When I set up my first online business about 10 years ago, no-one had heard of Google.
At the time, they were a small start up company, working out of a garage in California, with no revenue and no business model.
While they had big plans for world domination, they were tiny compared to the big players at the time like Yahoo and MSN.
No-one would have ever thought that such a small company with a stupid name like Google would topple the search engine giants.
So how did they do it?
It was simple. People who searched on Google got more reliable, relevant results than they’d get if they searched on the other search engines.
If you searched for second hand cars in Dublin, you got second hand cars in Dublin.
And believe it or not, that wasn’t always the case with the other search engines.
What’s more, unlike the other search engines, Google didn’t have any annoying banner ads or pop up ads to get in the way of the user experience.
In fact, at the time, they didn’t have any ads at all.
Of course, that couldn’t last forever, because everyone has to pay the bills eventually.
So when they decided they had to start making money by introducing advertising, they had to be careful how they did it. The last thing they wanted to do, was to annoy their growing fan base, by ruining the user experience.
Their solution was simple - they’d avoid banner ads, pop ups and image ads altogether. The only ads on Google would be simple text ads highlighted as ’sponsored links’.
Rather than pay each time their sponsored link was displayed, advertisers would only pay when someone clicked on their ad.
This wasn’t a new concept - a company called Overture (who are now a part of Yahoo) already did something similar.
But there was one big difference.
While Overture gave the top results to the company who was willing to pay the most money, Google took a few factors into account.
It’s not all about the money!
The money was certainly a big factor that Google took into account when deciding which ad got the top paid listing, but it wasn’t the only factor.
The other factor that influenced their results was what became known as ‘Quality Score’.
The Key to their ‘Quality Score’ is Relevance.
Remember, one of the reasons that Google took off in the first place, was that their normal (organic) search results were the most reliable, relevant results out there.
Google wanted to make sure that the ’sponsored’ results were relevant too.
If the sponsored results and ‘normal’ search results were both relevant, having advertising on the site would actually enhance the user experience rather than deminish it.
So, they incentivised the advertisers. The more relevant the ad, the lower price you’d pay. In other words, if you improve your quality score, you’ll pay less for your ads.
The Key to Your Success with Google Adwords is Relevance.
The beauty of Google’s system, is that if you can improve your quality score by being more relevant, Google will either promote your ad higher up the listings, discount your bid price (or do both).
You can still get to the top of the results if you are an idiot with a cheque book.
But if you are smart, you can improve your quality score by having more relevant ads which closely match what people are looking for and by sending them to relevant landing pages.
If you do that, you’ll get higher up in the listings, get more clicks and pay less than your compeditors.
So remember - relevance is the key!!
Getting Results With Google Adwords - Day 1
Getting Results With Google Adwords - Day 2
Getting Results With Google Adwords - Day 3
Getting Results With Google Adwords - Day 4
Getting Results With Google Adwords - Day 5
Getting Results With Google Adwords - Day 6
Getting Results With Google Adwords - Day 7
Getting Results With Google Adwords - Targeting the Irish Market