This article provides a review of "Beating Adwords" the Google AdWords course from the owners of the internet marketing community Wealthy Affiliate. This an all inclusive AdWords course that guides readers from the initial setup of AdWords accounts and Campaigns all the way to advanced techniques using the AdWords system.
Having read and implemented many AdWords courses available online that promise to show you the road to riches using Google AdWords network is now shock that ultimately, some are more effective than others (surprise, surprise). After having read about the Wealthy Affiliate website and upon a referral from a colleague, I decided to see if they had anything valuable to add to my AdWords knowledge base.
After purchasing these types of courses there are four specific things I expect from the authors that I feel add value:
1) Significant valuable AdWords information beyond just the basics of creating and setting up an
account/campaign (as a matter of fact, I hope that this info is removed altogether but I have yet to find
a course that does just that)
2) Profitable techniques and little known information to achieve AdWords success
3) Insights on Managing and Analyzing your results
4) AdWords advice on how to play nice with and avoid being penalized by Google
With that said, the following is my take on how Beating AdWords met my criteria for the above.
Goal #1: 4 out of 5 stars
Beating AdWords contains quite a bit of beginner information. The first 4 sections of the course is basically designed for the Pay per Click (PPC) advertising and AdWords newbie. As mentioned above, I would personally prefer to omit this info from the course (once you learn this stuff, you will never need a refresher, believe me). The information on Affiliate Programs and choosing what to advertise contain some useful points but thankfully, the rest of the course builds logically and clearly to more advanced techniques and information (though you have to wait until Section 5 in the course to really start diving in). Bidding techniques, Ad optimization, Traffic Cost/Profitability techniques and Ad Copy instruction provide you with solid techniques to kick start your campaigns or get flagging ones back on track.
Goal #2: 5 out of 5 stars
At the end of the day, the most important question I'm asking of any AdWords course is, "can this course help me make money?" Some of the best information contained in this course certainly can (and so far, has) help you achieve profitability with Google AdWords. The most helpful thing about this part of the course is the discussion of relevance and how it can be implemented in your campaigns from start to finish (tips to eliminate non-buyers from clicking your ad is another BIG one).
It's no secret that Google LOVES relevancy, not only in your ads but also in the pages to which those ads point. Beating AdWords delivers here with added instruction on how to set up a "landing page" (if you're using one) so that it works in concert with your AdWords ads for maximum relevancy. If you've been using AdWords, you know what lacking relevance can do to your campaign, especially after the Quality Score slap that Google issued recently. This course helps you fix your relevance issues and avoid being punished by the AdWords system with things like Inactive Keywords and inflated bid minimums.
Goal #3: 4.5 out of 5 stars
The Beating AdWords section on analyzing and tweaking your ads for success includes how to use both the Google Tools as well as some proprietary methods that can be obtained through membership at Wealthy Affiliate. In my opinion, being able to EFFECTIVELY monitor and tweak your results can be the difference between success and failure with Google Adwords.
It is important that you obtain as much information on this topic as possible from as many sources as possible in order to incorporate effective techniques into your own system. Beating AdWords makes a significant contribution to this type of user knowledge base by covering good A/B split testing strategies, page optimization techniques as well as other approaches that can work together with an AdWords campaign (such as capturing leads if you can't capture the sale to maximize the benefits of all traffic that comes to your pages).
Goal #1: 5 out of 5 stars
Beating AdWords does an excellent job in helping you to make sure your campaigns are Google friendly. As mentioned earlier, Google takes relevancy very seriously. If your campaigns and content are not in line with "the rules", you can find yourself burning through ad spend unnecessarily or getting banned altogether.
This section of the course deals with the Google Quality Score and ways to work within its guidelines and maximize your benefits by doing so. Ad Grouping, Ad History, Effective Page Content and Relevance are all discussed and they do a good job in instructing you on how to implement in a logical, step by step manner (you'd be surprised at how many course authors do NOT do this).
This type of information is invaluable if you use AdWords as your internet advertising platform. Google goes to great lengths to protect its integrity when it comes to search and ad results. Making sure you are well informed on how to work with them should be a top priority of anyone serious about AdWords success.
Conclusion:
I subtracted .5 stars from Beating AdWords due to the large amount of material early in the course designed to assist the beginner in getting situated with Google AdWords. Though there is definitely a lot of useful and valuable information in the subsequent sections that can be directly implemented by AdWords users, I prefer the newbie information to be kept to a minimum. It is also one of the more "reasonably" priced AdWords courses. The relevance, targeting and Google Quality Score sections will help you fine tune your campaigns and, in my case, help you fix ones that are under performing (or downright tanking).
As with any profitable and effective AdWords course (if you have the time and money to find GOOD ones), Beating AdWords is written by those who understand how to succeed and profit on the platform and also have insights into how Google "prefers" that you use their system. However equally, if not more important, Beating AdWords is one of the courses that can help you to avoid doing the things that result in failure. In my experience, that's half the battle won.