Online Marketing Opportunity

Conversion Tracking

Adding conversion tracking to your Adwords PPC account can significantly improve the return on investment from your campaign. It allows you to track conversions at the campaign, group and keyword level so you can find out which areas of your account are making you money and which are not.

The main use of conversion tracking is to track sales made on your site. However, if you do not have a standard e commerce site you can still use conversion tracking to measure form completions, email sign ups or just visits to a specific page.

Setting Up Adwords Conversion Tracking

It is quite straight forward to set up conversion tracking in Adwords. Under the Campaign Management tab in your Adwords account select Conversion Tracking from the menu bar. Click on the Create an action button and enter all the relevant details. Once you have finished it will produce your conversion code.

You need to insert this code into the conversion page on your website, if you are tracking sales this would be the ‘thank you’ page which is shown once a sale has been completed. The code needs to be placed between the body tags, preferably nearer the </body> tag so that the small Google image appears at the end of the page.

Be careful to add the code to just 1 page, not to a footer template used on all your pages. If you start getting a conversion rate of 100% this is probably your problem, unless your website is irresistible to visitors!

Using The Conversion Data

Google states that it can take up to 24 hours before a conversion shows in the Adwords interface. You will get most of your results within a day but from my experience it can take up to 3 days for all conversions to show. For this reason I analyse my conversion data weekly, 3 days after the week ends. If you track Monday to Sunday, carry out your conversion analysis the following Thursday to get accurate figures.

As with all statistics you need to build up a certain amount of data before it really means anything. The time this takes will depend on how many conversions your site makes. A keyword with 300 clicks will give you an idea of the true conversion rate but 500 clicks is more accurate.

Once you have some data to work with, go through your account and check the cost per conversion for every ad group and keyword. You should try to establish an average profit per sale from each ad group, you can use this figure to work out which keywords are working and which are wasting money. If a keyword has a cost per conversion slightly higher than the average profit per sale you may want to test it at different positions to see if you can make it profitable. If any keywords have a cost per conversion way over your average profit figure you may just want to pause them.

Usually some ad groups and keywords will perform better than others. You should try and distribute your budget so that you get all the clicks available for your most profitable keywords.

Be careful with your Adwords budget. Most advertisers are given a credit line from Google and pay only once a month or when a certain limit is reached. This makes it very easy to overspend. If you want to get up and running fairly quickly you should be prepared to make a loss on the first few weeks of a new campaign while you adjust it.

A good model to follow once you have a profitable campaign is to re-invest a percentage of your profits each month into your Adwords budget. This way you can steadily increase your spend and therefore your profits with less of a financial risk.

Advert Split Testing

When you split test adverts you run 2 adverts which are the same except for 1 aspect. Once each advert has had enough clicks to make the test statistically significant, compare the click through rates (CTR) of the 2 adverts. The one with the highest CTR is the ‘winner’ so edit the losing advert to start another test. If you continue to test your adverts in this way it can lead to a significant increase in CTR which can lower your cost per click and / or increase the display position of your adverts.

Many Adwords advertisers do not split test their adverts correctly. First you need to go to ‘Edit Campaign Settings’ and set the Ad Serving to ‘Rotate’. With this setting Google will display the 2 adverts equally. If you use the other ‘Optimise’ setting Google will try and display the advert with the best performance data more often which will make your test results inaccurate.

You need to decide on the number of clicks that will make up the test period. Really you need at least 50 clicks on each advert to start getting meaningful results. However, if your adverts accrue clicks quickly you may want to make this number 100 or even 200 clicks. The more clicks registered in the test period the more accurate the results.

It is important to test just 1 aspect of the advert, otherwise you will not know exactly why one advert beat another. From my experience the most effective aspect to test is the headline, then the display URL and then line 1 or 2.

There are endless possibilities to advert split testing but here are some you may want to try:

• Use Camel case for your advert (the first letter of every word is a capital).
• Test your display URL with and without the www. preface.
• Try adding your main keyword to the end of the display URL ( e.g. www.yourdomain.com/Keyword).

Remember, even if you have a great advert with a high CTR you can always improve it, so keep testing! Effective advert split testing can give you a real edge over your competitors, in highly competitive markets it can be vital to running a profitable ad campaign.

PPC Adverts

When you write an advert for your ad group you always need to consider the main keyword phrase for the group. Where possible, they main keyword phrase for the ad group should be used in the title of the advert, line 1 or line 2 of the advert and the display URL.

Using your ad group’s main keyword phrase in the advert increases the relevancy between the keywords and the advert which can boost your Quality Score. It can also lead to an increased click through rate, because if the search term is in the advert Google displays it in bold which makes the advert stand out.

The space available when writing your advert is quite limited, with only 25 characters for the title and 35 characters for lines 1 and 2. This means that in some cases you will have to be creative to get everything you want to say into your advert.

Remember that the aim of your advert is to get relevant traffic to your site. This means that you need to clearly describe the product or service you are selling and write ad copy which compels browsers to click.

A good place to start when writing a new advert is to look at your competitors. Enter the main keyword phrase for your group into Google and examine the top adverts. You do not want to copy any of these adverts exactly but you can take all the best, appropriate aspects from your competitors to use in your own advert.

Try and make your advert stand out by including the benefits of your product or service and highlight any reasons why people should buy from you rather than your competitors. These reasons could include free delivery, fast delivery, a guarantee, being a well established business or a special offer.

Including the price in your advert can be an effective strategy if you offer the best price in the marketplace. If you do not offer the best price do not include it in your ad copy, you do not want to advertise the fact that you are more expensive than your competitors. Also, bear in mind that if your prices change frequently your adverts will have to be changed accordingly.

PPC Keyword Matching Options

There are 4 keyword matching options that you can use to qualify the keywords in your Adwords campaigns. Using these options correctly can often be the difference between a profitable and a loss making campaign.

The broad match (keyword) option will result in the highest number of impressions, it can result in your advert being displayed when your keywords are searched for in any order. For example the broad match keyword phrase ‘boat trip’ may result in your advert being shown for ‘trip boat’ or ‘boat fishing trip’.

When using phrase match (“keyword”) your advert will only be displayed if the keyword phrase is used in order. For example, the phrase match option for ‘boat trip’ could lead to your advert being displayed for ‘long boat trip’ or ‘boat trip gear’ but not for ’boat fishing trip’.

The exact phrase match option ([keyword]) will only display your advert when the exact phrase is used – ‘boat trip’. This option results in the fewest impressions but can bring in the most relevant visitors to your site.

Negative keyword matching (-keyword) prevents your advert from showing for the negative keyword and can be applied at both the ad group and campaign level. If you are using broad match keywords it is important to look for negative keywords to use. For example, if you use the broad match keyword ‘boat trip’ your advert could display for the search ‘fishing boat trip’. If you do not run fishing trips and this is a high search term you should include this on your negative keyword list, -fishing.

A good way to find high search, negative keyword terms for your campaign is to use the Adwords keyword research tool. Enter the broad match phrase you are using and look for any keywords with high levels of search that would not bring relevant traffic to your site.

If your market has a high search volume, you may be best off starting out with phrase and exact match keywords only. If your sector is relatively low in search traffic you could start with all 3 keyword matching options along with any appropriate negative keywords.

PPC Campaign Structure

Once you have selected your keywords, you need to set up a structure for your campaign. You can only set geographical target locations at the campaign level so make sure you use separate campaigns for each country or region that you wish to target. The same goes for the daily budget, so split out your keywords into multiple campaigns if you want tight control over how your budget is distributed.

Name each campaign and advert group clearly, this will make managing your account much easier. This is especially true if you have numerous similar products or services on offer.

Only put highly related keywords together in the same group. This is important because the relevance of your keywords to the text in your advert are part of Google’s Quality Score.

The main factors used to calculate your Quality Score are the click through rate of your advert, the maximum bid price set and the relevance between the keywords in the ad group and the display advert. The system is designed to reward well structured campaigns and good adverts. It is possible for your advert to be displayed at #1 while paying less than the advertiser with the advert at #2.

Adwords Keyword Research

Some people will advise you to spend an hour brainstorming keyword ideas and use multiple keyword research tools to produce a lengthy keyword list. I disagree. The two most important aspects of PPC keywords are relevance and traffic. You should only pick keywords that are highly relevant to the product or service you are advertising. Yes, you may be able to get loads of cheap traffic on a general term but if it does not closely relate to what you are selling the conversion rate will be very low.

Similarly you do not want to go the other way and pick 6-word keyword phrases that get 1 search a month. Even if they have a decent conversion rate it will be years before you will know this for sure. You need to select keywords with medium to high levels of traffic. This allows you to find out which keywords work and weed out those that do not.

A good, free tool to use is the Adwords keyword research tool. You can use this tool to evaluate potential keywords and build a list. It will show you approximate search levels for each keyword, as well as the level of advertiser competition. If you find a relevant keyword with high search volume and low advertiser competition you should exercise caution. This may seem like the ideal combination but most markets in Adwords are competitive, the level of competition is probably low because the keyword is unprofitable.

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Introduction

Pay-per-click or PPC advertising can be a very effective way of bringing targeted visitors to your website or blog. It has become a popular online marketing method due to it’s flexibility, you do not need a large budget to start and you can stop or re-start your campaign at any time.

There are numerous PPC advertising systems to choose from but the Google Adwords program is by far the largest, and in my opinion the best. Throughout this guide I will be describing how to set up and maintain an Adwords campaign. However, the principles of Adwords can be applied to most other PPC networks.

I would recommend using Adwords if you are new to PPC advertising, it is the best interface to work with and generally has the most profitable traffic. Once you have a profitable Adwords campaign set up and getting as much traffic as you can, you may want to consider using Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN adCenter to expand your reach.

A word of caution before you start up your first PPC campaign. In some competitive markets the cost per click can be quite high for the top positions. Make sure you set a daily budget you can afford and stick to it until you have steady profits coming in. The Adwords system usually runs on credit, you only pay Google once a month or when your account reaches a certain level. This makes it is easy to rack up an Adwords bill that you cannot afford to pay.

Reciprocal Link Exchanges

You may have heard negative comments about reciprocal link exchanges, people saying that it is no longer an effective online marketing method. Well, as with many things in life, what you get out of reciprocal linking depends on how well you do it.

If you join a link exchange program full of low authority web sites with numerous, long link pages you could exchange 100’s of links that would offer little or no value to your site. A site with little or no authority (with PageRank 0 or 1) has no real value to share through linking. This value is further diluted by long link pages which often have 50 or more links on a single page.

The most effective way to build reciprocal links is to stop thinking of PageRank and increasing your rankings, instead concentrate on quality sites with a close theme to your own. The idea here is to get high quality referral traffic, visitors who may actually buy your product or service.

Now, if you sell computer hardware you may have trouble getting links from other computer hardware sites. They will not want to send potential customers to buy from another site. You need to look for link partners with complimentary products or services. If you sell computer hardware, look for computer software sites to exchange links with. You will not lose out on sales and adding links that are useful to your customers makes your site a more valuable resource.

Links from complimentary sites can produce good levels or referral traffic to your site and regular sales each month. It is a good idea to try and get around 20 – 30% of your traffic from other websites. That way, heaven forbid, if your site drops out of Google one day you still have traffic coming to your site, generating income.

Social Networking

Social networking or Web 2.0 is the one of the latest ways of promoting websites and blogs. By using social bookmarking sites or content sharing sites you can get incoming links to boost your rankings and referral traffic.

Another benefit of these sites is that they are so popular with the search engines that the page or post you create may rank in it’s own right. This tends to happen more often with longer, less competitive phrases.

Best Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites allow users to ‘bookmark’ a certain page or website which they found interesting. This usually takes the form of a title with a short paragraph of text which is displayed in categories to visitors. They can then click through to your site and if they also like the content they can ‘vote’ for your site. Getting lots of votes for a post moves it up to the top of the page. This gives it more exposure and the potential to send lots of traffic to the site in question.

Different people with varying interests will have their own favourites but in my opinion the best general social bookmarking sites are:

http://digg.com/
http://del.icio.us/
http://www.propeller.com/

Best Social Content Sites

Social content sites allow you to produce and publish content online for free. They generally take the form of a web page which you can customise by adding a title, articles, reviews, images and links. These pages can rank in the search engines, so if you add in a link to your site you can send visitors there even if it does not rank in the listings.

Again, this is a matter of opinion but I think the best social content sites for online marketing are:

http://www.squidoo.com/
http://hubpages.com/

General Social Networking Tips

Whether you are using a social bookmarking or social content site you should try and include the keyword phrase you are targeting in the title and the body text of the post or content. Also try to include this phrase if you are able to add a ‘tag’, a username or a website address.

Only link to good quality content. If you just added a short post on your blog to say you are away for a week do not submit it to all the social bookmarking sites. Try and produce interesting or useful content and when you do let people know about it.

Try and make any social bookmarking posts compelling for readers to click on and visit your site. You can do this by asking a question, making a controversial statement or by giving half the information in the post to tease readers (I managed to make ‘X’ work by using the new …..).

Be careful with multiple posts and accounts. It is fine to bookmark your best pages once a week on a social bookmarking site or to make the same post on numerous different ones. However, if you start opening multiple accounts with the same sites and submitting the same pages over and over again you could get into trouble.

Most of these sites can track behaviour through IP addresses, if they discover some underhand posting going on they could remove all the posts from all you accounts. Stick to making genuine posts that visitors to the site may be interested in and you will be fine.

Paid Text Links

You may have heard that paid text links are no longer an effective way to boost the rankings for your site. In fact, if done correctly, using paid text links is probably the fastest and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings.

However, there is an issue here. Google have decided that buying text links is a way of ‘gaming’ the system. They are now busy trying to discount the value of links from sites where it is clear that they have been paid for.

This seems like an odd move to me. If you take part in any form of online marketing you are basically trying to influence the ranking system. Google have no issue with article marketing, reciprocal linking or other forms of paid advertising. A link from the Yahoo directory is one of the most valuable links in Google’s eyes and what is that but a paid text link!

Anyway, as long as you avoid paying for a link on any site that makes it clear they are paid for (with a heading like sponsored links, our sponsors etc.) you should be fine.

Two of the largest and probably best text link sites are:

http://www.text-link-ads.com
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com

If your site has 1 competitive main keyword, it may be worth trying to get a single PageRank (PR) 6 or higher link. If you have a number of different, less competitive keywords for your site you may be better off buying numerous PR 3 – 4 links.

Try and find a link to buy on a site with a similar topic to your own, pick your anchor text wisely and buy them for at least 6 months. It can take 3 – 6 months before you see the full benefit from the links.