Google’s advertising network reaches 90 percent of internet users around the world. Their ads not only show on Google itself, but they also reach visitors on major news sites, blogs, and other Google sites like YouTube and Gmail.

There’s no other advertising network that comes close to Google’s reach. But a large reach doesn’t mean it’s worth spending your hard-earned advertising dollars with them.

Is Google Adwords worth it? Let’s take a look.

A Brief History of Google Ads

Google Ads, originally called Google Adwords, is close to 20 years old. Google started selling advertising a few years after launching its search engine and that’s where 95 percent of their revenue comes from now, almost two decades later.

At first, these ads were only shown on the Google website but it wasn’t long before they launched their Adsense product, which lets other websites place Google ads on their sites. This multiplied the reach of those ads many times over and led to the 95 percent coverage they reach today.

How Google Ads Work

Google Ads ads work a lot like the regular Google search engine. When someone searches for something on Google, they get a list of the web pages that Google thinks are the most relevant for that search term.

Ads get displayed the same way. When you create an ad, you choose keywords that you want to trigger your ad. When someone searches for that keyword, your ad might show up in the results.

We say “might” because there’s another factor involved – how much you’re willing to pay for each click on your ad. Google’s ads are what’s known as pay-per-click, or PPC, ads. You don’t pay when it gets displayed, only when someone clicks on it.

When you create your ads, you can choose how much you’re willing to pay for each click. If there are a lot of ads competing for the same keyword, the cost per click will be higher. The order the ads get shown is partly determined by who bids the most.

There are other factors involved beyond the cost-per-click, mind you. The “quality” of your ad has a bearing on it as well, meaning how relevant it is to what people are searching for and how many people click on it. If your ad gets more clicks and people find what they’re looking for on your website after clicking, you may rank higher than another ad with a higher bid per click.

Google Ads vs Organic Search

You might be wondering why you would pay Google to run your ad when the regular search results (known as the “organic” results) don’t cost a thing.

This is a common misconception. You may not pay Google to have your website show up in the organic results but there’s still a cost involved. It takes time for search engine optimization (SEO) to work its magic and get your site to show up in the ranks and there’s a lot of work that has to be done for it to be effective.

Building links to your web pages, writing new content on a regular basis, maintaining your web server so your website loads as quickly as possible, and making changes to your site as Google fine-tunes its ranking algorithm are a few of the things you’ll need to do to get your site ranked in the organic results.

It can take weeks or months to see results, during which your website won’t be generating any new leads or customers.

Why Google Ads Are a Good Value

Google Ads, on the other hand, start working almost immediately. It can be as little as a few minutes from the time you set up your ad to the time it starts showing up in the results.

This lets you test things to see what works and what doesn’t. In the time it would take to get the first visitors from the “free” organic results, you could have your entire marketing funnel running like a well-oiled machine.

Google Ads Work with Any Size Budget

You don’t need to have a massive advertising budget to get results from Google Ads. You can run an effective campaign for as little as $5 or $10 a day if you set it up well. Start by targeting a small number of targeted keywords for the product or service you’re advertising so your ads only show to the people who are most likely to be interested.

Once you start to get data about what’s working and what isn’t, you can cut out the ads that aren’t and scale up the campaigns that are. Constant testing and tweaking let you “dial in” your ads to get the highest possible ROI.

Google’s own data shows that, on average, Google Ads advertisers generate $2 for every $1 spent on advertising. Who wouldn’t want to get a 100 percent ROI on what they spend on advertising?

Once you see what’s working, then you can start putting the work into SEO because you already know what connects with your audience. Using Google Ads to gather data and putting that knowledge into action for long-term SEO gets you the best of both worlds.

The Power of Remarketing

One of the most powerful features of the Google Ads network is what’s called remarketing. If you’ve ever looked at something on Amazon or eBay and started seeing ads for the same product or other related items on various other websites, you’ve seen remarketing in action.

Remarketing lets you show ads to people who have visited a web page, taken an action like clicking a link in an email you sent, not taken a certain action such as viewing a product on your site but not buying it, and various other triggers.

This gives you the ability to show ads to targeted groups of people, and make the ads very specific to them. You can offer them special discounts, remind them of an action they started and didn’t finish, and a myriad of other things to grab their attention.

Is Google Adwords Worth It?

Hopefully, we’ve answered the question, “Is Google Adwords worth it?” with a definitive yes. If you manage your advertising campaigns properly, you won’t be spending money on ads – you’ll be investing money that will multiply several times over when it comes back to you in the form of customer sales.

The trick is learning how to manage your campaigns properly. As Google has added features and new technologies to its ad network, it has become more and more complex. It can be a full-time job to stay on top of the latest changes, not to mention the time you need to spend managing your campaigns.

If you’d rather focus on what your business does best and leave the Google Ads work to experts, Pay Per Click Authority can help. Our expert Google Ads management service will take care of all the hard work, letting you focus on serving all the new customers that your ads will send your way.

Get in touch with us today to find out what we can do to help grow your business.

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