What is AdWords?

Google provide two methods of appearing in their Search Engine Results Pages (or SERPs).

The left hand side of the page consists of “natural” or “organic” search results as compiled by Google, based on the relevance of the page links to your keyword search term.

To get here requires a knowledge and implementation of Search Engine Optimisation techniques, which can either be learned or outsourced. The basics of it are actually quite straight-forward.

But there are many charlatans at work in this industry, so select your outsourced partner carefully! Since you already found this website in the search rankings, you can tell this site has been designed around SEO principles.

Weeks or months of effort can be required for SEO to work, so be prepared for an investment in time, money, or both. The so-called “free clicks” you get from organic rankings are actually anything but…

Next, you can “buy” an immediate placing on the SERPs by opening an AdWords account and bidding on keywords that match your desired marketplace’s desires, and your own products and services.

Although the process is easy enough, it has many subtleties and pitfalls for the uneducated, and can result in much money spent and wasted, for little tangible result.

Again, you can either learn and implement it yourself, or outsource to an expert.

Keep in mind that buying traffic is all too easy with AdWords – the correct result is for your website to convert these visitors to a desirable and commercially useful outcome for both parties – you as the merchant, and them as the buyer.

And when you do sell, it has to be at profit, otherwise the traffic you’re buying will not be sustainable.