Google AdWords can be a confusing beast to get control of if you’re not following a system for managing your account.

The 3 things you must pay attention to with your Google AdWords campaigns.

1.) Keywords - Keywords are the foundation of AdWords. You need to have enough keywords and the right keywords in order to get the most out of AdWords.

2.) Ads - Your advertisements must be written so that your potential customers find them attractive enough to click on them. (Clearly promote the benefits of your offer in your ad copy do not talk about how great your company is.)

3.) Landing Pages - Design landing pages on a proven layout. Your landing pages should have one goal and one goal only, get your visitor to take your call to action.

Look at how your keywords are performing daily. You do not want to spend money on Keywords that are generating clicks but no conversions. Clicks cost money and you want to put your money towards keywords that convert.

If you’re using AdWords to generate sales leads then track how well each of your keywords are converting to leads.

Use keyword matching to gain more control of how your keywords trigger your ads on Google. You can read about keyword matching here - http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6100 You can also save a lot of money by deleting keywords that are generating clicks but no conversions.

Track your Click-Through-Ratios (CTR) on your ads daily. Your goal should be to get a higher CTR over time. Google often rewards advertisers with a higher CTR by increasing the position of your ads without increasing your cost per click. The best way to increase your CTR is by split testing your ads daily and using sound ad copy techniques.

Use Google’s split test feature for your ads to increase your CTR’s. Google allows you to split test your ads in your AdWords account. After creating an ad you’ll see a link where you can create a “new variation” of your ad. Create two ads and let Google split the traffic up between them. After 20-30 clicks on each ad you can go to www.splittester.com and enter some data about your 2 ads and this tool will tell you which ad is going to be the winner & the loser. Delete the losing ad and immediately create a new one to begin your split test all over again. (make sure that you check the box in your AdWords settings to “rotate” your ads and not “optimize” your ads or the split test feature will not work.)

Once you have a winning ad delete the loser ad and create a new one to start your split test all over again. You want to run split tests on your ads for the life your campaigns, don’t stop!

Your landing page should be designed to generate sales leads or sales. Your landing page should have one goal, get the lead or make the sale. You should not offer too many choices on your landing page that could defer your visitor from taking your call to action.

Here’s Google’s guidelines for building landing pages - http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46675

Pay attention to the 3 elements above and you’ll be rewarded with better results.

About the Author:

Take him up on his free 30 minute AdWords consultation at www.JeremiahBaker.com