SEO Vs. Paid Ads: Taking the Third Option

In the Internet, one of the most popular methods of online marketing is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO refers to the methods used by a marketer to naturally increase their ranking on Google or Bing's search results.

Organic SEO is achieved through creating web content containing the brand's desired keywords. However, the web content being created must be relevant and of high quality to achieve a higher ranking. Shortcuts that are often illegal in the eyes of the search engine algorithm are looked down on and can lead to banning.

Because SEO takes time to strategize and take effect. This is why another mode of digital marketing has quickly gained traction: Paid advertising.

Paid advertising, also known as pay-per-click advertising, is rather self-explanatory. It means paying for advertising spaces on search result pages. Each click on an ad by a user costs a marketer a certain amount of money. Links are identified with small icons as paid ads on the search results.

It also allows a marketer to have options such as choosing keywords related to the ad and the geographic location where the ads will appear.

Paid ad services, like Google AdWords, allow marketers to have advantages such as:

1. Better visibility. The best paid ads can dominate the top slots of the search results. Despite having low organic ranking, well-made paid ads can still appear on higher positions.

2. Faster exposure. Since organic SEO takes a long time to fully take effect, one can switch to pay-per-click instead. When made right, it can have the ability to reach the top page on the first try.

3. Visuals. Paid Ads allow marketers to display the product they are selling. This can be more attractive to users than a simple link to a page.

However, one should note that paid ads have no effect on the organic ranking of a brand's webpages. It can also be more expensive than organic SEO in the long run.

To avert this, online marketing outsourcers with PPC management services tend to offer SEO company services as well. It allows their clients the option of using one or the other.

The ideal method of online advertising, however, is not just to stick to either organic SEO or to paid SEO, but using both of them. Putting the two of them together in a symbiotic relationship can be beneficial. For example:

1. Paid advertising can be used as a testing ground for keywords before finalizing your SEO strategy. Through this method, you do not have to waste time experimenting

2. Data can be gathered from studying keyword search results from paid ads. These can be used to improve SEO strategies for organic ranking.

3. Keywords that cost too much money in pay-per-click can be shifted to organic SEO use. In this manner, the advertiser can minimize costs and still appear higher in the search results.

4. More users will be aware of your online presence. This is because your ads and webpages will be visible on both organic rankings and paid ad slots.

Search engine optimization and paid advertising are both efficient tools for online marketing. They both also have their advantages and disadvantages.

Through collaborating these two tools, a smart online advertiser can avoid the pitfalls that using only one tool brings.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Donald_Smithon/2139064

The Future of Marketing - in 2020 and Beyond

What is Digital Marketing? The Answer

We exist in a new world. We live a life in which the power to know what each of us wants, and the best way to give that to us, is at an unprecedented stage.

And whilst a lot of people find this scary, it also opens endless doors for ease, deeper engagement and success.

What am I talking about? Well, digital marketing of course!

What is digital marketing? That is a question which, despite being broad, full of triggers for other questions, and almost unanswerable in a singular sense, is seen a lot. Particularly these days when it is an exciting, still growing but fiercely competitive industry.

And, almost certainly, it is the question that brings you and I together on this page.

We’re going to break it down into the key segments to allow you to read it at your leisure, be that to learn new terms in an ever-changing industry, or to prepare for your next interview.

If you have any questions, or anything to add, please let us know!

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing refers to the advertising, networking or positioning of a brand through technological mediums. Whilst that includes television, radio, billboards and the like, it has generally come to refer to all online activities such as websites, social media and search engine optimisation.

Digital marketing is an industry comprising numerous specialisations, and endless additions to the field.

Whilst many would argue that digital marketing is that which exists online, there are elements of this modern force that exist in our offline sphere. You should be aware that digital marketing mediums like radio and TV, which we won’t discuss here, have been around for a century!

In general, however, digital marketing as we will be discussing it refers to: the use of the internet or related technology by companies to reach their audience.

In fact, if you ask Google that question, the snippet that pops up reads like this:

“Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.” So, fairly similar to our definition.

Typically, this form of marketing is done through social media, search engines like Google, and advertising across websites. And let’s not forget a company’s very own site (that’s digital marketing too!).

The other thing to note about digital marketing is that it is a beast that is still growing despite over a decade in the headlights. More and more users are connecting to the internet every day, as population growth and connections in the developing world boost an already massive potential audience.

On the audience

Above all else in the field, audience is king. A brand’s audience is who they want to come to their website, to fulfil a journey and, in the end, become a repeat client and brand advocate. There are two broad categories of business marketing that are equally important for differentiation in the digital sphere:

B2C is the one most of us are familiar with. Almost everything we do day-to-day can be related back to a B2C (Business-to-consumer) interaction. Be that buying food through to joining a gym.

With digital marketing, B2C is usually more ‘speed critical’ than B2B (Business-to-business) because the end aim is for a customer to complete the marketing funnel fast: from first contact to buying a product online.

That means in the B2C area, marketers need to focus on CTAs (Call to Action) and effective user experience strategies on their website.

B2B digital marketing, on the other hand, is more lead-focused rather than all about generating website sales.

B2B digital marketers will put a huge amount of stock in generating inquiries, delivering contact details to their offline sales team, and building an authoritative rapport with their audience.

If you’re just getting started in this field, in either of those categories, it’s important to look into a few parts of audience definition and management.

First, know your brand’s existing audience. Diving into the digital marketing sphere is great, but it doesn’t mean losing your existing clients (or shouldn’t, anyway!).

You need to understand demographics too. And be able to know what will make an interaction personal for the lead on the other end.

This fantastic quote on what digital marketers are giving to their audiences comes from Chris Cavanaugh for Forbes:

“The lines between traditional and digital are blurring and organisations are really beginning to embrace the idea of branding as an experience rather than a singular medium, channel or execution. At the end of the day, what we’re doing is creating and designing brand identities that aren’t strictly tied to physical spaces, digital technology or even senses. We’re creating brands that are experienced over time and in different ways.”

And in delivering this to your audience,in both of the above categories (B2C and B2B), a key component is going to be Data.

The importance of data in Digital Marketing

A digital marketing buzzword that unlike a few of the others is truly worth that title, is data. The benefit of digital marketing over traditional forms is that data on audience interactions or otherwise can be delivered to the team in realtime and with consistent and correct analytics.

We’ll be covering this below as a specialty field within the industry, but it is worth noting that, after highlighting the core audience (eg consumers), next will be deciding what data you need to collect.

At a high-level, this might be sales for consumer marketing, and emails for business-to-business.

So what are the different areas digital marketers can specialise in, and what do they consist of?

Types of Digital Marketing

When we consider different types of digital marketing, we need to think about every step of the marketing journey. This means a few of the key components we mentioned above, as well as many, many others that we didn’t. Let’s dive in.

Web DEV/UX

We’re going to start with one specialty that a lot of guides to digital marketing seem to – for a reason we can’t understand – negate from their list: Website development (including User Experience).

Before anything else on the web, your website needs to be well-designed, stable and effective at what you need it to do. Any responsible marketing strategy will have numerous channels working in tandem to direct leads to the website, which means if one fails, another one (hopefully) will work.

But your website needs to do its job, because there is only one. In digital marketing, website development and User Experience (UX) is critical to achieving your marketing aims, and there is a lot more to these specialties than a lot of us realise before entering the field.

SEO

Perhaps the one acronym that even those outside the industry will have heard by now is SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation. That’s why there are millions of hits on Google for that term every month.

It is easily one of the most, if not the most, important part of the digital marketing jigsaw. Neil Patel – a key figure in modern marketing – points out that dozens of new blog posts are published every second. And that’s just on WordPress websites!

Getting your website to stand out in a crowded, crowded room is getting harder and harder, and it’s why SEO is such a specialised field. It is more than just putting some keywords in and hoping Google likes your page.

If you’re entering the digital marketing sphere, we strongly recommend you do at least a short course in SEO to familiarise yourself with standard techniques.

Content Marketing

Alongside your website and SEO comes content marketing near the top of the food chain (though this list is not necessarily meant to be in an ‘order of importance’). Content marketing was a buzzword for a long time, and remains at the forefront of digital marketers’ minds.

Essentially, it means using content (not necessarily just blatant adverts) to drive leads to your feed/website/business. This can really take any form, from a traditional blog post shared on Facebook, through to a clever combination of virtual reality and offline interactions.

Content marketing is so renowned that the grapple for an audience’s attention is almost as fierce as the fight for Google’s front page. That means that, whatever form it comes in, your content needs to be 1) worth your audience’s time, and 2) effective in delivering your desired aim (eg send leads to website).

This specialisation can actually be broken down further, too. Ever watched a video on YouTube then listened to a Podcast on Spotify? Chances are, if they’re both for a big company, they’ve been put together by digital marketers specifically employed to deliver those goods.

If you’ve got a passion for video production, or think your face for radio is wasted in, well, radio, then honing your craft in a particular content fields – just as print journalists have – is well worth the effort.

Email

And whilst we’re talking about content marketing, a key part of getting that fantastic content out to your audience is email marketing. If you’ve heard of MailChimp or the like, you’re on the right path.

Whilst we all complain about email fatigue and the amount of time we could save having face to face or phone chats, email is – and appears to be for the near future at least – a massive part of our day to day lives.

That means that email marketing doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. It just, perhaps, needs a greater engagement with data. If you like data analysis combined with content marketing, this could be the specialisation for you.

Social Media Marketing

Here’s one that your average layman is probably familiar with. That’s why everyone gets annoyed with Facebook ads, right?! Social Media Marketing has taken on a life of its own in the past decade or so, from bands running MySpace pages out of their garage, to Apple spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on getting their social media presence just right.

Managing a brand’s Social Media is more than just posting the odd blog post or funny meme, though. These days, managers need to understand analytics, the use of data, the importance of proper audience engagements and a whole host of other things.

A big part of social media is also, of course, advertising, and knowing what platforms to use for what ads, how to craft the ads, and how to hit your audience is a non-stop learning curve. For everyone.

If you want to get in on this game, be prepared to jump in the deep end of data and adverts, whilst focusing on real relationships over template posts.

PPC

And advertising on Social Media leads us nicely into PPC (Pay Per Click). Now, this is technically under the specialisations of Paid Advertising or Search Engine Marketing or similar. However, this acronym is vital to understand when coming into the field.

PPC refers to any transaction in which you pay another publisher (Google, another website, Facebook et al.) for every time a user clicks on your ad on their site.

Digital marketers will spend years crafting their skills at researching the perfect keyphrase or the ideal target audience to execute the perfect PPC campaign. That means essentially getting the biggest bang for your buck (or quid, for those of us here in London!).

Learn more:  Pay-Per-Click 101: How Does PPC Work?

Other advertising (Native and Affiliate)

But paying Google to show at the top of their SERP, or Facebook to promote your page, isn’t the only option when it comes to paid advertising online. Native advertising came on the back of the spike in content marketing (see above), whereby websites with large readerships of their own content will accept payment from you, a digital marketer, to place your content on their site as well.

It’s important not to mislead leads however. Native advertising needs to be flagged as such, which means many readers will be turned off.

Affiliate marketing, meanwhile, means allowing others to help you promote your brand, but paying them a commission when a lead converts directly from their promotions (eg a shoutout on Instagram) to a customer of your business.

Native (and Affiliate) marketing is undergoing a huge surge in popularity of late as brands begin experimenting with the idea of small influencers online, rather than paying loads to have someone with a million followers advertise for them.

Design

Perhaps closely related to a few of the above specialty fields is that of design. Be it branding, website, advertising or a host of other digital needs, designers are always in demand.

There is a big gap between a Clipart website and a beautifully designed custom page, meaning if you’re artistically-inclined and happy to revert those skills to the digital world, jobs await.

If your design desires are of the website type, there is an ever-growing need for data-backed research into a new frontier of design, as the themes pumped out by publishers like WordPress become ever more styled and websites lose dynamism.

If you’re looking at branding such as logo and online adverts, the world’s your oyster when it comes to the amount of clients looking for your services.

Apps

Perhaps the quite achiever in this mobile-oriented world, specialising in app development seems to be a field hidden from the wider world and reserved for tech geeks in Silicon Valley. But the world of mobile apps just keeps on growing, and they’re capable of more and more incredible feats.

Along with marketing funnels, user engagement and data analysis, app development and maintenance requires awareness in brand management. But if you can successfully tie an app in with the rest of your digital marketing strategy, your brand will soar above many a competitor.

Data

So, we’ve left the big one till last. DATA. I put it in capitals because IT’S SO IMPORTANT. If you’ve not heard of data, big data, analytics and the rest by now, you need to do a bit of reading before entering the digital marketing world.

Data is – perhaps – the be all and end all of digital marketing. It’s the reason this form of marketing is so much more effective than anything the world’s seen before.

The data at our fingertips is genuinely mind boggling, and it’s the cause of consternation outside marketing circles (just look at the US elections discussion, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal). That’s not to say that using data makes you Dr Evil. It just shows how effective it can be.

Data doesn’t have to mean collecting people’s details either – it’s literally anything and everything. A click on a website through to the length of video a user watched.

Data enables digital marketers to personalise their interactions with individual audience members. Bland adverts or emails that you hope will hit the spot are a thing of the past – if you know how to use your analytics.

On that point, the scientists and masterminds managing data and insights are maybe just as important as the data itself. Because without them, no one knows what to do with this wealth of information.

If you’ve got an eye for detail, a love of spreadsheets and a lot of patience for scanning numbers and figures, than look no further than data management. This is an area of digital marketing that seemed to creep up on a lot of us a few years back, but looks set to continue being the primary driver behind digital marketing for years to come.

The next frontiers of Digital Marketing

So, that’s a (believe it or not) brief outline of some of the key fields and terminology that we’ve all become accustomed to in digital marketing. But as we keep saying, it’s a field that doesn’t sleep, and doesn’t rest on its laurels.

There is always something growing, or something coming around the bend, that a few but not enough digital marketers pick up on early.

So here are a few areas that are starting to make waves in the wider industry, but that have been utilised to great effect already for some years now.

VR

You’ve no doubt heard something about Virtual Reality. VR is becoming more familiar to us in day to day lives because of utilisation in museums, VR headsets for sale in gaming stores, and the wide use in big screen films.

But it still hasn’t become a commonplace strategy in marketing.

This is probably due to a combination of expense, lack of data to prove its worth, and unease at breaking the mould. But digital marketers who are making use of VR are setting a new bar for the rest of us.

That’s not to say it hasn’t been in use at all. As far back as 2015, the New York Timesmailed out 1 million Google Cardboard headsets to their subscribers, along with access to a VR film they created. It pulled users deeper into their storytelling, and no doubt created a whole shipful of new brand ambassadors – without technically advertising themselves at all!

The beauty of Virtual Reality is the deeper engagement that it provides to your audience, and the psychology behind it can be quite dramatic.

Some studies showed users in VR with either lighter or darker skinned avatars left the experience showing real changes in racial bias. Others, who performed as Superman-like characters in the VR world, showed greater altruism upon returning to their normal lives.

If that’s not reason enough to invest in learning the VR world for your brand, then maybe nothing is!

AR

Often confused with its more famous cousin, Augmented Reality is also about interrupted vision and changing your reality, but it’s a tad less immersive than VR.

Where VR removes a user from their current situation (for example, from standing on a street to flying through the air), AR just changes the street they’re standing on.

Augmented Reality is so exciting to people in the technology and digital marketing fields that, some years back, Apple CEO Tim Cook had this to say:

“I’m excited about Augmented Reality because unlike Virtual Reality which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but hopefully allows an improvement on what’s happening presently… That has resonance.”

The fact the world’s biggest companies, like Apple and Google, are directing their expensive R&D teams to work quickly on AR should tell you all you need to know.

Opportunities in the marketing sphere, for those with the patience to learn and the ability to think creatively, are endless with AR. And as with VR, it provides an immersive experience for your audience that has rarely – if ever – been matched in a marketing strategy.

Live video

I know, I know, live video is nothing new. But the reason it’s listed as a new frontier in our guide is because most companies and digital marketing agencies still don’t make use of this (optionally) cheap, ultra-engaging and minimally used outlet.

From Periscope on Twitter a few years back to Instagram’s 2018 TV reveal, live video has been changing the dynamic between social media users and their followers.

What has had limited take up is that of brands creatively and genuinely – and therefore successfully – utilising this new medium. But before you dive in, here are a few quick tips.

The critical part of brands using what has been a landscape for individuals and friends is genuinity. The moment something like a live stream comes across as planned, scripted and branded, users switch off. And research suggests they don’t come back.

So if you’re venturing into this world, have a plan but don’t script everything. Be happy to take some risks and go with the flow. Interact with your followers in a meaningful, human way and the engagement you receive will lend your brand further credibility with those engaging.

As with AR and VR, if you have a penchant for pushing the boundaries, specialising in delivering impactful live video streams for your clients could set you apart in coming years.

How to enter the field

Just as important as reading this guide to What is Digital Marketing is working out what you need to enter the field, and where to start looking for digital marketing jobs.

This A-Z guide to starting your digital marketing career and this guide to becoming a freelancer in the industry are great places to start.

On top of what’s outlined in those pages, the best advice you can be given is to immerse yourself. Whether that means building your own website about a hobby and diving right in, or reading as much about the field as you can.

People who are successful in this industry – and indeed, any competitive and fast-moving area – are those that are passionate, hardworking and willing to put in the yards.

Do your SEO course. Speak to people already working in the field. Learn a little bit of coding and analytics use. Hone your networking skills.

Last but not least, we’re always happy to answer your questions, so get in touch with us here if you need help or you can sign up here.

After all, the more new minds entering our industry, the better it is for all of us, as it creates fresh insight and pushes the boundaries of what’s achievable.

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A Step-By-Step Guide on How to Setup a Google Adwords Campaign

If you haven’t tapped into the marketing magic of Google Adwords, you could be missing out.Article Source

Google Adwords is a powerful tool that allows businesses to reach their target audience online by strategically placing your ad right next to search results.

Google’s partnership with over 1.2 million businesses is one of the most effective marketing tools available to companies today. And, it’s not just businesses that are reaping benefits. This is also how 95% of Google’s annual revenue is currently generated.

Want to know how to set up a Google Adwords campaign for your business?

The process is simple, straightforward, and your campaign can be set up in just minutes. When paired with the advantages it offers, it’s a no-brainer for any company who wants to get ahead in today’s net-frenzied world.

Read on to find out more!

How to Set Up a Google Ads Campaign for Your Business

Your SEO strategy is still one of the top ways to rack up new visitors. But, Google Ads is another marketing must-have for every business.

Google is constantly tweaking their products to improve the user experience and ensure that their products are leading the race in online technology.

Their approach to advertising is just one example of their internet marketing genius at work.

In fact, Adwords is set to transform into Google Ads later this month, as their newest, most improved, advertising platform yet.

Let Google’s Advertising Platform Help Your Business Reach New Heights

Everyone one knows that the chances of a random small business outranking a big-name brand naturally is little to none, right?

Well, Google makes it possible for you to place your company right under the search ribbon. Instantly, your business appears at the top of your potential consumers’ results.

Maybe your small-town retail business will never outrank big sellers like Amazon. But, now, with Google’s advertising mojo, your business can still be the first that customers see.

If you want to make sure that your business gets noticed, check out our step-by-step guide for how to set up a Google Ads campaign.

1. Start Here

The first step to setting up your campaign is to head over to Google’s advertising site and click the “Get Started Now” button.

You’ll need to be logged in, then you can select “Create Your First Campaign”.

And just like that, you’re on your way to creating a high-impact advertising campaign that’s guaranteed to get results.

2. Select the Type and Name of Your Campaign

This step is fairly straightforward. You will need to name your campaign and select a type.

If you are unsure what to choose, just select the “Search Network Only” option. You can always change it later if you find this is not the right choice for you.

3. Put Your Name on Google’s Map

Next, you’ll need to pick your location.

This is especially important if your company primarily depends on local business for revenue. Brick and mortar businesses, for example, want to be sure that they show up in local searches.

When you name your location, Google knows where your target customers are coming from. And, they place your name at the top of results for that specific location.

4. Set Your Budget

With Google’s advertising campaigns, you get to determine your budget. This gives every business the option to utilize Google’s marketing magic, no matter how big or small.

The formula is simple. You choose your daily budget, set your bids, then choose your keywords. Your daily budget is the maximum amount that Google can charge you each day.

Most days you can expect to reach your budget’s daily limit. So, you should choose a daily budget that you can afford and reasonably sustain.

Keywords are priced per click. It’s up to you choose a bid strategy for keywords.

At first, you may want to change the default bid strategy to the manual setting. This allows you to have more control over pricing your bids. If you are new, it could be a beneficial way to make sure you don’t overdo it during your first week or two and break the bank.

You can always revisit your strategies at a later date when you become more comfortable with the platform.

5. Choose Your (Key)Words Carefully

You won’t need to do a lot of research to determine the most relevant, top-grossing keywords. Google’s keyword planner does the work for you.

Of course, the most relevant keywords that you might expect would to yield the greatest results from online searches are often those that are most expensive per click. Remember, this is how Google makes a major portion of their profits, after all.

However, you’ll find that there is usually a less expensive alternative that will still earn you plenty of traffic.

Obviously, you’ll want to try to choose relevant keywords that offer the greatest gain at the lowest price per click to maximize your budget.

6. Sit Back and Watch Your Audience Grow

Now, for the fun part.

You get to see Google Ads at work. You are just about guaranteed to have more visitors to your site. But, if you aren’t seeing the results you want, simply go back and tweak your campaign’s keywords or daily budget until you come up with the right formula.

If you are short on time or can’t seem to create a profitable campaign on your on, the experts at PPC news can help you calculate the perfect winning strategy right away.

Adsense - The Powerful Passive Income Generator!

Webmasters have a revolutionary new method of collecting income from their websites.

Whereas in the past advertising revenue was reserved for those sites with large a coming and going of visitors, now even teenagers are making a quick buck with their online hobby blogs. People place Adsense on their online family photo albums, their blogs and their business sites. The minimum you would get, even with a small amount of traffic, is for Adsense to pay for your hosting costs.

Adsense revolutionized the world of paid advertising; banner advertising is based on the number of visitors you attract to your site, so the number of "banner impressions" dictate the revenue you receive. Google Adsense is quite different; it is the number of visitors that actually click on the advertising that determine how much you earn.

There is also a great disparity between payouts; because advertisers bid up the price for certain keywords, some ads pay more than others. As such, a site with few visitors but expensive keywords in their google ads can potentially still pull in a hefty payout.

Google really has taken the web by storm; attracted to passive income, more and more people are seriously capitalizing on their Google Adsense advertising. Some of the highest earners manage to attract enough visitors to make a four figure monthly income, just from using Adsense alone! This is not one of those get-rich-quick schemes and Google's Adsense success is largely thanks to the fact that Google already enjoyed a fantastic reputation before introducing the program. They are a publicly traded company with physical headquarters. This, and the fact that anyone can apply to use Adsense for free, has caused millions of people to sign up. For google it was a smart move, because now they extend their presence to countless websites and generate millions of dollars in advertising revenue. People were never reluctant to sign up, because the program is free. Google benefits by more people using Adsense, so offering it for free was the best thing they could do.

One of the driving forced behind the program are its relevance to each and every page on a website; the program picks up keywords appearing in the website copy and automatically displays relevant ads. This increases the chances of people clicking through, and the webmaster collecting more revenue.

People are leveraging their income by operating several websites and attempting to attract as many targeted visitors as possible; in many instances we can observe that people work hard at a site, then once it is established they can largely leave it alone, yet still collect significant checks.

A major concern for entrepreneurs was the danger of a competitors ads showing up on their site; thanks to the Adsense feature where it only displays relevant advertising. However this problem was solved by offering webmasters the option of filtering out unwanted ads. They can submit the URL of the competing site in their account, and any ads from the website will be blocked.

Google recently came out with a new feature: small targeted keywords based on the site's content are displayed; then as people click on those, a page opens showing a variety of pay-per-click ads based on that keyword. This gives webmasters the chance of displaying more advertising in less space.

Adsense also adds credibility to your website; the more focused the content, the better the ads will be and this encourages people to built high quality websites. These make the net a better place and generally provide a free service; site owners can afford to share their expertise or passions because they can receive indirect revenue's. The visitor does not pay for the information; instead the advertisers do, making the website's existence possible in the first place.

It is no surprise Google Adsense is the most widely used form of advertising; they have created a program that is beneficial to both advertisers and users with their "no click no pay" mechanism, or more popularly called "pay-per-click". Advertisers do not pay for ads that are not drawing visitors, and website owners are paid more for each click than they would if the system were based on the number of people viewing the ads, instead of clicking on them.

All in all Google Adsense has developed itself into a powerful tool, used by large corporations and the kid next door. They have truly revolutionized how the web thinks about advertising and made the process more profitable for site owners, while less costly for advertisers.Article Source

Google Ad Grants: How We Can Help Nonprofits Benefit From This

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About 46% of all non-profit organizations don’t have enough money to support the staff in carrying out their mission.

But what if someone gave you $10,000 each month to use in advertising costs? You could attract a lot of new donors.

With your advertising costs largely covered, you could use your other resources to support your team. And the boost in your donations could help you achieve your goals and reach new heights.

But how can you get $10,000 in monthly funding?

Enter Google Ad Grants, a program by the giant search engine with the sole purpose of helping non-profits grow and promote their cause. Read on to discover everything you need to about how Google Ad Grants help non-profits.

What Are Google Ad Grants?

Nonprofits have the opportunity to advertise on Google without paying anything out of pocket through the Google Ad Grants Program. Once accepted into the program, Google gives your organization $10,000 each month in Google Ads (formerly AdWords) credits.

Google Ads are the small ads displayed at the top of the search listings when you make a search listing. They also appear in the side column.

As the advertiser, you place bids on specific keyword phrases so that your ads will appear in Google’s search results when a user does a search for your keyword phrase.

You can specifically target keywords potential donors may use to find a non-profit organization that meets their objectives. For example, if you run a non-profit that helps children of fallen military veterans, you might target the keywords “charity to support children of fallen soldiers.” Then if someone types in a closely matched search query, they will see an ad for your charity.

After clicking on your ad, they would be directed to your landing page for you to pitch your mission objectives and engage them to donate to your cause.

Ad Grants Program Specifics

Here are some details and restrictions you need to know about Google Ad Grants.

The program delivers Google ads for you, but the ads can only appear on Google.com. You can’t post video or banner ads on partner sites. That’s ok, though, as the search engine is the most popular site in the world and you strategically use keywords to target your potential donors.

You should also know that Google will not manage your ads for you. You must manage your Google Ads account yourself or outsource it to a reputable SEO agency.

Also, your daily budget is set to $329, which will equal $10,000 over the course of the month. You are not allowed to have keywords with a Max Cost-Per-Click (CPC) higher than $2.

The keyword max will limit your ability to use the most popular keyword phrases in your space. However, you can effectively use long-tail keywords, which are keyword phrases that are four words or longer. Most SEO experts agree that long-tail keywords are more targeted, resulting in ad clicks from the best potential leads.

Take caution that if you do not use the monthly ad grant, you will lose it. You may find it hard to spend $10,000 on a campaign. We highly encourage you to consult our professional service to help you maximize your opportunity with Google Ad Grants.

What Are the Benefits of Google Ad Grants?

Obviously, having $10,000 in free Google Ads credits is a huge benefit to any organization.

Google Ads drives the most targeted and valuable prospects to your site of any marketing channel. That’s because you can strategically use the right keywords to attract a potential donor when they have their credit card in hand and are ready to donate.

Google’s audience is enormous and the potential to reach so many hot leads is worth the ad spend, even if Google didn’t offer its grant program.

It’s also very easy to become eligible for the program (more on that in a bit). You can enlist in Google Ad Grants and advertise on the best search engine in a very short time frame.

How to Become Eligible for Google Ad Grants

It’s surprisingly easy to enrol in this program. There is no lengthy application process. You must be a registered charity or non-profit but you cannot be an educational, medical or government organization.

You start the eligibility process by applying for Google for Nonprofits. This group is a fantastic resource for your charity. You can take advantage of GSuite and many fundraising methods.

The next step is to apply for the Google Ad Grants program. Again, this is a simple process that doesn’t involve a lot of time. Even if you have questions, the agency is there with you for support.

You will need to agree to operate in accordance with Google’s Terms and Conditions by maintaining a top-notch website. You must agree to Google’s guidelines regarding nondiscrimination.

How to Maintain Eligibility and Stay in Compliance

Once approved into the program, it’s important to stay in compliance to remain active in the program.

There are a number of conditions you must abide by. For example, all your ads must link to the same URL that was approved when you applied to the program.

Ads must reflect the goals and objectives of your nonprofit. That doesn’t mean you can’t sell products and services, but 100% of those proceeds must go to your charity.

You will need an organized account in order to engage your visitors to the fullest. We recommend conversion tracking so you can optimize your campaigns for the best results.

The Bottom Line

Google Ad Grants is a generous program from Google that can help any nonprofit raise funds. You can use the boost in donations to achieve the goals of your charity. You can better support your team without having to worry about the costs of promoting and marketing your cause.

Make sure to optimize your campaigns. Run tests to see how your ad copy is performing and try new headlines and ad text to see if conversions rise.

Of course, if you would rather not deal with all the campaign management, we would love to help you and your team. Check out our services page to see all the ways we can support your charity now.