There is no faster way to get highly-targeted traffic directly to your offer than Google's AdWords program.

People try to make the AdWords program look complicated when it's really nothing more than a classified ad that runs on a network of web properties. If people read the ad and click, you pay. If they don't, you don't.

The path to getting clicks is exactly three steps long.

Step 1. Choose the right keywords that will cause your ad to appear.

Start by reviewing your web site and making a list of all the keywords and/or phrases which best describe your product or service. Keywords are not case sensitive so don't worry about it.

Then start feeding them into a keyword search tool so you can come up with other related keywords that you didn't think of.  Google gives you a free tool  that works well..  Overture's Search Suggestion Tool  is another good keyword research tool.  If you really want to come up with dozens of great keywords, and gauge the competition for each keyword on the search engines, check out WordTracker.  They offer a free daily trial or you can pay for a subscription to get all the research tools. 

Step 2. Create a strong headline that will get your ad noticed.

Since your headline must be no longer than 25 characters long, including spaces and punctuation, it takes some work to get it right. Headlines that contain reader-oriented benefits work best.

If you're selling used books, which headline do you think would work better?

A) "1,000 used books in stock"

B) "Used Books Free Shipping"

C) {KeyWord:Used Books}

If you answered "B", you're right. Free Shipping is a user benefit that should draw more clicks.

Anyone searching for used books expects every AdWord that comes up to be about used books, so you're wasting the most important part of your ad if you choose "A".

But, what if you choose "C"? Ah, grasshopper, you have uncovered a little known Google AdWords secret known as...

The Secret of the Dynamic Headline

If a user types in a search term that matches one of your keywords exactly, the search term will appear highlighted in your ad. A highlighted keyword that exactly matches the phrase a search phrase is more likely to draw a click. At least that's the theory.

If one of the phrases in your headline or ad is "pre-owned books", and someone types in that phrase, then "pre-owned books" is going to be highlighted in either your ad or headline. Let's look at our used book ad:

Used Books Free Shipping Find the Used Books you want from over 100,000 titles. www.SomeBookStore.com

Uh oh. The phrase "pre-owned" books doesn't appear anywhere. However, since you were smart enough to have that phrase listed as one of your keywords, the user will still see you ad, there just won't be any highlighting.

Now let's replace the headline with this:

{KeyWord:Used Books Free Shipping}

When the user searches for "pre-owned books", that phrase is going to appear highlighted in your headline even though it isn't really in your headline. Why? Because by entering the magic {KeyWord:Used Books Free Shipping} tag Google will replace the variable KeyWord with the user's search term as long as that search term is listed as one of you keyword phrases. If it's not, then Google will simply display your normal headline. How's that for cool?

Just remember to follow the syntax EXACTLY including the mixed case usage of KeyWord, the colon and the curly braces surrounding everything. The 25 character limitation still applied to the default headline that you enter after the colon, but Google doesn't count the syntax part of the entry.

Now you're ready for step 3.

 Step 3. Create compelling ad listings that users will want to click.

Remember, Clicks aren't sales! AdWords don't sell your product or service. They sell people on clicking a link that leads to your product or service. If you write a great AdWords ad, but you have a lousy sales page, your click-to-sales ratio is not going to be very good. You're likely to end up spending a lot more money on AdWords then you'll ever make.  What's the solution? Re-write your sales page or hire someone to do it for you.

What if you're an affiliate and you want to promote a product that pays you a commission for each sale but the company's landing page is awful? No problem. Simply create your own pre-sales page and host it on your own web site. Just code the buy link in your page so it goes to the affiliate payment link on the parent site. That way you can augment their sales copy with your own.

The hardest part about writing your ad is that the body can only have 70 characters total. That includes spaces and punctuation. What's worse, that 70 characters has to be divided over two lines. Neither line can have more than 35 characters. Yikes!  Google has some very strict rules about content that you need to read before you start creating your AdWords.

The key to getting this right is to create an ad that's too long and then start snipping it down to size. Keep in mind what your customers want to see and write it.

Used Books Free Shipping Find the Used Books you want from over 100,000 titles. www.SomeBookStore.com

If I wanted to dabble in the rare books market, I could quickly change the ad to read:

Used Books Free Shipping Hard to find used & rare books.  Over 100,000 titles.  www.SomeBookStore.com

It's going to take some work, but you'll get the hang of it!

And that's how easy it is to get started driving traffic to your web site using Google AdWords!

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