How To Become An AdWords Expert

Get the Flash Player to see this Google AdWords tutorial about building your keyword list.

The conditions for becoming Individually Qualified in Google AdWords and getting hired to manage other people’s AdWords accounts.

Besides getting great results from your own advertising campaigns, you can also participate in the Google certification program and receive a globally recognized stamp of approval certifying essential AdWords knowledge, and earn from consultancy fees and campaign management services.

Before setting up your first account, it’s important to prepare yourself with a few days of reading, after that it’s all a matter of practice and staying informed.

The three things you need to become an AdWords expert are:

Knowledge
Practice
A Google Qualification

Knowledge

AdWords functionality

In addition to our own articles, you can learn everything you need to know about AdWords from the AdWords Beginner’s Guide and after this you should progress on to the AdWords Learning Center.

There is additional information available from the Google Business Channel on Youtube, which has some indepth videos on AdWords and related Google products.

How to Stay Informed

After you’ve made the first steps in your AdWords learning process, you need to make sure to keep track of the changes that occur to AdWords (Google regularly updates the features).

The following blogs are a great start to keep track of AdWords updates and gets hints/tips on your campaigns:

Inside Adwords – the Official Google AdWords blog.
Google Conversion Room Blog – Tips on tracking and improving conversions online.
Search Engine Land – A news and information site covering search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry.

As well as the above blog you can also subscribe to our own RedFly Internet Marketing Blog.

Practice

Once you’ve learned the basics of setting up and running an AdWords account the next step is to manage several campaigns yourself for at least a few months, then you will move on to expanding your account and using tracking to optimise your account.

As they say, practice makes perfect and if you keep track of your accounts you will learn all you need to know about AdWords, but if you want to do more than just that you can start by increasing your knowledge, keeping up to date on new features, and taking the Adwords exams.

Getting Recognized by Google

Individual qualification is a way of demonstrating your knowledge of AdWords, you can only achieve this by studying for and passing the Google certification exams. To become a Qualified Individual,you must pass a basic Adwords exam called the Fundamentals exam and also one of three advanced exams. You can choose from three advanced topics – Search Advertising, Reporting and Analysis, and Display Advertising.

If you’re interested in obtaining this kind of acknowledgement, you must sign up for the Google AdWords Certification Program.

The good news is there is no minimum spend requirement to be Individually Qualified. So if you study hard you can get your qualification and start marketing yourself as an Adwords professional.

Or, you could hire a qualified professional to run your AdWords account for you.

Remember, you can watch this and other AdWords Tutorials on our Youtube channel too.
Further Reading: We recommend reading How To Hire An AdWords Professional next, or select from one of our growing number of tutorials below.