Being Google AdWords certified is
unbelievably helpful for those wanting to advertise either their own website,
or their company’s website on Google. You don’t need to become certified to
start advertising on Google, but it will sure save you a ton of time in the
long run. At Sherpa Marketing we are proud to be recognized as AdWords certified professionals (and Google Partner), meaning that we’ve passed
multiple assessments that assess our product expertise. We are qualified to
help you grow your business on the web using Google AdWords. And we want to
help you do the same for yourself!
Google
Advertising Basics
First, if you are unsure what I mean by
“advertising on Google”, this is what I mean:

When you type something into Google, in this case I typed “Sherpa Marketing”, you’ll notice that the very first thing that pops up is an advertisement for our company’s website. This was made using Google AdWords and can help people find your business, especially if you do not rank high on Google’s organic search (SERP - search engine results page ranking).
For instance, if you are a hair salon and
want to advertise to find staff members, you can make an ad that displays when
people search for related keywords, such as “hair salon hiring near me”, “hair
salons that are hiring”.
It won’t be guaranteed that your ad will
show up every time, it depends on a multitude of factors including budget, relevance
of the ad to the searcher, the quality of your ad, etc. The good news is these
are all things you’ll learn about in the Google AdWords course!
Day 1
1. Get
Started on AdWords Training – Time 10 Minutes
Type “Academy for Ads” into Google, or
follow this link.
Sign into your Gmail account. If you don’t have a Gmail account you can try
using your regular email, to be honest I am not sure if it will let you sign in
with something besides a Gmail but it’s worth a try. If not, it is very easy to
make a Gmail account.
Once you’re signed in you’ll see a
dashboard that looks like this:

To get AdWords certified you will need to
complete your AdWords Fundamentals,
along with one of the other 5
options. These options are: AdWords Mobile Certification, AdWords Search
Certification, AdWords Video Certification, AdWords Display Certification, or
Google Shopping Certification.
You can tell by the red circled item above,
that I chose to do the AdWords Search Certification. This is because it related
best to what I intended to do with AdWords, creating search ads. Search Ads are
what was circled in the first photo above. If your company does a lot of online
sales, you may opt to choose the Google Shopping Certification or Display
Certification. I recommend you do AdWords fundamentals first, where you’ll get
a small taste of what each one of the next options entails, then you can decide
after completing your fundamentals.
2. AdWords
Fundamentals – Time 4 Hours
Now that you’re all logged in and have had
some time to familiarize yourself with the dashboard, it’s time for you to get
certified!
Click on the “AdWords Fundamentals”:

You’ll be brought to this checklist of
things to go through:

The suggested time to go through each one I
found was fairly spot on, so if you go through all of them (which you should)
it will take you roughly 220 minutes, or 3.7 hours. Let’s round up to 4 hours
just to be safe.
3. AdWords
Fundamentals Practice Assessment – Time 20 Minutes
Next thing I would recommend is doing the
practice assessment. This should only take about 15 minutes and is a much
shorter version of the real test, giving you an idea of how you will do on the
real thing. You might need to go back and re-do some parts on the checklist to
get better at them.
4. AdWords
Fundamentals Assessment – Time 1.5 Hours
Alright now you’ve passed your practice
assessment and feel comfortable in all your checklist items it is time to take
the real test!

It will time you and you only have 1.5 hours to complete it, so take a break,
get some water, a coffee or whatever you need before starting! You will need an
80% score to pass, just like on your practice assessment.
Aggregate Time on Day 1: 6 Hours
Day 2
1. Second
AdWords Assessment – Time = 4 hours
As mentioned earlier, to be Google AdWords
certified you need to pass your AdWords Fundamentals (shown above), along with
1 of the other options. For the sake of this example I will walk you through
taking the AdWords Search Certification, although the steps will be similar for
each one.
Log back into your Academy for Ads account
you used for the AdWords Fundamentals. On your dashboard scroll down to the
“Get AdWords Certified” portion, and click on the desired one, in this case
“AdWords Search Certification”.

Once you click on it you’ll come to a
similar screen to the AdWords Fundamentals page. It will have a checklist of
all the items you should go through, and will look like this:

Once again each of the times are consistent
with how long each will take you. Thus, adding them all up this step will take
roughly 222 minutes, or 3.7 hours.
AdWords
Fundamentals Practice Assessment – Time 20 Minutes
Next you should do the practice assessment
which will be representative of the test. You can re-take this as many times as
you want, and it will also give you suggestions on which parts on the checklist
above you should re-do.
AdWords
Search Assessment – Time 2 Hours
When you’re feeling ready, you can click on
the real assessment at the top of the list. You’ll have 2 hours to complete it
and it will be timing you, so you can’t go overtime. Make sure to get cozy and
settle in, it will take the full allotted time.

You will still need an 80% or higher to pass so make sure you’re feeling ready before you start!
Aggregate Time on Day 1: 6 Hours
Aggregate Time on Day 2: 6 hours, 20 minutes
Total Time: 12 hours, 20 minutes
Hope this helped you figure out exactly how to get
Google AdWords certified! It’s not as daunting as you might have thought. Feel free
to send us any questions you might have.
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