If you’re interested in making money online, you are probably looking for ways to drive traffic to your blog, your web site, or other online offers you are going to promote. One of the most reliable methods to find targeted traffic and bring it to your online site is through a popular method called pay-per-click marketing. In pay-per-click (or PPC) programs, advertisers pay a planned rate for each person who clicks on their ad.

These rates are usually set through a bidding process, with the highest bidder getting the best placement. The number one PPC program is operated by the Web’s number one search engine, Google. The Google AdWords PPC program is the most widely used pay-per-click program among internet advertisers, and if you want to compete for advertising space through Google’s PPC program you will definitely want to make certain you protect your AdWords money.

Competition for the best keywords on Google’s search pages is fierce. The top bids on the most popular keywords can run as much as $50 or $60 each. It is easy to see that random bidding on untested keywords is a quick way to burn through your AdWords money, and exhaust your advertising funds rapidly. There are a number of ways to ensure that you get the most out of your AdWords money, and one of the best ways to protect yourself is to only pay for the best converting ads. Ads which deliver the best ratio of sales to clicks are considered the highest “converting”.

So how can you be certain which ads will convert the best? One good method to find the best converting ads is to use a process known as “split testing”. Split testing works like this: you devise several ads for each set of keywords you intend to bid on. Using the Google AdWords management interface, you can schedule these ads to be rotated evenly. That means if you have two ads for a set of keywords, and your ads are shown one hundred times, each of the two unique ads will be shown about fifty times each. By embedding tracking code in your link or landing page, you can protect your AdWords money by identifying which of the ads gets the most clicks and which of the ads generates the most sales. Once you’ve determined which ad sells the best, ensure the best use of your AdWords money by dropping the poorer performing ads.

Bad management of your Google AdWords advertising campaign can cost you a lot of money. Random bidding and failure to test your conversion rates for each ad can be fatal mistakes that will cause you to burn through your AdWords money all too quickly. If you’re planning to advertise using Google’s PPC program, make sure you don’t fall victim to a costly mistake.