Often times I hear fellow Internet marketers tell me that their search engine marketing just doesn't work. Specifically, they're spending more on Google Adwords than they generate in revenue from the sale of products or services.

Companies who are large enough can actually work with Google to optimize their SEM campaigns. The problem is that most companies aren't large enough and are left to fend for themselves. If you're in this category, consider the following steps to optimize your Adwords.

1. Determine your optimization goals. What type of click through rate are you looking for? Would you be happy with a .2% click-through or a 2% click-through? How about your coversions. Based on other metrics, what would you consider to be adequate..3%, 5%, 10%, or more?

2. Research your website the your competitor's websites. What are the pros and cons of each targeted site? Can you improve your website to better focus on and enhance the purchase decision process? One thing you should focus on is determining the ideal keywords for your website or landing page. Google Adwords can help you with this. Simply visit the tools section and ask them to suggest keywords for you.

3. Create keyword suggestions. With the proper tracking in place, it's most adventageous to test as many keywords and keyword combinations you can. Add synonyms of exising keywords, add missing plurals and singulars of existing keywords as well as negative keywords. Experiment with match types and evaluate which keywords drive conversion.

4. Enhance text ads. Have your text ads been designed for ultimate conversion? Use your keyword in the title, multiple variations of ad text, and inter-capitalize display URLs. In addition, you want to experiment with your ad copy. An example of this is a client of mine who had a lot of click throughs but few conversions. After testing the insertion of price on his Google ad, clicks were greatly reduced and sales more than tripled. The result was more revenue at reduced cost.

Give these techniques a try if you want to boost the productivity of your SEM campaigns. With Google Adwords, you can only improve by doing. Follow these suggestions, test, and measure!