Three days into my experiment with Google Ads to direct readers to the paper, I find myself more than impressed. Since initiating the experiment, the initiative has generated 11 clicks from 16,056 impressions. (Since beginning in December 2007, the site, has 474 visits from 39 states and 23 countries resulting in 942 pageviews - an average of 1.99 pages per visit - with an average time on site of 2 minutes). These visitors are spending demonstrably more time on the site than when the paper was left to fend for itself. More than two years late, I have learned the right way to attract interested readers.
When using Google Ads, you set a daily budget that you are willing to spend, and identify a series of keywords relevant to your ad. Initially my keywords were very specific to education and unsuccessful; but when I added the broader, more popular "education" keyword, impressions and clicks jumped. Based on your daily budget, Google automatically places a bid among all competing ads on that keyword to determine the order your ad appears alongside page results. I've learned that writing multiple iterations of an ad is most helpful (and Google optimizes your results by showing the more successful ads more often).
The question to come is whether this uptick in visits and time spent will translate into increased interaction (through comments or direct contact) or references by other websites. Now, after realizing that this was the right way to go about sharing the paper all along, I'm continuing with the experiment to further optimize performance. Most visitors view only the homepage before leaving (55% start at the homepage and 38% end there). Now, I am using multiple ads focusing on the entirety of the paper and more specific ones focusing on just national standards or funding that go directly to the relevant article. By doing so, the hope would be that readers engage with the content and are more likely to click through to other parts of the paper, thereby lowering the number of quick entries and exits.
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When using Google Ads, you set a daily budget that you are willing to spend, and identify a series of keywords relevant to your ad. Initially my keywords were very specific to education and unsuccessful; but when I added the broader, more popular "education" keyword, impressions and clicks jumped. Based on your daily budget, Google automatically places a bid among all competing ads on that keyword to determine the order your ad appears alongside page results. I've learned that writing multiple iterations of an ad is most helpful (and Google optimizes your results by showing the more successful ads more often).
The question to come is whether this uptick in visits and time spent will translate into increased interaction (through comments or direct contact) or references by other websites. Now, after realizing that this was the right way to go about sharing the paper all along, I'm continuing with the experiment to further optimize performance. Most visitors view only the homepage before leaving (55% start at the homepage and 38% end there). Now, I am using multiple ads focusing on the entirety of the paper and more specific ones focusing on just national standards or funding that go directly to the relevant article. By doing so, the hope would be that readers engage with the content and are more likely to click through to other parts of the paper, thereby lowering the number of quick entries and exits. 
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