Note: This article is for the novice online marketers.

Lets assume you have a website that you wish to promote and drive traffic to. Lets also assume that you have heard of Google and have used their search engine before.

Google has an advertising program called Google Adwords. If you sign up to adwords you can make an ad appears promoting your website on relevant Google search engine results pages.

• Why do I say "relevant"? Because you get to choose what search terms you want your ad to appear for.
• Where will the ad appear on the page? It will appear on the right hand side of the main search results.
• How much will it cost? Google charges you per lead they send to your website from your ad. It is called cost per click. ie: You only get charged if someone clicks your ad.
• What will the ad look like? The ad is a text ad. It consists of a linked header, and a couple lines of summary text.
• Why do people bother with Google Adwords? Because you can target people looking for a website/product just like yours. Also because google controls over 50% of all searches run on the Internet, which equates to hundreds of millions of searches each day!
• Do I have to set up a campaign myself? Most people do, however there are plenty of SEO/SEM firms that can do this for you.

Now this is where it gets confusing. Google Adsense is for people who want to display other people's Google ads on their own website/webpages and share the Google ad revenue with Google.

Let me clarify Adsense a little...

• Why did they name these products with similar names? Beats me... maybe just to confuse everyone
• Is Adsense for advertising your website? Unfortunately the answer is "yes" and "no". In your Adwords campaign you can choose for your text ad to not only appear in Google search results, you can choose to make your ad appear on other people's websites (ie: Adsense).

To keep it simple, if you are looking at increasing traffic to your website then sign up to Google Adwords. If you are looking to make money on traffic that already is visiting your website then have a look at Google Adsense.