Advertising on Google can be daunting when you don’t know what you’re doing. Here’s how to do it right.

1. Determine the right keywords.

When using Adwords, you don’t need to bid on every keyword related to your business. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to determine what keywords will cost you, how often people are searching for them and which will be most profitable for your business.

2. Don’t use Adwords’s default settings.

If you’re not sure about the options that appear during your campaign setup, then you should probably be using a professional. Likely many of the settings that are selected by default when you start a campaign are not right for your needs and could end up costing you more money.

3. Monitor results closely.

Don’t just let your campaign sit! You need to keep a close eye on your performance to identify what’s working, what’s not, and where to optimize.

4. Improve your landing page constantly.

Your landing page plays a huge role in the performance of your ads. Adwords actually reviews it to determine how relevant it is to your ads and how good the user experience is. If you score poorly in either of those areas, you’ll be penalized with higher costs per clicks.

5. Make several ads.

Remember: Google will rotate your ads and automatically run the versions that perform best. Create several versions and watch the results, so you can fine-tune your ad copy and create even better ads over time.

6. Follow Google’s best practices for Adwords

Gee, I wonder what Google would recommend for maximizing the results of an Adwords campaign? Oh right – their best practices are right here, in plain view, for every advertise to use. Read them, implement them, live them. Or suffer the consequences: higher costs and lower visibility of your ads.

7. Don’t just pause poor-performing assets.

When you discover a keyword or ad is bringing down your overall campaign performance, it may be a good idea to pause it. But don’t stop there. Improve it, using the data from the rest of your campaign. Keep fine-tuning until you get the results you’re looking for.