Landing page quality score
Perhaps the most important component of your Adwords setup, and search engine marketing in general, will be to create landing pages that are optimized for each of your adgroups. As you increase your landing page "quality score", you will also lower your click cost. This requires that each landing page's title, meta-description tag, h1/h2 tags, image alt tags, and page content all contain variations of your keywords with reasonable density. Use the keyword density tool to verify optimal (3-8%) keyword saturation.
Next, see what Google thinks of your efforts. In your Adwords control panel, next to each keyword, you'll find a link that rates your keywords and page quality with a score between 1 and 10.
Again, increasing your score allows you to pay less for a click than a competitor who has a lower score. If your quality score is lower than 8, start by making sure your pages are optimized for natural search results, that your keywords are well matched to the page content, that your ad text is well matched to your keywords, and that your ads are worded with appealing (makes people want to click) sales text. The more targeted and appealing your ads are to those who search for your keywords, the higher your clickthrough rate will be. And higher clickthrough rate contributes to a higher quality score. Increasing your quality score takes a combination of knowledge, logical thinking, creativity, and experimentation. It's work, but it's crucial to your search engine marketing efforts.
Also, try using Google's keyword suggestion tool to extract keywords from your own landing pages. This will give you a sense of how Google's robot views your page. Since Google does not use humans to review your site, it is important to structure your pages and content in a manner that Google's system will be able to index properly.
Trial-and-error with PPC search engine marketing
I hate wasting money, but I've had to accept that Google is sometimes a mystery that requires experimentation. I was once trying to advertise a website using 2 keywords, we'll say "keyword1, keyword2". So I bought the domain name www.keyword1-keyword2.com. For some crazy reason, Google marked every page on that site with a quality score of 1 (horrible). I thought I had the perfect domain name, and spent weeks trying to figure this out - emailing Google (getting cut-and-paste replies), consulting with other SEO experts, etc. I even tried promoting a competitor's URL, confirmed it's high score, and then copied their homepage onto my URL -- but again, low quality score. My domain had been "slapped" for no apparent reason, before I ever even used it. In the end, I bought another domain (www.keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com) and pointed it to my original content. Although I never added keyword3 to my Adwords campaign, Google gave every page on the new domain a quality score of 8 (very good). These were the same exact pages on the exact same server! So although Google's overall approach to PPC is usually quite logical, sometimes mysteries pop-up that can only be solved with trial-and-error.
Yes, working with Google is a love-hate relationship, depending on how you well you're doing with your Adwords search engine marketing .
Beyond Adwords
While Adwords gets most of the attention these days, it's worthwhile to experiment with other PPC platforms. The neglect of Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN can mean good opportunities, in the form of less competition and lower click charges for many keywords. Since Yahoo is only available to advertisers in the U.S. and Canada (last I checked), competition for clicks there is further reduced.
