Attendance at Radiant Church in Colorado Springs had been declining for years when Todd Hudnall accepted the position as senior pastor. Recognizing the computer-savvy nature of their community, Hudnall and his team focused their efforts on improving the church website and using the Internet for advertising.

"Our position on Google searches was poor," Hudnall says, "so we decided to use Google Adwords. It has essentially replaced our large Yellow Pages ad; it's less expensive and seems to be more effective."

After two years of using Google Adwords, the number of first-time guests who learned about Radiant through the Internet has gone up 25 percent.

Adwords is Google's form of pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. When you perform a Google search, the standard search results appear on the left side of the page and sponsored links appear on the right. The listings under the "Sponsored Links" heading are there because they've purchased an Adword that relates to the search topic. That company pays ...