Google Advertising Tools
Harold Davis
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Preface
In the five years since the first edition of Google Advertising Tools was published, Google tools for making money from content with advertising (Google AdSense) and for creating contextual advertisements (Google AdWords) have become even more important to every business with a web presence. This software is now ubiquitous in the life of anyone doing business on the Web. In addition, these programs and the related Google offerings have greatly expanded in functionality and complexity.
In the first edition of Google Advertising Tools, I noted that advertising on the Web is a $7 billion marketwith a 40 percent estimated annual growth rate. Give or take a few percentage points, this growth prediction has proven accurate, and the lions share of it belongs to Google. But no one could have known the extent to which Google has expanded into other areas of our lives, from video to office applications to mobile telephony and beyond.
Five years is forever in Internet time, and in those intervening years the Google AdSense and Google AdWords tools have grown even more useful and powerfuland more complex. The need to understand Googles advertising tools has also become more universal.
Every business and businessperson needs to know how to position advertising with AdWords, and should consider how to capitalize on the moneymaking potential of AdSense. Effective use of both programs requires a practical mastery of a number of related issues, including how to create an effective Internet marketing plan, implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO), understand the structure of search, and track results using programs such as Google Analytics. Besides covering AdSense and AdWords , this revision of Google Advertising Tools explains these topics.
Google Advertising Tools has been rewritten to take into account changes and advances in the software, as well as the different needs of our times.
The first edition of Google Advertising Tools explained how to write code that takes advantage of the Google APIs. However, this kind of programming has become a specialized arena that no longer belongs in a book aimed at the general business public. Therefore, this material has been omitted from the revised edition.
At the same time, the AdSense and AdWords programs have grown to include so many features that they can seem downright intimidating to someone coming to the programs for the first time. Dont worry: Ill help you host your first AdSense ads and launch your first AdWords campaigns easily and without fuss. More advanced users will find the explanations of many potentially confusing bells and whistles helpful.
By the way, Google is constantly improving the features and user interfaces of its advertising tools (as is true of many web-based applications). So, by the time you read this book, the way these applications look may be a little different than they do here. But dont worry: the core functionality will not have changed, and you should be able to use the directions in this book without any significant problems.
My focus in Google Advertising Tools is to help you run your businesswhether it is large or smallin a more profitable way though effective use of Googles advertising software.
Organization
This book is organized into three parts, with each part containing a number of chapters. Taken as a whole, these parts cover the gamut of the Google advertising tools. However, each part can be read as a self-contained unit, and each part is aimed at readers with different needs.
, explains how to create a successful website, how to create a marketing plan, how to drive traffic to a website, the nuts and bolts of SEO, how to make money from a content-based website, how to build a site that will get traffic, how to get your site noticed, and the many ways to make money with advertising on your site.
, explains how to work with Googles AdSense, the premier contextual advertising program for content sites. Participating in the AdSense program is probably one of the best ways to monetize your site.
, explains the nuts and bolts, and metrics, of the Google AdWords program, a highly successful mechanism that anybody with a valid credit card can use to place advertisements that reach over 80 percent of users of the Internet. Ive added chapters that cover how to improve AdWords performance, AdWords tactics and strategies, and how to monitor performance. A final chapter explains AdWords programs that go far beyond contextual text ads.
If you read all three parts, you will get a comprehensive picture of how advertising works on the Web and how you can use the Google advertising programs to your advantage.
Assumptions
This book does not explain HTML and will not tell you how to create or modify websites. To put the concepts and software explained into practice, you need to have basic knowledge of web fundamentals and skills, or you need to work with a webmaster who does.
, are intended for readers who have, or are interested in building, websites that can be used to make money with advertising. To take advantage of this material, you will need to be able to publish web pages and modify the HTML code of these pages; for example, to add affiliate links and the code needed to display Google AdSense ad units on your pages.
You dont need any technical skills to become an effective advertiser on the Web using Googles AdWords program, although great analytic business skills are a plus. So in a sense, , advertising on the Web does have its own complex discipline and metrics. If you want to take advantage of AdWords and Google Analytics tracking features, youll need to be able to add JavaScript code to your HTML pages.
To profit from , you need, of course, a service or product to advertise that makes you money, but webmasters who are simply interested in monetizing the content of their own sites, and not in advertising per se, will gain from an understanding of how the other half lives. An interesting idea to explore is whether you can profitably drive traffic to your site using AdWords and make more revenue from AdSense and other programs than it costs you to get the traffic.
Many people who are interested in business and the Internet should regard the parts of this book holistically: no matter what part of Internet advertising is most crucial to you, your understanding will be improved with knowledge of the full life cycle of planning , driving traffic, implementing SEO, and hosting and creating ads.