Content Site System

A couple of weeks ago, the Internet marketing world had been hit by what seemed to be wonderful news: Google AdWords Keyword Tool started showing actual numbers instead of vague graphs for search volume.

Emails were sent to all the marketing and advertising mailing lists, giving their subscribers the good news. One of these emails predicted that “it probably spells the end for services like Wordtracker.” A well-known guru expressed his excitement: “Holy cow! Talk about shaking up the planet!”

The famous keyword research guru, Jim Morris, dedicated a post on his blog (nichbot.com) to the Keyword Tool revolution: “All of a sudden - there is no longer any confusion about how many times people are searching for a certain keyword phrase on Google.com.”

Mr. Morris included in his post a screenshot of 8 results the Tool returned when he had asked for keyword suggestions for the term “blogging.” Here they are: blogging, blogs, blog, blogging software, radio blog, pink is the new blog, blog search, bad girls blog. Three columns follow the keywords list: Advertiser Competition, Approx Search Volume for last month, and Approx Average Search Volume.

Until July 2008, all three columns used to show a shaded bar, which was supposed to indicate the relative volumes, i.e. if the bar was completely green it supposedly indicated very high volume; half green equaled moderate volume etc. But now, the two search volume columns show actual numerical figures, while the first column, Advertiser Competition, still shows this shaded bar.

I went through the suggestions Jim Morris got for “blogging” and checked a couple of them. For instance, the Advertiser Competition bar next to “radio blog” is painted 3/4 green. Looks like quite a lot of bidders on this keyword, doesn’t it? One expects to find a lot of ads when “radio blog” is searched. Well, not necessarily. There is not even one ad for “radio blog” (at least there were none on 7/8/2008, when the blog was published and I conducted my search). Not in the U.S. nor in the UK or Canada.

The next keyword phrase I checked was “bad girls blog.” The mysterious bar is 50% green, representing more than light competition (Or does it? Nobody knows what it actually represents. The question is, why is it a secret? Why doesn’t Google tell its customers the exact volume of competition?) Anyway, in the case of “bad girls blog,” again, there is not even one ad in the English speaking countries.

You may ask “what is the problem? Don’t use Google if you don’t like it.” Well, the problem is that Google is not just a search engine. Google charged its advertisers over 16 billion dollars last year alone, and an advertiser must rely on the data Google provides him or her in order to set up a good campaign. If these data are extremely inaccurate, there is a good chance most AdWords advertisers are spending their money in vain.

With proper testing, education and and methodology you too can be guaranteed results from your advertising.

The first viable return on investment from your advertising is an inquiry for your product or service. It may be an email, a phone call or a visit to a store.

But, in either case, it is just an Inquiry for the goods, of one sort or another. It is the first practical evidence that the money spent is earning something tangible in return.

In today market it is easier to get someone to fill out a form online or send an email than it is to get them to go to a store and talk to a salesperson.

But, when he does inquire verbally from a Retailer, there are twice or three times as many chances of substitution, of ?Don?t-keep-it? or ?Here?s-something-better,? as there would have been if that same Consumer had written direct for it by Mail.

The ad which directs consumers to a retail store should have as much conviction in it’s copy as a successful mail order advertisement. Otherwise the consumer will be affected by lower price and something better sales tactics.

The ad must sufficiently influence the consumer to buy that product or they may go to the retail store and be convinced by the sales clerk to buy the sale item or one in which there is a sales contest. In this case the competition would benefit from our ads. Many proponents of branding, or name recognition are just drawing people into a store to buy substitutes. When Nike started advertising sports sandals Teva’s sales more than tripled.

The ad must give them a better reason to buy our product or service than he is likely to get from the Salesperson for the competitions goods that Salesman will want to substitute. It must give him this reason in such undeniable form that he can comprehend without effort, so absolutely that he will believe our reasoning Claims. It must accomplish this in spite of his natural distrust of all Ads statements.

Because the competing goods look just as fine when shown and recommended by the Substituting Salesman. The Curiosity Inquiry having no firm foundation of “Reason-Why” under it cannot combat the personal influence of the Salesman.

In contrast to general publicity “Reason-Why Advertising” or Salesmanship-on-Paper, ROI is predictable. Consumers need only be convinced 1 time, through “Reason why advertising” or “Salesmanship- on-paper,” we thus convince him, and more than fortifying him against substitution.

We also help his imagination to find and recognize, in the article advertised, the very qualities claimed and proved for it in the Copy. These qualities he might never have discovered for himself, nor appreciated if he had casually discovered them, in a mere ?Curiosity? purchase.

The consumer will become a regular buyer of the product because he first read or heard about it in a reason why advertisement. Repeat customers are much more profitable than new ones.

The difference in Results from Space in which this direct selling force of “Reason-Wh”? has been used, and in results from similar space filled with “General Publicity,” is often more than 60 per cent. Conclusive tests on Copy have clearly proved this, and preceding article cites a vivid example of it from actual experience.

If you feel like you are spinning your wheels with the same poor quality leads from your lead generation service, you’re not alone. In the past few years we’ve heard from more and more of our clients that the quality leads they used to get from their lead gen services are becoming worse and worse. More people are shifting their budgets to pay per click search where the quality remains strong.

Many lead gen firms use pay per click (PPC) search to attract their leads. Once they have a lead, they will ship it out to a variety of vendors, charging each the same fee. If you are seeing your leads get more saturated, it might be time for you to go right to the source instead of letting the middle men do that for you.

Getting into PPC advertising is not as simple as it used to be. Sure, you can set up a website with some contact info, but the competition has gotten more sophisticated in recent years. In order to really compete and push down your cost per acquisition, you’ve got to throttle up your effort and skills.

We always tell our clients that everything in the pay per click pipeline needs to be optimized. Let’s take a look at a couple items.

The first place to begin is with your pay per click ad copy. It’s fairly easy to place an ad and launch it. However, the pay per click engines are putting more emphasis than ever on “Quality” algorithms. If you are unable to make the daily effort to test your ad copy, you are going to fall behind those that do. A good PPC management company will run daily split tests for their clients. This is who you are up against more and more these days — experts who double and triple the click through rates of their clients’ ads.

Why is this important? Because it doubles or triples your traffic — and in turn doubles or triples your leads.

But don’t stop there, look at your landing pages (the pages where you send your pay per click traffic). Are the contact forms too busy or too buried? Is your phone number buried? There are ton of things you can do to convert leads at a higher rate.

Optimizing your site’s landing pages reduces the dollars you spend on each lead. You might be surprised, but even tiny changes can cut your costs per lead in half. We’ve seen it. So put in the effort or invest more funds in these mission critical spots.

Making the jump to PPC search may not be in your company’s core competency. If not, then outsource to a PPC management company. Their experts can mine massive keyword lists, pull keywords from your competitors, conduct the necessary and vital daily split tests, and give you insight into better landing pages.

Ditching those weak, watered-down leads and going right to the source can help your business boost its results dramatically.

It seems like every day the bid pricing on Google AdWords is getting more and more competitive. While this is true to a degree, the potential effectiveness of an AdWords campaign has also never been greater. If you haven’t had much experience with Google AdWords campaign management, then you may want to remember these four simple AdWords management strategies for your next foray into the world of PPC advertising.

First, it is a good idea to have a well-developed keyword tactic. Don’t just start arbitrarily picking keywords or using a PPC service’s keyword generator to add more keywords. A good AdWords management strategy is to do a careful keyword analysis before you start. Understand the goal of your campaign, and choose keywords that will help you achieve this goal. Also, make sure you pick keywords that are specific as possible. You don’t want people clicking on your ad if they aren’t truly interested in buying what you sell.

Second, it is a good idea bid for the first page, but not for the first spot. What does this mean? It means that unless you are truly aiming to dominate the Internet landscape and be at the top of your industry, you shouldn’t worry about getting in the top slot on a SERP (search engine results page). If you are in the top ten spots, then you will appear on the first page of Yahoo results, though it varies for each service. Try to let your ad do the selling, not your position. Placing yourself at the top of the search results is a two edged sword - you will get more clicks, but they will not be as targeted.

One of the AdWords management strategies that goes without saying (but still can’t be said enough) is to test all of your keywords, and then test some more. You need to remember that PPC marketing is like the stock market - it can fluctuate greatly on a daily basis. Ignoring your keyword results or click through rates or conversion rates for too long can spell doom for your PPC advertising campaign. It is vital that you continually monitor your campaign, and make the necessary changes.

Last but not least, you should consider placing CPM ads instead of just CPC ads. What does this mean? CMP is a term that means cost per thousand, and it refers to impression based pricing instead of cost per click pricing. So, you can place ads on a cost per impression basis on websites that cater to a demographic that may be interested in your product. If you sell lawn mowers, you may want to advertise on a site that discusses lawn maintenance. Where your ads appear is up to you, but it can be a great way to pick up cheap impressions and, ultimately, clicks.

By implementing these four easy solutions, you can increase your chances of success in the PPC industry. Good luck.

There are a multitude of PPC services that you could choose from if you’re starting a campaign. Yet, there are only a few real choices for a serious campaign. This is because of one reason - volume.

So what services are in the top tier of PPC (pay per click)? The industry leaders are Google and Yahoo, with Google AdWords claiming the lion’s share of the PPC market. Both Yahoo and Google offer a similar compliment of features, and either can be used to manage a very successful PPC campaign. So what differentiates the two? Well, if you are looking to run a very large-scale pay per click campaign, then Google is the most logical choice. The number of potential customers in the Google enterprise is staggering when compared directly against the leading other search engine services.

Yahoo’s search marketing service has many of its own merits, and can work very effectively for a campaign that doesn’t require its owner to completely dominate their particular industry. Many people choose to use both Google and Yahoo, creating a campaign that incorporates both of these top PPC services. For someone with a larger budget, this can be a very effective way to maximize reach.

Just because Google and Yahoo are the biggest names in the game doesn’t mean there aren’t other relevant players. Several others exist, such as Ask.com and MSN. And, on a smaller scale, there are several other niche PPC providers. Sometimes, these services can actually be a better bet for a small campaign, because certain keywords can be less saturated than with the big services. This makes is possible to have a lower cost per click average, and thus makes it possible to increase the profitability of the campaign. Of course, the biggest drawback of these services is their scope. On a large scale, they can’t compete with the numbers of the top PPC services.

In truth, almost all of the PPC services you can choose from offer very similar features and benefits. There is a standard across the PPC industry, and most services comply tot his. But as Google and Yahoo are very large media companies, they have developed very smooth systems that are bug-free and streamlined. But what really separates the top PPC services is simply volume. Google does more customer volume than all the other PPC services combined. Yahoo is a solid (though distant) second place. Both of these campaigns can be used on a large-scale basis, while the other services are perhaps better suited for smaller, more specified PPC campaigns.

It seems like every day the bid pricing on Google AdWords is getting more and more competitive. While this is true to a degree, the potential effectiveness of an AdWords campaign has also never been greater. If you haven’t had much experience with Google AdWords campaign management, then you may want to remember these four simple AdWords management strategies for your next foray into the world of PPC advertising.

Before you can even start to run an effective campaign, you need to carefully choose relevant keywords. These, after all, will form the backbone of your campaign. Don’t just arbitrarily add keywords to create a broader potential consumer base. And, don’t use a relevant keyword generator unless it really is generating effective keywords. Remember that you only want clicks that will turn into sales. Empty clicks just means money down the drain.

The second thing you should consider is the position of your bid. Many inexperienced PPC campaign mangers think that it is better to bid for the top spot. However, this is rarely the case. Unless you are the undisputed leader of your industry, this is not a good idea. The top spot is a very wasteful place to be. You will get many clicks that have no chance of resulting in sales. Instead, try to bid for the first page, but not the first spot. Use your text ad to sell yourself, not your positional ranking. A higher ranking will mean more clicks, but a lower conversion rating on the backend.

The third strategy for running an effective AdWords campaign is to test, test, and then test some more. Don’t leave your campaign unmonitored and just everything is going to plan just because it did the week before. Your profitability of your keywords will likely be in a constant state of flux. As such, you need to continually monitor and test their effectiveness. PPC advertising is an open marketplace, and so ebbs and flows are to be expected on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis.

Last but not least, you should consider placing CPM ads instead of just CPC ads. What does this mean? CMP is a term that means cost per thousand, and it refers to impression based pricing instead of cost per click pricing. So, you can place ads on a cost per impression basis on websites that cater to a demographic that may be interested in your product. If you sell lawn mowers, you may want to advertise on a site that discusses lawn maintenance. Where your ads appear is up to you, but it can be a great way to pick up cheap impressions and, ultimately, clicks.

Try using these four simple strategies the next time you manage a PPC campaign. Doing so can increase efficiency and profitability.

When it comes to PPC (pay per click) advertising, it seems like the marketplace is getting continually more saturated and competitive, making it harder than ever to run a cost-effective campaign. This is true to some extent, but there are still ways to run a campaign that gets great ROI. Here are a few PPC bid management techniques you can utilize to do just that.

The first thing you should do is stay within your budget. Don’t get caught up in bidding wars if you don’t have to. These are often initiated by rookies to the PPC game, and can cost you dearly if you get involved. If you spend too much on your clicks, you will erase the profit you earn from backend conversions. If you aren’t getting the number of clicks you desire, then try to make other small changes such as modifying your keywords or tweaking the text of your ads. Upping your budget is the last thing you want to do. After all, you set your budget for a reason - to make sure you turn a profit.

Next, you should not bid to get in the top spot, now matter how big your budget. Unless you are the undisputed leader in your industry, or are attempting to become the undisputed leader in your industry, bidding for the top spot is a quick way to erase your margins. You should let your ad sell your service, not the spot you are in. Plus, many people click on the top spot without thinking too much about the contents of the ad. This is the last thing you want, because you are lowering the quality of your leads. If you’re going to pay for a click, you want to make sure it’s for someone legitimately interested in what you sell. This should be the guiding light of your PPC bid management techniques.

Also, there is a technique called bid jamming that you might want to try. Basically, some PPC services have a visible bid system, meaning you can see the bids of all your competitors. Something you may not know is that your competitors don’t pay the price they bid for each click, but instead pay one cent higher than their next closest competitors bid. If you bid one cent lower than your next competitor, it will force him/her to pay full price for the bid, something that is hard to keep up for long.

These are some basic bid management techniques that can help you maximize ROI with your PPC advertising campaign. Remember that patience can go a long way to maximizing the efficiency of your PPC campaign. Don’t be afraid to wait for your moment, and then seize it when it comes.

In the UK, a PPC campaign can be a great way to boost your sales with some targeted Internet marketing. Sometimes, though, the required time to manage such a campaign is simply too much for the company to handle internally. At this point, there are a host of PPC management UK companies who will offer to manage your campaign for you. This is the basic idea of what is involved.

When a company offers PPC campaign management, they are usually offering to do 3 things for you. First, they will do a careful keyword analysis for keyword and keyword phrases related to your industry. Most access similar information to do this, and therefore will draw up similar results. The PPC management UK company will attempt to create the best possible mix of high-volume keywords and very targeted keywords, giving your campaign some diversity and, ultimately, giving it the best chance for success.

Secondly, the majority of PPC management companies will provide you the option of writing your own ads, or writing them for you. If you choose to have the company do it, they will likely charge by the keyword groups that your keywords are formulated into, as each will require a slightly different ad. This improves the relevance of your ads, and the chances that prospects will click on your ads. Perhaps more importantly, specific ads will increase your backend conversion rate once prospects are at your site.

The third main feature of PPC management companies is the monitoring of your campaign. This means that they will track detailed statistics of your campaign’s progress and report these numbers back to you, along with suggestions for new strategies if they are needed. This is the most valuable service to many people who use PPC management because it is time consuming.

After taking these factors into consideration, you should determine if a PPC management service is a good fit for your needs. If you are conducting a smaller campaign, it will probably not be cost-effective to hire out a professional service. With a larger campaign, it may be worth it to save yourself valuable time. And, on a larger scale, you have a greater chance of offsetting these costs with increased margins. It is important to remember that a PPC management UK company will charge you for setting up your campaign, and then take a percentage of your monthly budget. If you can’t afford this double billing, then it may be best to run your own PPC campaign - something that is very doable.

Anyone wanting to make money with Adwords needs to keep in touch with the new strategies hitting the internet, as well as Google’s own policy changes.

In 2007 it was ‘kill your competitors’ with Day Job Killer and then the many and varied spy systems that tracked your competitors’ ads so that you could copy them and blast them out of the water. Some of these systems were on a hugely expensive membership plan.

So there were a lot of advertisers who could not afford those systems or maybe simply did not want to spend all of their time tracking, spying and tweaking in order to cover the cost of their membership. They began to look around for a new direction, and early in 2008 we saw the first hints that marketers were rediscovering something that they had previously considered dead - the content network.

If you are new to Adwords, you may not realize that the content and search networks were once one and the same. Google divided them so that advertisers could have more control in the days when click fraud was prevalent, and most advertisers immediately turned off the content network for their ads.

However, times have changed and click fraud is no longer a serious problem. Google now shuts down any Adsense account suspected of ‘invalid clicks’. This is bad news for the Adsense site owners who can now be put out of business by any bored visitor who repeatedly clicks on their ads. But for Adwords advertisers, it means that the content network is up for grabs again.

The content network has several advantages over the search network. First, the cost per click is generally lower. Second, you do not have to fight off the competition in the same way. Third, you have a lot more control - you can specify the exact sites where you want your ad to show.

The last point there is very important. When setting up a campaign for the content network, always specify target sites for your ads. In fact, you should specify not only the site, but the exact pages of the site.

Just as you would with search terms, you need to target pages that are as closely related to your product as possible. For example if you sell garden spades, you will want your ad on a site about gardening but not on the pages that relate to indoor plants.

It is also better to limit your advertising to sites that display their Adsense above the fold - that is, the ads are visible on the screen without scrolling down. Toward the top left of the screen is the hottest area, that’s where you really want your ad to be.

All over the Internet, marketers are singing the praises of Adwords. They hold out assurances that they can help budding entrepreneurs to make 100’s of dollars working only 3-4 hours a day. Truly the lazy man’s way of making money! But hold on did we mention lazy? Perhaps there is some truth in this. The actual fact is that Adwords has great tutorials making it easy to use. If the real truth were known, all those “would be entrepreneurs” who paid their hard earned money to the “experts,” could have got all this information for free from these tutorials on the site.

There are 3 tactics that will help your Adwords campaign to succeed:

1. You must first consider keywords. The success of your Adwords campaign depends on it. In fact your campaign will not be productive without the right keyword. You will need to select a keyword that can attract warm ready to buy leads from your niche market, and also be broad enough to bring in interested leads from a more general market.

You will be charged for clicks on your ad no matter how well it performs. This is why choice of keywords is so important. Frequently searched keywords will draw large amounts of traffic. However they will not necessarily produce sales. Marketers who just go into the search engine database and pick out the most frequently searched keywords often misunderstand this fact. They do not understand the fact that if these keywords are not targeted there will be no sales.

Keywords are not easy to find and select, but Adwords has the answer to your problems. They have many tutorials and resources to assist you in your search for the perfect keywords. You can find some of the finest resources around when you go to www.adwords.google.com

2. Your bid must get you a high position in the search engines. This is because the average searchers, like most of us are looking for instant gratification. Because of this they will only look at the first 5-10 pages of the search results and then try a new keyword.

This is why it is so important for marketers to position their ads within the first 5-10 pages. Of course the search engines will not place ads on a first come basis, rather they will position ads according to how much an advertiser has paid. The highest bid will get the top position. You will need to draw a line between how much your budge will allow and how much you need to pay for a top position. It is no good spending a lot for a top position for your ad and then not being able to pay for it. In order to protect customers from heavy losses search engines allow a price cap to be placed on an ad and when that is surpassed will take the ad out of circulation.

3. It is very important to follow up with your campaign. There is risk involved with every ad and nobody knows its worth until it has been proven on the open market. It is imperative that advertisers pay attention to every detail of their campaign, so that they can make quick changes to avert disaster further down the road.

Now you know! Without having to pay $54.99 to the “experts” you have all the points you need for a successful AdWords campaign. Now the responsibility of using this knowledge is in your hands.