Using Google Adwords to bring visitors to your website can be an important part of your marketing plan. But many website owners and marketers fail to use the Google Adwords program to advertise their products, affiliate programs, or their website and don't realize the benefits that it can bring to their business.

Even though this can be a relatively inexpensive means to drive targeted traffic to their landing page, many have heard that their competitors using this program have wasted their advertising dollars. This has made many online marketers believe that they can't get any viable business or leads through listing their websites with Google Adwords.

It's true, you certainly can waste a lot of money on this sort of marketing campaign unless you know the right strategy and make your Google Adwords tailored specifically to "your market". For instance, you can pay for a lot of clicks from curious people looking for housing around the city of New York when you're a Buffalo real estate agent and you're using "New York Real Estate" for your keyword that your Adwords campaign is based upon.

The point is that you have to know how to use Google Adwords to selectively target the visitors that will click through and come to your real estate website. If you know the proper means to use Adwords, then you will spend less money and have a greater return for your dollars spent.

If set up right, Adwords works with precision and you only pay when a prospective customer clicks on your ad. You can use Google to calculate what it costs to drive this highly targeted traffic to your website landing page. You can also calculate the conversion rate of these leads into bona fide prospects and customers by using Google's special tracking code.

Research has shown that the average cost per lead or sale coming through Google's Adwords program is 29 cents. Compare this to $1.18 for leads or sales through the local Yellow Pages and $9.94 for leads or sales obtained through direct mail campaigns. You can see that Google Adwords can save you money.

The key to success with Google Adwords is making the program highly specific to your market and targeted customer. This takes a little research on your part. You see, Adwords works through keywords and keyword phrases. The trick is to target these so that only potentially viable leads or customers click on them. If you use your keywords too broadly, you will pay for clicks from "looky-lou's" and this is what will make Adwords expensive.

Using Omaha real estate as an example, If you target your real estate Adwords ad for the keyword, "real estate", you will be getting clicks from people way outside of your real estate market area. These visitors will probably never do business with you and you're wasting money paying for their clicks. Are you starting to see what I mean?

So, how do you use keywords to become specific and send you only highly targeted customers or leads interested in your product or service? Google provides you with four ways to use keywords. These are "broad match", "phrase match", "exact match", and "negative match" for pinpointing the ad delivery so your ads are clicked on by only the people you are targeting them for.

Broad match is the default setting for keywords you select. What this means is that if you have the keyword phrase, "Omaha real estate", each word is used separately. Someone searching for "Omaha history" may see your real estate ad even if they aren't searching for real estate in the Omaha area. The same would be true if they were searching for "estate taxes". You never want to use the broad match.

A phrase match is made by putting quotation marks "", around your keyword phrase. If you use "Omaha real estate" for your keyword, your real estate ads will only show up on search pages where someone types in a phrase using "Omaha real estate". You can see that this is good for your real estate business if your market was Omaha. If someone was searching for "Omaha real estate MLS, your ads would still show up as your keyword phrase is within the phrase typed in to the Google search.

An exact match is made by putting brackets [], around your keyword phrase when making your Adwords campaign, such as [Omaha real estate]. Doing this makes it so the person doing a Google search has to type in just that phrase for your ads to appear. The big downfall is that the searcher has to search for real estate in Omaha by using just that phrase and that phrase only. But, then again, this will make your ads highly specific to your prospect's search.

The last means to targeting your ad to your market area is to use negative matching to eliminate certain searches that may be irrelevant to your ad campaign. Let's say that you are using a phrase match like "Omaha real estate" but we don't want your ad on searches for Omaha real estate tax. To eliminate that possibility, you simply use -tax as a negative keyword. "-free" is used by many Adwords advertisers to eliminate people searching for free information or products.

Google provides a "keyword suggestion tool" to find relevant keywords. This will aid you in your research. Find as many keywords as you can with this tool, eliminate those suggested keywords that have no relevance to your real estate ad campaign, then decide whether you want to use them as phrase matches or exact matches. Once you've added these into your Google adwords campaign, decide on any negative keywords that you don't want and ad them to your campaign.

One tip at this point - The keywords that you use should be contained within the content of your website landing page. This is very important as it makes Google see how relevant your ad is to the content of the landing page that you are sending visitors to. Google doesn't like to be hyped or spammed and this makes it clear that you're not doing this.

Now you are ready to write your ad(s). The ad has to be highly specific as Google doesn't give you much space to write dialog. The headline can only be a maximum of 25 characters, the description is limited to 35 characters on each of the two lines, and your website URL (domain name) is limited to 35 characters. This means that you can't waste space and ramble. You have to be highly specific.

I highly suggest that you develop at least two ads for each ad group or campaign. This way you can test them, see which works better, then eliminate the poor performing ad and write another based upon what you've learned. This constant testing of your ads will make your click-thru rate increase over time and thus your ads will cost you less in the long run.

The headline is all important. This should catch searcher's attention by including your keyword or keyword phrase. After all, this is the phrase the Google searcher is looking for. Use the keywords that are most often searched for when people are "Googling". For instance, using our example, you could have "Omaha Real Estate", or "Find Omaha Real Estate" as your headline. Headlines cannot include exclamation marks, other superlatives, or the word "online".

The text of your ad has to be short and specific. It should focus on benefits, be shaped around your keywords, and have a "call to action". Make a list of the benefits of your product, affiliate program, or business. Then narrow that list down to the benefits that your prospects would most likely be interested in. Such as, "solves your biggest problem" or "free download".

Since Google Adwords works on keywords, be sure to use your keywords in your text. Here again is where the Google Keyword Tool comes in handy. You have to know what your customers are looking for and the Keyword Tool will give you a list of the most searched for keywords.

Get inside the head of your prospect. You might think that one keyword or benefit is the best but is that what your prospect is searching for? One way to find out is to do a search using your keywords and look at the Google ads on the search pages. These most likely have withstood the test of time and work. Make sure that any benefits apply to your prospects and customers.

Another way is to create two ads and see which one gets the most traffic to your site and the best conversions once the visitor sees your realtor website. The ad that gets you the most leads and business is obviously the one that people are reading and think addresses what they're searching for.

If at all possible, entice the prospect to take action through clicking your ad. Most people like to be told what to do, so play to this urge. If you're trying to get leads through giving them a free white paper report, don't put "It's Free!" in your ad, say something like "Free to Download!" as this tells them what to do.

Be sure to make your ads specific to your location if your product or business is location specific. This will exclude curious visits from outside your market. You don't want to use Nebraska Real Estate if you're listing and selling homes in Kearney, Nebraska only. This is where an exact match on your keyword phrase comes in.

Be sure to create the right destination (landing page) for your potential customer to go to on your website. If you're advertising an iPod, then they should land on the page that provides just that, not necessarily your digital products website homepage. The content of your landing page must match what the ad is for. Be sure that if you collect their contact information using an opt-in form, that form is near the bottom of the page and is preceded with relevant content.

Google will penalize you if visitors land on a page that merely has a form on it like many did at one time. They are in the business of providing searchers with information on what they are looking for. The landing page should also have links to other pages on your website. Google wants visitors to be able to peruse your site if they don't find what they're looking for on the landing page. These pages will also lead to more information and content that is relevant to their needs.

Lastly, be sure to track your Google Adwords campaigns to see what's working and what isn't. A few tips for this are assigning a unique page on your website for each keyword you use. Then see which ones bring the most traffic and sales conversions.

Track the click-through ratio for each ad and keyword. Google provides you statistics on this and on conversion rates. These are good indicators of how your ads are doing. By following the click-through as people navigate to your website landing pages, you can determine which ad and keyword combinations generate the most leads and sales. This will help you get into the minds of your customers and to write more specific ads to address their needs.

Google Adwords can work. Adwords can become an important part of your marketing plan and provide you with highly targeted traffic to your website. You can eliminate paying for worthless clicks by targeting your Google Adwords ads to a specific market, type of customer, or location with specific keywords that meet the needs of what your visitors are searching for.

If done properly, Google Adwords will be a benefit to your business. In this day and age of the internet, you can't afford to ignore the power of Google Adwords.

Jim Bruce has been making his own web sites and marketing online since 2000. He brings the expertise of experience to his web site design and online business writings. You can find out more about starting your own web site and online business at http://www.ristvinmarketing.com