AdWords
®
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
by Howie Jacobson,PhD
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AdWords
®
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
by Howie Jacobson,PhD
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AdWords
®
For Dummies
®
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2007 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
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not be available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Control Number is available from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-470-15252-2
Manufactured in the United States of America
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About the Author
Howie Jacobson, PhD, has been an Internet marketing strategist since 1999.
He specializes in helping clients use Google AdWords to grow their busi-
nesses. Due to the fact that he was forced to study statistical methods in
graduate school, Jacobson took to direct marketing as soon as he tripped
over it in 2001.
He is the creator of “Leads into Gold,” a home-study course that teaches
small-business owners how to become their own direct-marketing agencies.
He is also co-creator of The System Seminar’s home-study course, “Internet
Marketing for Smart Beginners,” along with System founder Ken McCarthy
and Cindy Kappler.
Jacobson has presented at several System Seminar events, at Perry
Marshall’s AdWords Seminar, and at workshops and seminars around the
world. He is a regular contributor to HorsesMouth.com, a performance-
improvement site for financial advisors, as well as a former writer for
Vault.com. He is the second-tallest member of Perry Marshall’s AdWords
Coaching faculty, and has worked with Marshall since 2003. He leads tele-
phone seminars on beginner and advanced AdWords topics and provides
online coaching and support at his Web site, www.askhowie.com.
Jacobson also runs www.loweryourbidprice.com, a company that produces
software tools that help AdWords advertisers and AdWords consultants save
time, reduce costs, and increase profits.
Luckily for you, Jacobson began his career as a schoolteacher. He learned

reassurance.
My technical advisors at Google, Jason Rose, Fred Vallaeys, and Emily Harris,
answered my frequent volleys of questions with celerity and grace. We
haven’t met, but I like to think of them riding their Segways from the office to
the gourmet lunch rooms at the Googleplex.
Big hugs to the many AdWords experts who shared their wisdom, stories,
and sometimes even keywords. Perry Marshall is such a fine AdWords
teacher, business associate, and friend that I wonder what good deeds
I performed in my previous life to deserve him. David Bullock and Glenn
Livingston shared their best stuff with me freely and often — I apologize to
their clients and spouses for all the time I monopolized while asking them
questions. David even agreed, in a moment of weakness, to become the tech-
nical editor for the book. Luckily, I asked and he agreed just before he was
featured in Black Enterprise Magazine and became the most sought-after
Taguchi expert in the country.
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Timothy Seward, my neighbor in North Carolina, has taught me more about
Analytics than I thought there was to know. If I’d been paying for his time,
he’d be retired by now. The fabulous Joy Milkowski shared her methodolo-
gies with me and helped me rewrite the chapter about creating compelling
ads. The friendship we developed during this project has been an added
bonus. Don Crowther, one of the cleverest and under-the-radar marketers on
this or any other planet, shared more cool ideas with me than I could ever
have hoped.
Bryan Todd and I have argued and philosophized about metrics more than
either of us cares to admit. Kelly Muldoon shared her experience with geo-
graphic targeting, and always has the right amount of sympathy and choco-
late for any situation. Michael Katz, the world’s expert on e-newsletters, was
so helpful during this project that I almost forgive him for being funnier than
me. Thanks also to my many clients who shared case studies with me —

Steven Hayes
Senior Copy Editor: Barry Childs-Helton
Technical Editor: David Bullock
Editorial Manager: Kevin Kirschner
Media Project Supervisor:
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Media Development Specialist: Angela Denny,
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Media Development Associate Producer:
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Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth
Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case
Cartoons: Rich Tennant (
www.the5thwave.com)
Composition Services
Project Coordinators: Adrienne Martinez,
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Layout and Graphics: Carl Byers,
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Anniversary Logo Design: Richard Pacifico
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies
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Publishing for Consumer Dummies
Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher
Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director

You can measure your results 21
Keep improving your marketing 22
It’s dating, not a shotgun wedding 23
Following up with your best prospects 24
How to Think Like Your Prospect 25
Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Starter Edition Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Who Should Start with the Starter Edition 28
Signing Up Couldn’t Be Easier 29
If you have a Web site 29
If you don’t have a Web site 35
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Touring Your Starter Edition Control Panel 38
The alerts at the top 38
The ad 38
The Keywords 41
Content network 42
Deploying the Goldilocks maximum CPC strategy 43
Impressions, clicks, and cost 43
Graphs and reports 45
Activating Your Account 46
When nobody can see your ad 47
When just you can’t see your ad 48
Managing Your Account 50
Upgrading to the Standard Edition 50
Chapter 3: Setting Up Your Standard Edition Account . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Setting Up Your Standard Edition Account 51
Graduating from the Starter Edition 52
Opening a new Standard Edition account 52
Running Mission Control with the Campaign Management Tab 55
All Campaigns view 56

Broad match 104
Phrase match 104
Exact match 105
The goal: From vague to specific 105
Researching Keywords: Strategies and Tools 106
The Free Keyword Tool 107
Google’s keyword tools 108
KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker sites 108
Thesaurus tools 108
KeyCompete.com 109
Using your server log to get smarter 109
Finding Sneaky Variations for Fun and Profit 112
Some quick ways to vary keywords 112
LowerYourBidPrice.com — sneaky keywords made easy 115
Sorting Keywords into Ad Groups 116
Divide keywords into concepts 118
Organizing your keywords 119
Deploying Negative Keywords 121
Brainstorming negative keywords 123
Adding negative keywords 125
Adding, Deleting, and Editing Keywords 126
Growing your keyword list 126
Editing your keywords 126
Chapter 6: Writing Magnetic Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131
Understanding the Three Goals of Your Ad 132
Attracting the right prospects while discouraging
the wrong people 132
Telling your visitors what to expect 135
Tuning Your Ad to the Keyword 135
Marching to a Different Drummer 135

Links 156
Exploring the Other Ad Formats 156
Getting the picture with image ads 156
Making the phone and the doorbell ring with mobile text ads 157
Waving to the neighbors with local business ads 158
Going Hollywood with video ads 159
Part III: Managing Your AdWords Campaigns 161
Chapter 7: Deciding Where and When to Show Your Ads . . . . . . . . .163
Getting the Most Out of Your Campaigns 164
Changing the default campaign settings 164
Separating your account into three types of campaigns 172
Keyword and site targeting 175
Bidding Smart 179
Initial bidding strategies 179
When you have data . . . 180
Chapter 8: Improving Your Campaigns through
Keyword Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
Nurturing, Relocating, and Firing Keywords 182
Star keywords 182
Solid performers 184
Long-tail keywords 187
Underperforming keywords 188
Negative-ROI keywords 188
Resuscitating Poor-Quality Keywords 188
Managing the 80/20 Way 190
AdWords For Dummies
x
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Chapter 9: Getting It Done with AdWords Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195
Improving Your Campaigns with the Optimizer Tools 196

when your prospect is ready to buy 239
Spinning a Web with an Opt-In 240
Generating an opt-in form using AWeber 241
Placing the form on your Web site 244
Generating opt-ins via e-mail 245
Importing and adding leads yourself 246
xi
Table of Contents
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How to “Bribe” Your Prospects to Opt In 246
Give away something of value 246
Make the opt-in a logical next step 247
Offer your visitors something they really want 248
Reassure them 249
To sell or get the opt-in? 249
The thank-you page 249
Creating a lead-generating magnet 251
Staying on Your Prospects’ Minds with E-mail 253
Verifying your lead 253
Following up automatically with an e-mail autoresponder 254
Broadcast e-mails 268
Managing your e-mail lists 270
Going Offline to Build the Relationship 271
Chapter 12: Building a “Climb the Ladder” Web Site . . . . . . . . . . . . .273
Identifying the Rungs of Your Business Ladder 274
Using Web Tools to Help Your Visitors up the Ladder 276
Design 276
Sales copy 279
Articles 280
Blog 281

Assigning a value to a conversion 311
Putting code on your Web site 311
Tracking sales from a shopping cart 313
Testing conversion tracking 313
Introducing Two New Columns 314
Conversion rate 314
Cost/Conv. 314
Tracking ROI of Ads and Keywords 316
Identifying the profitable ads 316
Keywords 319
Dealing with multiple conversions 319
Creating Easy-to-Understand Reports 320
Types of reports 321
Settings 322
Advanced settings 322
Templates, scheduling, and e-mail 323
Customizing Your Reports to Show the Most Important Numbers 324
Customizing Keyword Performance reports 324
Customizing Ad Performance reports 326
Discovering What to Do with the Data 328
Chapter 15: Making More Sales with Google Analytics . . . . . . . . . .329
Installing Analytics on Your Web site 331
Creating an Analytics account 331
Adding tracking code to your Web pages 332
Configuring Analytics 333
Configuring goals and funnels 337
E-commerce setup 339
Making Sense of the Data 339
Checking for data integrity 339
Viewing your data in the Dashboard 340

Adding a Welcome Video to the Landing Page 363
As Seen on TV Ads and Web Copy 364
Plugging in the Blender with Risk Reversal 365
Getting the Basics Right 366
Letting Visitors Choose Their Own Sales Funnels 368
15-Cent Click to $1700 Customer in Minutes 369
Local Search with Video Web Site 370
Generating B2B Leads Without Cold Calling 370
Understanding and Answering Customer Objections 373
Making Money in an Impossible Market 375
Task #1: Lowering the bid price 376
Task #2: Improving Web-site conversion 376
Index 377
AdWords For Dummies
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Introduction
M
ost business owners I meet have never heard of Google AdWords. My
prediction: If you aren’t advertising your business in Google within
two years, you’re not going to stay in business. The age of the Yellow Pages is
coming to an end, and online advertising — led by AdWords — is taking over.
For those who take the time to master this new advertising medium, it’s an
exciting time. AdWords represents a revolution in the advertising world. For
the first time ever, businesses large and small can show their ads to qualified
prospects anywhere in the world, when those prospects are hungriest for
their products and services. AdWords allows fine geographic targeting, like a
Yellow Pages ad, but (unlike the Yellow Pages) also allows advertisers to edit,
pause, or delete their Google ads any time they like, in real time.
Unlike a traditional advertisement, Google ads cost money only when they

This book strives to explain clearly, in layperson’s terms, the AdWords
mechanics and best practices for businesses large and small. You will dis-
cover how to build smart and elegant campaigns based on an understanding
of the direct-marketing principles.
This book isn’t meant to be read from front to back. (I didn’t even write it
from front to back.) It’s more like a reference. Each chapter is divided into
sections, so you can jump in anywhere and find out how to accomplish a spe-
cific AdWords task.
You don’t have to remember anything in this book. Nothing is worth memo-
rizing, except the mantra, “Thank you, Howie.” The information here is what
you need to know to create and manage successful AdWords campaigns —
and nothing more. And wherever I mention a new term, I explain it in plain
English. When the movie comes out (I’m thinking Kevin Spacey plays me,
although Daniel Day Lewis would also be a good choice), these explanations
will be in bold subtitles. I rarely get geeky on you, because AdWords is by and
large a user-friendly interface. Occasionally I do show off by explaining a
technical phrase — feel free to skip those sections unless you’re preparing
for a big game of Trivial Pursuit — Cyber Edition.
Conventions Used in This Book
I know that doing something the same way over and over again can be boring
(the opening credits of The Brady Bunch comes to mind), but sometimes con-
sistency can be a good thing. For one thing, it makes stuff easier to under-
stand. In this book, those consistent elements are conventions. In fact, I use
italics to identify and define the new terms.
Whenever you have to type something, I put the stuff you need to type in
bold type so it’s easy to see.
2
AdWords For Dummies
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When I type URLs (Web addresses) within a paragraph, for the rare snippets

comes can be nonmeasurable as well, such as convincing Web-site visitors
3
Introduction
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to reduce their energy consumption, support a political candidate or posi-
tion, eat healthier food, and so on.
I make several foolish assumptions about your level of computer savvy. I
assume you can make your way around a Web site, including clicking, typing
in Web addresses, completing forms, and so on. I assume you have access to
a working credit card (no, you can’t borrow mine) so you can sign up and pay
for AdWords.
I don’t assume that you’re using a PC or a Mac. You can benefit from this
book whatever computer platform you use: Mac, PC, Linux, Hairball (all right,
I made that last one up). Some third-party software works on Windows PCs
only, but you can accomplish 99% of the tasks in this book using just a Web
browser and text editor.
I also assume you can get Web pages created. You don’t have to create them
yourself, but either through your efforts or someone else’s, you can design,
upload, name, and edit simple HTML Web pages.
How This Book Is Organized
I sent my editor an unabridged dictionary and told her all the words from the
book are in it, and she could decide which ones go where (that’s her job,
after all). It turns out I was wrong: Google wasn’t even in the dictionary (the
one I got for my college graduation in 1987), so it was back to the drawing
board.
On my next try, I divided this book into parts, which I organized by topic.
Google AdWords is the big topic, but much of the book focuses on what you
have to do before and after AdWords in order to be successful. You don’t
have to read it in order. In fact, every time I wrote “as you saw in Chapter 4,”
my editor sent a slight electric shock through the Internet into my keyboard.

Next you master the ads themselves. Since AdWords is the most competitive
advertising space in existence (slapping your ad in the middle of 20 others
offering more or less the same thing), you must deploy advanced strategies
for creating compelling, action-triggering ads. Otherwise no Web traffic, no
leads, no money. I focus on text ads, since they are the most common and (in
their simplicity) provide the best opportunity to illustrate direct-marketing
principles. I also cover image ads, video ads, and local business ads con-
nected to Google Maps.
Part III: Managing Your
AdWords Campaigns
Keywords and ads are the bricks. If you hired me to build you a house and I
just dropped a dump truck full of bricks on your empty lot, you wouldn’t be
happy. The chapters in this part give you the blueprints to turn your bricks
into a sound and effective structure, and the tools to build and maintain it.
5
Introduction
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You’ll learn how to structure campaigns and ad groups, manage keyword
bids, and target the right traffic.
Part IV: Converting Clicks to Clink
This is my favorite part of the whole book, the part where my family dragged
me away from my keyboard as I kicked and screamed, “Wait, I haven’t told
them about live chat yet.” Once you’ve set up your campaigns and paid for
visitors to your Web site, you learn how to use lead-generating magnets to
collect contact information from visitors — and to use e-mail to stay in touch
and build a relationship. I also cover Web site strategies to extract maximum
value from each visitor.
Part V: Testing Your Strategies
and Tracking Your Results
Actually, this is my favorite part of the whole book (okay, my other favorite)

I’ve heard too many stories of AdWords beginners turning on their cam-
paigns, going to bed, and waking up to $16,000 craters in their credit cards. I
use the bomb icon when a little mistake can have big and nasty conse-
quences.
I’m probably less geeky than you are. I’ve learned enough code writing to be
dangerous (ask my Webmaster, who probably has installed a one-click backup
for my sites by now), but not enough to be useful. So I use this icon only to
impress you with my knowledge of certain geeky terms, and when I share a
snippet of code that your Webmaster can deal with if you don’t want to.
I’ve created a companion Web site to this book at www.askhowie.com. Many
of the processes you’ll implement can be hard to describe on paper, but simple
to show in a video tutorial. (If you’re not sure what I mean, try describing to
someone how to tie their shoes.) I include video footage of my own computer
screen, so you can see and hear exactly how to do what I tell you to. Also, the
Web addresses of articles, resources, and tools change from time to time.
When I suspect that the current URL won’t be valid by the time you read this,
I send you to my site, which will either automatically redirect you to the right
location, or provide an even better resource that wasn’t available when I was
writing the chapter.
Where to Go from Here
I’m thinking that a nice bowl of gazpacho would be nice right about now.
Fresh Roma tomatoes, cilantro, onions, some cumin, and maybe a few chunks
of cucumber, sweet corn and avocado floating on top. Wanna join me?
You can start reading wherever you want, but I’d like to point out a couple of
fundamental chapters that you will want to understand fully before spending
money on AdWords. Chapter 1 gives you the direct-marketing mindset you
need to use AdWords effectively, while Chapter 4 guides you to a deep under-
standing of your market. Skim Chapters 10 and 11 before turning on the traf-
fic to your Web site.
7