Deciding where to spend money in a small business is always difficult - with so many worthy things to spend your budget on. Using Google AdWords can seem daunting and scary – especially when it involves bidding against your competitors for keywords.

There are a lot of myths around Google AdWords, and some are causing businesses to hold back on using this method of advertising in their strategies. So I’ve put together seven of the common myths surrounding AdWords, so you can see for yourselves how flexible and impactful they can be for your business. 

Myth one: AdWords are expensive

Status: myth busted

The belief that only large corporations and people with lots of money in their pockets can afford online ads is simply not true. Google AdWords makes it easy to manage your ad spend by setting a daily budget and maximum bid.

You set your daily budget to any amount and have the flexibility to change it at any time. This gives you control over your overall budget and will never overspend. To further refine and maximise your ROI, you can select a maximum bid amount so that you’ll never pay too much for your ad.

Myth two: Spending money on Google AdWords will influence my website’s ranking in Google’s free search results.

Status: myth busted

Google’s AdWords and Google’s free search engine optimised sites are completely separate. Spending money on AdWords will have no impact on your search engine rankings. Likewise with if you were to cancel your AdWords, this won’t have any impact on your rankings either.

Myth three: I don’t need to create a new landing page for my ad

Status: Myth Busted

Your landing page needs to be relevant. It’s the page that loads when your ad is clicked. It isn’t enough to simply direct these visitors to your home or product page. By failing to tailor your landing page, you are missing the mark when it comes to making your ad more relevant.

To ensure your landing page is relevant, make sure the titles in your ad copy and landing page match. You also need to make sure that the offer or service your promoting in the ad is found on the landing page. The success of your ad relies heavily on the landing page, so take the time to perfect it.

Myth four: People Don’t Click On Google Ads

Status: myth busted

This is the easiest of the myths to prove wrong. Google is a massive global company, and there are thousands of companies bidding for AdWords every day. How much money do you think Google makes in one day on AdWords alone? £1 million? £10 million? Would you believe that Google generates over $100 million (roughly £70 million) in revenue every day from people clicking on their ads? Because it is true! With an average cost per click between £1 and £2, that’s well over 50 million clicks per day. So yes, people are 100 percent clicking on Google ads every single day!

Myth five: The more keywords, the better

Status: myth busted

Its common to think that if you have more keywords, it is more likely that your ad will appear in front of a customer. But this is a poor strategy to take. By choosing lots of keywords, not only will you get worthless traffic (that’ll cost you money) but you’ll also waste your daily budget. The more specific you are with your keyword, the higher quality of traffic you’ll get, and you’ll have more money to spend on each keyword.

Myth six: My competitors will make me pay by clicking on my ads

Status: myth busted

Businesses often worry that their competition will intentionally click on their ads and make you pay more. Google is wise to this so not only is this unlikely to happen to your own campaign; there is a robust click fraud program in place that detects and filters out invalid clicks in real time so that you only pay for valid clicks on your ad. So no need to worry about your competition, and feel safe that all clicks are valid.

Final Thoughts

So now you know a bit more about the myths surrounding Google AdWords, it leaves you free to decide whether to use them as part of your marketing strategy. Remember, don’t believe everything you hear, sometimes believing in the myth can hold you back.

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If you have any questions or comments about this post, please fill in the comment box below.  Or send me an email: shale@bonline.com.