How to Advertise on Google & Grow Your Business

Advertising on Google is one of the best decisions you can make to expand your reach, find new customers, and grow your business. Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) is the world’s largest and most widely used online advertising platform, and by advertising on Google, your business can reach a potential audience of millions.

Let us help you get started with this beginner’s guide to advertising on Google.

How Advertising on Google Works

Google Ads functions as an auction, but unlike a regular auction, it’s not just your bid that matters – the auction takes the quality and relevance of your ad campaigns into account. This means that the playing field is level for everybody, not only those advertisers with the deepest pockets.

The Google Ads auction is centered around the concept of keywords. Advertisers identify keywords that are relevant to their business – and that searchers are likely to use when trying to find something – and bid on them, stating how much they are willing to pay each time a Google user clicks on their ad. This is where the term “pay-per-click advertising” comes from.

Here is our most recent explanation on how Google Ads works, which includes this visual:

How to Advertise on Google

Advertising on Google requires a Google Ads account, which is free to create. Once you’ve opened your account, it’s time to figure out how to use Google Ads to grow your business!

The following is a ten-step process for advertising on Google:

1. Establish your account goals
2. Determine your audience
3. Conduct keyword research
4. Set budgets and bids
5. Build your optimal account structure
6. Write high-performing ads
7. Create effective landing pages
8. Implement conversion tracking
9. Grow your remarketing lists
10. Make optimization a habit

We’ll provide more tips on how to optimize your Google advertising below.

Optimal Google Ads Account Structure

The first step is to consider your account structure. Although there are many ways to structure an AdWords account, such as mirroring the structure of your website or by product categorization, the most effective and successful accounts all share the same qualities when it comes to organizational hierarchy. The following figure shows an optimal Google Ads account structure:

The account itself is the topmost level. Within each account are campaigns. Some advertisers only run a single campaign at any given time, whereas others run numerous campaigns simultaneously. Each campaign houses various ad groups, each of which, in turn, contain unique keywords, ad text, and accompanying landing pages.

Campaigns are often organized by theme, such as a holiday promotion or back-to-school sale. Within each campaign, ad groups are often organized by products or services, such as Hanukah merchandise or school stationery. Finally, individual products, such as menorahs or notebooks, have their own targeted keywords, unique ad copy, and relevant accompanying landing pages.

The structure of your Google Ads account may not reflect this hierarchy precisely, but organizing your account in this manner will allow you to keep things organized and tightly themed from the outset, factors that can have significant influence on PPC metrics such as Quality Score.

Check out this Google Ads guide full of best practices & tips to getting started.

Advertise on Google with WordStream

Aside from the technical aspects of setting up and running a PPC campaign using Google AdWords, many advertisers struggle with the time commitment necessary to achieve success with paid search. That’s why WordStream’s software and free tools have proven invaluable to thousands of businesses advertising on Google.

The Google Ads Performance Grader: A Completely Free Audit of Your Google Account

To maximize the impact of your Google advertising campaigns, you need to know what measures are working and where improvements can be made – and WordStream’s Google Ads Performance Grader can help you do exactly that.

The Google Ads Performance Grader is the most comprehensive, fully featured free tool of its kind. In 60 seconds or less, the Google Ads Performance Grader performs a detailed and thorough audit of your PPC account, identifying areas in which improvements can be made as well as highlighting successful areas of your account and how they compare to competitive benchmarks for your industry.

Try the Google Ads Performance Grader for free today.