An effective AdWords ad is one that gets lots of clicks that is the only thing to be concerned about when writing your ads (except, of course, Googles editorial policy). If youve done your keyword research, youll get impressions; if youve got a page that converts to sales (or leads, or commissions), youll get a return on your investment. But getting people to your landing page is the ads job, and there are some things you can do to pump up your CTR, which will improve your ads position and lower your click costs.

First, some ad basics. Each AdWords ad comprises four lines of text: the first is your headline, which can contain up to 25 characters including spaces; the next two are your ad copy, 35 characters each; and the last is your display URL, also 35 characters. (There is actually a fifth line, the destination URL, but that's for another article). Obviously, the headline is most important, because its usually the first thing a searcher sees. If you can make your headline jump out from the rest, your ad will be more visible. Fortunately, Google makes this pretty easy.

You may have noticed that, when searching on Google, your search query is bolded when it appears in any of the search results. The same thing goes for sponsored search results: if you include the keywords youre bidding on in your ad text, specifically the headline, your ad will stand out.

But what if youve got hundreds or thousands of keywords? You cant be expected to write a different ad for each keyword, right? Of course not and you dont have to. In AdWords, your keywords can be separated into groups, aptly called ad groups. Each ad group should contain a set of keywords and phrases that all have a common thread. For example, if youre bidding on the term widgets, you should place each phrase containing that term into one ad group. You then write an ad whose title contains the word widgets for example, Get Your Widgets Here. You can even repeat this for terms within ad groups. For example, in your widgets group, you might have the terms red widgets and green widgets. You can take these out and place each in its own ad group, along with any other similar phrases. Then your ads will be even more focused for example, Get Red Widgets Here. The more keywords that appear in your ad, the more relevant your ad becomes.

Internet marketing guru Perry Marshall goes more in depth about ad groups, and his advice is great, but theres another resource out there that contains the best copywriting tactics Ive come across. Im talking about Chris McNeeneys AdWords Miracle e-book. Chris used to write classified ads for a living, and his mastery of the art is evident in the techniques he outlines in his book. Most of them are so simple youll wonder why they never occurred to you. For example, he talked about a method called "stop them in their tracks" in one of his newsletters. To stop potential customers in their tracks, you've got to come up with ad copy that tells customers to do the opposite of what they're trying to do. In keeping with the widgets theme, you could write an ad whose headline says, "Don't Buy Any Widgets!" Follow that up with some relevant ad text that entices people to buy your widgets, by including the benefits your widgets offer.

Okay, now I want you to try something. Pretend you want to buy something online youd probably go to Google first thing, right? Well, go ahead and do your search for whatever it is. See the sponsored links? Look at the headlines. Which one jumps out at you first? Im betting its the one that seemed most relevant to your search because it contained the exact information you searched for. Whats the headline look like? I bet at least one of the words is bolded (if not all of them), and Ill bet the rest of the ad lets you know exactly what youll get when you click on it. This is the best way to figure out how to write ads. Put yourself in the place of your target market, and then actually do some searches and check out the ads. Which one makes you want to click? Ask people you know to do searches and tell you which ads grab their attention. Youll probably find its the same kind of ad every time.

Find more articles like this at The Internet Marketing Blog. Any questions or comments, e-mail the author at ryan@theinternetmarketingblog.org.