Common Mistakes

If you fancy trying to list your business on Google's front page all by yourself, here's some simple common mistakes to avoid....

1) Make sure you only bid on relevant search keywords. For example, don't be tempted to bid on "Britney Spears" just because it has lots of searches! They won't convert into customers and it will drain your bank account fast, plus Google will probably ban you.

2) Make sure you set a daily spend limit on your advertising. Some people who "do it themselves" with Google get a very nasty surprise at just how much they spend before they even realise. With Google, you pay for every click and Google can give you a lot of clicks!

3) Make sure your adverts are well composed - you need to get a high click through rate otherwise Google will penalise you by increasing your minimum bid price to £10 per click (this is called the "google slap").

4) Make sure your website landing page is optimised for Google. This will allow you to obtain a good "quality score" from Google. The better your quality score, the less you'll pay to achieve the same ad position. It's possible to pay a tenth of the price of someone else in the same ad position with a good quality score!

5) Don't think it's easy to list your own company on Google without some serious amount of trial and error. Google give the impression it's easy to list yourself on their site but in reality it's actually in their interests to make you spend more, not less. Amateurs who don't know what they are doing are far more profitable for Google and in my opinion they purposefully make it pretty difficult for "newbies".

6) You may already have your website listed at the top of Google in the "organic" search results and therefore decide you don't need to be at the top of the Pay Per Click listings. This is a classic and often costly mistake - click here to find out why.