Become a Google AdWords Professional with Free Training from Google

It's not often that you can find a gift handed to you on a silver platter, but the Google AdWords Professional training program may just be such a gift.

For those who aren't yet familiar with it, Google AdWords is Google's online advertising program. Advertisers place their ads on Google's network so that they appear for targeted search engine keywords within Google's search results (and the search results of Google's partners) and/or on web content pages that accept Google ads. In most cases, advertisers don't pay anything unless and until their ad appears and someone clicks the ad.

The Google AdWords program has been wildly successful and is the online advertising outlet of choice for millions of advertisers. The AdWords program has wide appeal for all types of businesses - from the very small home business to large Fortune 100 corporations.
Managing a Google AdWords campaign mainly involves:

• Keyword selection to determine which search terms to target.
• AdWords campaign setup - groups of ads using various versions of keywords and ad text.
• Creating dedicated landing pages where those who click the AdWords ads end up. While this step isn't necessary, it's much more effective than steering someone to the site's home page.
• Writing one or more versions of ad text - the actual copy that displays in the AdWords listing.
• Managing the campaign budget, testing ad variations and monitoring results.

How Google AdWords Knowledge and Skill Can Help You Create a New Career or Home Business
The industry that caters to setting up and managing Google AdWords campaigns is known as search marketing, or SEM industry. While technically, search marketing may mean both organic search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC), many in the industry still refer to paid search as SEM and organic search as SEO.

As you might expect then, search marketing is a subset of Internet marketing. Many people (myself included) operate home businesses as Internet marketing firms. Some offer only SEO, others only PPC, and some offer both because many potential clients want both SEO and PPC and they want them to work together. Having this knowledge along with some experience provides the basis for an Internet marketing services business - a business that is in high demand. With this skill set you may also be able to find work at home or in an office working for an agency or you might freelance your services through freelancing sites such as Guru, eLance and others.