REACHING TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE

It seems like the following advice is only for real estate people, but the idea applies in a lot of places. There are two kinds of people looking for your business:

1. A person who lives in your area-your city, your state-who types in “real estate,” “dentist,” “churches,” or “restaurant” and expects that the results he sees will be area-only. You’ll be there when he comes looking for you.

2. A person that may not be in your area at all (or else Google’s system cannot detect where he is), but is still asking for your particular area’s services. He goes to Google and searches by typing in “movers in Ft Lauderdale,” or “Ft Lauderdale real estate,” or “hotels Ft Lauderdale,” hoping to get Ft-Lauderdale-only results. He may be traveling on a particular holiday or planning a move or he may be an investor.

He may in fact be from Palo Alto. But he could be down in San Diego. Or way out in Orlando. Or in Montreal. Or Sydney, or Tokyo. But he’s still searching on Google for you, and he identifies Palo Alto by name.

Either way, you want to be there, ready to open the door when he comes knocking.

REACH THE FIRST PERSON

Because you’re aiming at these two kinds of people, you can set up two Google campaigns for them, not just one. So here’s how. When you’re first setting up your campaign, select regional targeting.

Then you choose your country, followed by your state/province, and even a city or group of cities.

REACH THE SECOND PERSON

If you were advertising for real estate in California, you’d set up a nationwide campaign, possibly even an international campaign, but with local terms like “Los Angeles real estate” and “Yorba Linda real estate.” After all, there are likely to be people from all over the country, and maybe even outside the country, who are doing searches on these terms.

So you would need to grab a map or a listing of cities from a web site and then create a keyword set like this:

California real estate LA real estate Healdsburg real estate Villa Real real estate Santa Monica real estate Buy homes California Buy homes San Francisco Buy homes Bakersfield Buy homes Sausalito

To do this the best way, you would combine a large list of general keywords (the same ones you used on the regionally targeted campaign) with a large list of cities and towns, and then use a spreadsheet to mix and match them together.

Either way, you’ll end up with a huge keyword list: 95 percent of them will never get searches, and the other 5 percent may only get a few. However, it doesn’t cost anything to bid on these keywords if nobody clicks, and when people do click, they’ll only be five or ten cents. Not much traffic, but what you do get will be bargain priced. You should still buy generic keywords in your local campaign, but these local keywords in a nationwide campaign will bring very cheap clicks, mostly.

Your real estate Google account would be arranged like this:

Campaign #1: California Targeting Only Group 1: Real estate Group 2: Buy homes

Campaign #2: National Targeting-entire USA Group 1: California real estate Group 2: Buy homes California

Now you have both bases covered, and you’ll be getting as much traffic as possible for your local market. The key is that you’re not leaving out people in other geographic locations who may be seriously looking for what you happen to offer.

You can also use your business’s address or latitude and longitude, and target all searches within a radius that you select. Google even gives you the advanced option of choosing your own customized set of coordinates that you want to target.

HONE YOUR CHOPS ON A LOCAL TEST CAMPAIGN BEFORE YOU GO NATIONAL

One age-old advertising trick is to test ideas in smaller markets before spending big bucks to try them out in the larger ones. Nowadays, the risks of going national instantly if you have a good product may seem small. After all, you’re only paying for one click at a time, so you set a daily budget, and can turn your traffic on and off at will. But that doesn’t undo the value of trying your product in one small geographic area first.

For example, if you sell advice to investors, you might start just with investors in New York State. The advantage? You don’t need to worry nearly as much about your daily budget. If your cash reserves are limited, you can choose this smaller market to start off in, and if in the first few weeks or months it’s not profitable, you’re not forced to shut the entire thing down for fear of quickly going bankrupt. Make the sales process profitable in a smaller market, and then go national.

At that point, you’re able to take on the big boys in the worldwide market because you know that the mechanism works like clockwork in the small market, and every dollar you send out comes back with more dollars attached. Oh, this is also an excellent way to keep competitors from knowing what you’re up to, if they don’t live in the cities you’re targeting.