As the marketplace moves from physical store locations to ecommerce stores, Google has become a valuable tool for helping businesses big and small reach their target audience online. Learning how to earn money from Google is an important first step in setting your modern business up for success.

How Do You Make Money Online with Google?

There are two basic ways to utilize Google to reach your customers and make money – 1) organic (or free) search engine traffic and 2) paid search engine ads. Below, we’ve outlined how to earn money from Google using both of these strategies, providing tips along the way to help you get the most out of your search engine marketing efforts.

2 of the Best Ways You Can Make Money Online with Google

1. Search Engine Optimization: Utilizing Google to Find Leads and Customers

When considering how to earn money from Google over and over again – search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of the most popular tactics that small businesses use. SEO is the process of optimizing your website and site content for search engines like Google. The goal is to make your content easy for search engines to “crawl” (or read) so that they can determine when your pages are best served to their audience.

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

There may be some costs involved with SEO, such as hiring an expert SEO agency to help you get started. However, one of the greatest benefits of this tactic is that SEO is, for the most part, free! You don’t have to pay Google money to place your content higher on the search engine results page. Instead, Google’s algorithm determines which content is the most relevant and useful for search engine users.

What this means for small brands is that it is still very possible to compete with your larger counterparts online. Big companies with big budgets don’t have the upper hand here as any company is able to create compelling, well-researched, and useful content. The more time and energy you put into developing great, search engine optimized content, the more you will benefit.

Another great benefit of search engine optimization is that the content you create keeps working long after you publish it. While an ad may have a designated lifespan, the SEO content that you publish online will keep being found by relevant search engine users for many years. That means that your content continues to provide a return on investment that can potentially reward your brand for years to come.

How to Get Started with SEO

If you want to learn how to earn money from Google, you’re going to have to learn more about SEO. There are many moving parts in your SEO strategy, all of which can impact how you rank on the search engine. Since this is just a general guide, we will provide you with a few tasks you’ll need to do to get started.

• SEO Audit

The first thing you want to do when developing and implementing your SEO strategy is to figure out where your website stands as is. Whether you perform one yourself or hire an SEO agency to help, you’ll want to get an SEO audit.

The SEO audit will show your website’s strengths and areas that need improvement when it comes to SEO.

This audit typically looks at the following elements of your website:

• Make sure all URLs are SEO friendly.
• Optimize menu and site structure.
• Identify site speed issues.
• Check on-page optimization – titles, descriptions, headings, content SEO, image SEO, internal link structure, etc.
• Check off-page optimization – evaluate incoming links while identifying and removing bad backlinks.

If SEO is not your specialty, you should leave the SEO audit to the professionals. Work with an SEO agency that specializes in these types of audits. They will use their knowledge and experience to identify areas that need some work and determine what you’re already doing well.

Once you have the audit information, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions moving forward about what needs to be done to improve your SEO.

• Keyword Research

Keyword research plays a vital role in how to earn money from Google. That’s because keywords are an important part of search engine optimization. The keywords you choose to target can make all the difference between bringing in lots of great relevant traffic and attracting individuals who just aren’t right for your brand.

Keyword research can get a bit complicated, especially if you are new to SEO. But here are some basic steps that you can take to research keyword opportunities for your business:

• Identify topics that are relevant and useful to your audience, and brainstorm some keywords that search engine users might type in to find information on these topics.
• Add additional keywords to the list by brainstorming complimentary or similar topics that also apply to your business.
• Use Google Keyword Planner or another tool to identify the search volume and competition.
• Choose the keywords that are the most relevant with a low to medium competition level and higher search volume.

There are several tools that you can use to help in your SEO research. However, some businesses don’t have the time or expertise to use these tools. Many small businesses outsource their keyword research to SEO experts who can quickly and accurately find the best keywords to help them attract more relevant traffic through Google.

Google Keyword Planner is a free tool you can use to identify new keyword opportunities. 

• Search Engine Optimized Content

Once you’ve identified a list of keywords that will help you bring relevant traffic in from the search engines, it’s time to start creating content. Develop blogs, eBooks, landing pages, additional website pages, and other types of content. The content should be relevant to your audience and provide value while using your chosen keywords.

In addition to writing great content, you’ll also want to make sure that it’s formatted for the search engines. Here are some basic guidelines for SEO formatting:

• Use the keyword in the title and at least one of your sub-headings.
• Use the keyword in the first 100 words of the content.
• Include the keyword in the meta-title, description, tags, and image text.

Want to learn more about developing search engine optimized content? Check out our post on the 5 Cardinal Rules of Creating SEO Friendly Content. This will help you create better content.

2. Google Ads: Spend Money to Make Money

You might already know all about the benefits of PPC advertising and how Google ads can help you grow your business. What you may not know is that if you want to learn how to earn money from Google consistently over time, then you’ll need to dive into PPC advertising with Google Ads. PPC ads help complement your organic SEO strategy to improve visibility online and drive more relevant traffic back to your site.

Benefits of Google Ads

One of the greatest benefits of Google PPC ads is that they help your brand see immediate results. As soon as you launch your Google Ads campaigns, you’ll start to see traffic coming in to your website. This provides the instant gratification that many other digital marketing tactics just can’t provide, giving brands an immediate traffic boost.

Another benefit of PPC ads is that they help bring more targeted traffic to your site. When you use highly specific and relevant keywords in your PPC ad campaigns, you are working to target only those search engine users who are interested in your products, services, or brand.

Similarly, you can use keywords that indicate a high intent to buy. Allowing you to focus on sales conversions rather than just generating brand awareness.

PPC ads are also easy to clearly measure, allowing you to better understand their value as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. With Google Ads, you’re able to see how much traffic your ads are bringing in and what next steps these individuals take after clicking on your ads.

The measurability of PPC ads not only allows you to determine how your campaigns are performing, but to identify areas of improvement.

How to Get Started with Google PPC Ads

The very first step to getting started with Google PPC ads and learning how to earn money from Google is creating your Google Ads account. You can sign up for an account in a matter of moments on the Google Ads website. Then, you’ll be on your way to creating your first campaign in no time. We’re going to show you how to create a campaign so you can know how to earn money from Google ads.

1. Select campaign type and name.

First, select the goal/objective you are trying to achieve with your campaign.

Next, depending on your goal, Google will show you the best campaign types to help you get there.

We recommend starting with search ads for your first campaign. As you learn more about how to earn money from Google and the ads platform, you may want to experiment with other campaign types. But for now, stick with search network.

2. Choose the location where you’d like your ads to show.

Decide on which geographic area you would like to target with your ads. This can be as small as you want (specific zip codes or mile radius around a specific address) or as large (entire countries). Choose which is most appropriate based on your target demographic.

You can really narrow down your audience using the geo-targeting capabilities of Google Ads.

3. Pick a bid strategy and set your daily budget.

When you first get started there will be a default bid strategy in place. To give you more control over your bidding, you should manually set your bids for clicks or conversions, depending on your objective. Google will suggest which is best based on what you told Google you want your ads to do. You’ll then need to choose a daily budget, this will be the maximum that Google will charge you per day. (There is a good chance that you will hit this maximum most days.) Choose a daily maximum that’s reasonable based on your budget.

You can manually set your bids or let Google do the work to maximize clicks/conversions.

This is also where you will want to set your maximum cost per click.

4. Create your first ad group.

You can add single or multiple ad groups to your Google Ads campaigns. Select “Add ad group” and enter the ad group name while choosing your keywords.

If you are working with a small budget, bid on more low cost keywords to maximize exposure as bidding on high-priced keywords will exhaust your budget rather quickly.

Creating ad groups with Google Ads is easy, and Google even gives you suggestions.

5. Write your ad copy.

Write ad copy that includes the keyword in the headline (30 character limit per headline) and within the body of the ad. Your ad copy should be engaging while clearly communicating what the search engine user will gain from clicking on your ad. You have up to 30 characters on the second and third headlines as well. Your display URL will appear under your headlines as show below.

Lastly you can enter up to 2 different descriptions giving more details about what you are advertising. Each description must be 90 characters or less. You’ll also be able to add additional options to your ad if you desire.

Bonus tip: Are you promoting a time limited offer? Then use a countdown timer! If you’re familiar with the FOMO (Fear Of Losing Out) strategy, then use this to your advantage. In fact, studies have shown that this psychological force called as loss aversion is an effective way to boost your ads CTR and conversion rates.

6. Your Campaign is Ready

After you finalize the copy you want in your ad, just click to the next step to see a review of everything we just went over. Google will show you the budget parameters you set, where your ad will show to users, and a summary of ad groups, keywords & ads. If you click the drop down arrow, you will see a more detailed summary of your ad as well. At this point, your ad is complete and ready. You can now begin bringing in traffic, leads, and conversions.

The steps above are just a basic overview of how to get started. There are many other options that you can adjust or use to achieve specific goals. The better you get to know the features and options in Google Ads, the better you will learn how to earn money from Google.

SEO + Google Ads = A Winning Combination

If you really want to learn how to earn money from Google, you’re going to need to take an integrated approach to your search engine marketing strategy. This means using both organic SEO tactics and paid Google Ad campaigns to maximize the number of new leads and customers that you bring to your website.

Why is SEO and Google Ads a winning combination? Well, they complement each other really well when it comes to bringing in new traffic from Google.

Search engine optimization is highly effective and essentially free in the sense that you don’t have to pay Google to do it. However, SEO takes some time to work its magic. As you have to produce a lot of high quality content and give it time to be recognized by Google and clicked on by search engine users.

On the other hand, Google PPC ads help bring in immediate traffic. They place your brand and its message at the top of the search engine results page, providing quick and easy traffic back to your website.

Though this does require an upfront investment (and lots of knowledge on how to build and maintain ad campaigns), it provides the ideal complementary tactic to organic search engine optimization.

Now that you know how to earn money on Google, you can start taking the steps necessary to gain greater visibility for your business. Utilize a combination of paid search engine ads and search engine optimization for organic results. If you’re new to paid search ads or SEO, you may find it challenging to even know where you should get started. That’s where a digital marketing agency can come in handy.