If you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to running a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, it will cost you… a lot. It’s so very important that you learn how works. There are a lot of variables that come into play when you set up an Adwords campaign, it is not a couple clicks and watch the traffic flow, far from it. You need to take some time, do some testing and repeat until you’ve got your campaigns dialed in.

Of course, if you have the budget, you can hire a firm to manage your campaigns for you. There are many places that will do this full time for you. They can set up all your campaigns, write the ads, adjust your daily budget, find the keywords, etc. It’s not cheap but if you have more money than time it may be a good option for you.

The most important element of any Adwords campaign is picking the right keywords. If you’ve used PPC even a little bit you no doubt realize that some keywords will cost you a lot more per click than others. In order to save yourself a lot of money, but still get solid click through rates (CTR’s) you will need to find those keywords that ‘fly under the radar’. They will still get a decent amount of searches but they aren’t as competitive.

These ‘long tailed keywords‘ are actually keyword phrases. The one or two word keywords are almost always way to competitive for the average small internet marketer. Most smaller online marketers simply don’t have the budget to be able to compete on these keywords.

Another thing you will need to keep in mind is that all the major search engines, Google in particular, love to change things up. They really aren’t that concerned with the smaller online advertisers or the affiliate marketers. They are catering more to the people who actually do the searching as well as the big boys, the advertisers who spend millions a year. For that reason it’s tough for the little guy to keep up with the constantly changing rules which can make managing any Adwords campaign a real challenge.

If you want to lower your pay per click cost on a certain keyword, provide a quality ad. One of the ways Google decides how much everyone will spend on a certain keyword is by their quality score. Now, who in the heck knows exactly how they figure that but one component is your click through rate. The more people who actually click on your ad, the better your score will be and the lower your bid price will be.

The way Google looks at it is that if a lot of people are clicking on your ad it must be very relevant to the keyword you have targeted. That’s what they want so their searchers are kept happy. If you provide that relevance they will reward you by giving you a better quality score which can translate directly into lower bid prices for that keyword.

Google can be a little like the land of OZ, strange and mysterious and you never know what’s waiting around the next corner. To make your life easier try to find a professional to help you with your Google Adwords campaign management. If you can’t do that than at least keep these tips in mind when you set up your next campaign.