Some people want to see their website at the top of Google now and just can't wait for Search Engine Optimization(SEO) to kick in. After all, SEO can take months and even years before your site is charging to the top of the search engines, not to mention the amount of hours you've spent trying to get linked up on web directories. If you're one of these people and also have some sort of an advertising budget, then Google Adwords is what you need. But what is Google Adwords?

Let's start at the beginning. You know when you do a keyword search on Google and then all those results are returned? Examine those results closely next time and you'll see that some of them are actually sponsored links. This means that people pay to get their website in those spots. You'll see them at the top of the Google results page and at the right side. For example search for "cat toys" and see what comes up.

So you're probably wondering how much it costs to get your website in one of those sponsored spots, right? The anser is: it depends what keywords describe your industry or market and how many people are competing for those keywords. So if you have a company that sells cat toys, then you want to be listed when someone searches for cat toys. It would do you very little good to have your website come up under keywords relating to outdoor gardening. So Google Adwords works by you bidding on keywords. Basically, you tell Google how much you're willing to spend on Adwords for the month. Let's say $250. Then you choose the keywords you want and how much you're willing to pay per click. You only pay for clicks and not the number of times your ad is shown. This provides highly effective target advertising, because someone searching for "cat toys" is already interested and possibly looking to buy, they just don't know where to buy yet. So you tell Google that you're willing to pay $ .17 per click. Google then will place you at the top or in the right-side column under sponsored links. If someone else told google that they are willing to pay $ .30 per click on "cat toys" then they will be placed slightly higher than your ad in the sponsored ad sections when an Internet user searches for "cat toys".

So the key is to determine the best set of keywords for your company and then decide how much your willing to bid on those keywords. Then after a specific amount of time with those keywords, determine if you need to adjust your keywords, include other keywords and maybe raise or lower your bid for those keywords.