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Most search engines have different keyword matching options. I decided to focus on Google’s PPC matching options in particular because Google controls a significant share of the market. So what are the matching options available in Google?

Exact Match and Phrase Match

The exact match is exactly what it sounds like, your ads will display when a searcher types on the exact phrase on his query. You need to use brackets, [ ], for the exact match option. So if your keyword is debt consolidation, it should type [debt consolidation] on your account.

Meanwhile, the phrase match can be used through quotes. So you should type in “debt consolidation” on your account. For phrase matching, your ads will display when a searcher types in phrases such as “debt consolidation benefits”, “what is debt consolidation”, or “best debt consolidation”.

Extended Broad Match

The extended broad match is quite complicated. This is because not only will your ads display whenever a searcher types in anything with “debt” and “consolidation” on it. In addition, Google expanded broad matching so much that it is sometimes difficult to see any logical connection between the ads and the search query. For example, ads about counseling or credit financing can appear when a searcher looks for debt consolidation information.

Some experts recommend the discontinuity of using broad matching altogether but a lot of web masters still believe in its benefits. If you do decide to go ahead with extended broad matching, you should take note to use at least four words in the phrase because it will minimize the chances of algorithms misplacing your ads. You can also add negative keywords in your list so your ads will not display when searchers look for terms that are not relevant to your site.

In 2007, it is estimated that there are 143 million websites currently in existence; this means that there are untold millions of web pages over the internet. Now, the good news is only a small percentage of the 143 million websites have active owners that actively promote them. However, letting your site rise above this clutter is a challenge every web owner face.

If you want people to find your site from the millions of websites out there, you should use strategies that will promote your website, your products, and your services to get traffic. But remember that there is no use in reinventing the wheel so you might want to try of the primary methods of site promotion that is already proven to be effective.

Search engine optimization (SEO) – a website will rank higher in search engines with the careful choice of keywords in your title, meta tags, text, and incoming links from social bookmarks, directories, and related websites.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) – this is the paid search on search engines. Your text links will appear at the right corner of the search results when a searcher look for information on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You will only need to pay when a searcher actually clicks on your ad. The downside to this is it can be quite expensive depending on the keywords you choose.

Affiliate programs –your affiliates will promote your site and they will get paid when a searcher click though or purchases a product from you. Affiliate programs can be quite effective but it is difficult to find a large number of motivated affiliates who will actively promote your site.

Advertising in newsletters – your ads can appear on existing newsletters that are already being sent to your target market. This is a moderately effective approach to get people to visit your site.

E-mail campaign – your e-mails can be sent to subscribers of an ezine list or even a rented list. With a well-written copy, a good landing page, and the right list, this kind of promotion can be highly effective but costly.

Online communities – you can expand your network in online communities by becoming an active member. Try to participate in forums, blogs, and other discussions; put your site using your “signature”.

Viral marketing campaigns – make people want to share your site to their friends and acquaintance by creating something so unique and compelling that they cannot help but to pass it on.

Joint ventures – basically, it involves a cooperation among websites wherein other people will carry your marketing message and you will carry theirs in return. This can also involve sales commission and other forms of incentive. With the right joint venture partners, this can be beneficial to everyone.

The wrong question to ask is “Which is the best promotional strategy?” This is because there is no right answer to that question. Various marketers have found success using several of these techniques without touching on the others while others. It also does not follow that a strategy that worked incredibly well for one person will do the same for another. So it is up to you to find out which strategy is the best for you. 

One of the mistakes people make when advertising on Google Adwords is not testing their Ad copy. The first Ad you come up with is rarely the one that pulls the most clicks! This is why wise advertisers run simple A/B split-tests to improve their Click-Through Rate (CTR).

With an A/B split-test you show one version of your Ad to half the searchers and a different one to the other half. Google can rotate the two ads for you and they will show how many clicks and conversions each ads gets.

You can (and should) run a split-test for every Adgroup in your Campaign. These are the steps you need to take to set up your first split-test.

1. Change Your Campaign Settings

If you miss this step, you are going to base your decisions on the wrong data. If you run two ads, by default Google will start showing the one with the highest CTR more often. Don’t let Google take control of your campaign: you want to wait for each Ad to get at least 60 clicks before you decide which one is the winner.

To modify the default behavior, access your Campaign settings (click on the checkbox next to the Campaign name, then on the “Edit Settings” button), then look for the section called “Advanced Options”. As you see in the picture above, you need to change the Ad Serving from “Optimize” to “Rotate”. This will tell Google to keep rotating the ads evenly.

2. Add A New Ad

Now that your campaign settings are correct, you can click on the Adgroup you want to work on. Once you are shown the Adgroup details, click on the “Ad Variations” tab, as indicated in the picture below.

In this tab you are going to see the Ad that is currently running. In order to add a new variation, just click on the “New Text Ad” link.

You can now enter your new Ad. In my next article I will give you some ideas on what you should test. For the moment, just try to change as little as a single word (find a synonym for that one, such as “download” instead of “get”) and save the new version.

Mark today’s date, so that you will know how to filter your data when you analyze the results.

3. Pick The Winner

Check your stats regularly, to notice when each Ad gets to 60 clicks. Some people wait for 30 clicks only, others (like me) wait until 100. The more you wait, the more reliable is the statistical sample.

To pick your winner, you need to access the “Ad Variations” tab. Next to each ad, you will see something like this:

Focus your attention on the Click-Through Rate (CTR) and the Cost Per Conversion (Cost/Conv.). If you don’t see anything appear under the Conversion columns, that’s because you didn’t install the “Google Tracking Code” in your thank-you page.

Your goal is to create an Ad that pulls more clicks, that is with a higher CTR. In the example above, the first version pulls more clicks.

Some people base their decision on CTR only, but you are a smart advertiser and will look at the Cost Per Conversion too. As you see, with the first Ad the Cost Per Conversion has increased: the Ad is pulling more clicks, but those extra visitors aren’t converting.

In this case, I would keep Ad number 2 active (which has lower Cost Per Conversion), pause Ad number 1 and create a new Ad trying to beat the control (the winning Ad).

Going The Extra Mile

As in many things in life, the people who go the extra mile get the best results in the long run.

It takes you only a few minutes to set up a split-test and over time you will see your CTR go up and your costs go down.

If you are looking for Video Tutorials and Articles that can teach you how to Drive Traffic to your Website and Convert it into Sales, then your search is over. Head over to www.TechSavvyMarketer.com and meet Vittorio Bosio, the author of this article.

This is a guest post written by Vittorio Bosio of Tech Savvy Marketer.

Google Adwords is the fastest way to drive traffic to your website. It seems so easy to set up your account and start advertising on your main keywords. However, it is not uncommon to make these 8 mistakes that cost you money.

It just takes a little discipline to correct them, and the rewards are increased Click-Thru and Conversion Rates, lower Google bills and more money into your pocket at the end of the month.

1. Sending People To Your Homepage

I still see advertisers who use their homepage as the landing page for their ads.

Unfortunately, your homepage is usually too general in content to convert your traffic. Your visitors need to find what they are looking for immediately, without the need for extra-clicks.

If they don’t find what they are looking for fast enough, they are going to hit the back button and leave. But at that point you’ve already paid for that visitor.

2. Putting All Your Keywords In One AdGroup

If you put all your keywords in just one Adgroup, you are almost guaranteed a low Quality Score. Google penalizes advertisers who are not relevant enough by increasing their Minimum Cost Per Click. With a low Quality Score, you will have to pay a higher Cost per Click to have your ads appear.

If you want a High Quality Score instead, build many Adgroups, each one focusing on a particular keyword, then write a targeted Ad for each one. Make sure to include the main keyword of that Adgroup in the Ad itself. This will not only help your Quality Score, but also your Click-Through Rate.

3. Search And Content Network In The Same Campaign

Advertising on the Content Network means having your ads appear on websites that are related to your keywords. The Search Network, instead, is composed by Google and other Search Partners.

These two types of traffic are very different and you should create two separate campaigns, so that you are able to track the conversion rate of each one. You could find out that the Content Network doesn’t convert as well as the Search Network and you may be required to build a different landing page to target those visitors more effectively.

4. No Name Squeeze Page

If you are selling a digital or physical product, don’t drive your Adwords traffic directly to your sales page. It is very hard to sell a person on the first visit.

Instead, come up with a free gift that you can give away in exchange for the visitor’s name and email address. The page where you offer this freebie is usually called “name squeeze” or just “squeeze” page.

By doing this, you give yourself the opportunity to sell to that person over time. If he is not ready to buy now, you can start a conversation via email and convince him to buy your product when he feels ready.

Your gift can be an ebook, an mp3 audio, a weekly or monthly newsletter, a live teleseminar, and so on.

5. No Follow-Up

I have been guilty of this myself. It feels good to create a database of leads thanks to Google Adwords. But your job doesn’t end there.

You need to keep a conversation going with your list, or they will download your free gift and then forget about you. You should communicate with your list at least once a week, by sending them relevant information, that gradually moves them closer to the sale.

You can do that on autopilot with an Autoresponder software, such as Aweber or GetResponse.

6. No Tracking

Google gives you a free javascript code that you can paste in your thank you page (where people download your free gift), so that you know which keywords send you the most targeted traffic (targeted enough to take you up on your free offer).
By knowing which keywords convert best, you can start bidding higher on them and weaving out the keywords that don’t convert at all.

And if you want to know the conversion rate of both your landing page and your sales page, you can use a software such as AdTrackz. I will mention it in the next point too.

7. No Testing

You will be surprised by the kind of improvements in CTR and Conversion Rate that you can achieve just by running A-B split-tests.

An A-B split-test consists of running two ads or two landing pages at the same time, serving the first version to one visitor, the second to the following and see which ones gets more clicks or conversions.

You can split-test Adwords Ads just by adding a second version in your AdGroup. Google will automatically rotate them for you.

You can split-test your landing page with a software such as AdTrackz or the Google Website Optimizer, which is free.

8. Only One Landing Page

I know, this one takes a little bit more work. But if you take the time to tailor your main landing page based on the keyword the visitor used on Google, you usually see your conversion rate go up.

The offer you make on your Squeeze Page can be the same, you can simply highlight different benefits of your free gift based on the keyword the user searched for. And you can include that keyword in the headline too, so the visitor feels like you are continuing the conversation he has going on in his mind as he searches for your products or services.

Did I Miss Anything?

I am sure there are many other mistakes people make when advertising on Google Adwords. If you can think of any of them, please leave a comment below, so we can all learn from each other.

If you are looking for Video Tutorials and Articles that can teach you how to Drive Traffic to your Website and Convert it into Sales, then your search is over. Head over to www.TechSavvyMarketer.com and meet Vittorio Bosio, the author of this article.

In my post about collaborating with others, The Money Post asked me which niche I was working in. I don’t mind that he asked. But the niche is obscure so I declined to tell him.

If you’re working in an obscure niche, much of your advantage is being one of the few businesspeople in the niche. If too many people work in the niche, your profits will drop.

Obscure niches are usually niches with a small market. These niches can’t financially support a lot of competitors.

It is to your advantage not to let others know about these niches. The barrier to entry in online business is not a big one. It doesn’t take much to buy a domain name, build a site, and find someone to produce content to sell. Also, you can drive traffic pretty easily with pay per click (PPC).

Many of the wealthy internet marketers will not give away their niches. I know of one guy who uses aliases when doing article marketing on Ezine Articles. He’s well-known in some internet marketing circles. He doesn’t want people to Google his name and come across the articles in his obscure niches.

I remember browsing through a forum about pay per click marketing. One of the members started a case study thread. In this thread, he explicit gave away his niche including his landing pages and keywords. He started making money. Within a couple of days, his whole PPC campaign was copied by other marketers. Needless to say, his profits went down and he was pretty mad.

If you’re in a small niche that’s profitable, don’t tell others about it. Keep it to yourself and let others also do the hard work of niche research.

I haven’t written much about pay per click (PPC) in my four months of blogging here at Net Business Blog. In fact, this is the only post I’ve written on the subject. Also, I don’t have a lot of experience with pay per click. But over the last couple days, I’ve been thinking of adding it to my arsenal of traffic methods.

One of the things I’ve realized is that PPC is not just for affiliate marketing. If you’ve read many internet marketing ebooks or blogs, you probably connect PPC closely to affiliate marketing. You’ve read stuff telling you to set up an AdWords campaign, create landing pages, and wait for cash to hit your bank account. While both PPC and affiliate marketing do work well together, PPC can also work well for other purposes.

Here are three ways to use PPC more creatively but still effectively.

1. Use PPC as a link building tool.

I got this idea from this excellent link building article, 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website. The 9th tip suggested using PPC as a link building tool. Basically, create a PPC campaign with relevant keywords (don’t forget keyword research!) so you can get relevant traffic. As traffic from PPC comes to your site, your brand exposure will increase. If you have great content, you’ll often get links from the PPC visitors.

2. Use PPC to test and increase your non-sales conversion rates.

If you have a call to action on a page, it may be worth it to send PPC traffic to that page. This will allow you to quickly test the conversion rate for that page. Let’s look at some examples.

• If you have a mailing list, set up a landing page to collect email addresses and use PPC to drive traffic.
• If you have a blog and want more RSS subscriptions, write a really good article. At the end of the article, ask the readers to subscribe. Again, use PPC to drive traffic.
• Another call to action might be the passing on of viral content. You can send PPC traffic to viral content like a funny video.  At the end of the page, include a form where visitors can easily email the video to their friends.

3. Use PPC to get valuable consumer feedback.

PPC is a great way to obtain feedback for your business. Tim Ferriss, the author of the popular book 4-Hour Workweek, said before he published his book, he had to choose from multiple book titles. Instead, of going with his gut, he ran a PPC campaign. He sent the traffic to a landing page with the multiple titles and asked the visitors to vote for their favorite title.  “4-Hour Workweek” was the most popular title.

You can test pretty much anything with PPC. Choosing between multiple site designs? Send PPC traffic to a landing page where people can vote for their favorite design. Not sure what your prospective customers want? Use PPC to drive traffic to a landing page where visitors can answer questions about their wants and needs.

Sometimes people won’t vote or answer questions. That’s where you need to have an incentive. In exchange for their time and feedback, give them something free - a short report, a link (if you’re targeting webmasters), video, or audio file. Also, you can get their email address and promise to send them your upcoming product for free once you finish producing it.

One last thing about pay per click and the testing process. If you do it right, you can get a lot of visitors in a short amount of time. This makes the testing process much faster because you get a good amount of information quickly.

Feedback

Have you used pay per click? If you have, how did you use it?

Zac Johnson recently published a simple but quality guide to pay per click (PPC) marketing. He recommends NeverBlueAds to find affiliate offers and Google AdWords for PPC advertising. He gives step by step instructions including pictures.

Search Network Vs. Content Network

The reason I like this guide is because Zac’s PPC background is in using the content network of Google AdWords rather than the search network. What is the difference between these two networks? On the search network, the AdWords ads show up on the Google search engine results pages (SERPs). On the content network, the ads show up on sites that have signed up to put AdWords ads on their pages.

The search network has a better conversion rate. However, you have to set up landing pages and deal with quality scores in the search network. Landing pages are web pages you create that link to the offer and quality scores are scores based on the quality of your landing page. If you have a high score, you will pay less per click. If you have a low score, you cost per click will be expensive. Basically, in the search network, you can’t send your PPC traffic directly to the offer.

In the content network, you can send the traffic directly to the offer. This makes it easier to set up a content network PPC campaign. The content network does have a lower conversion rate but you can find high paying affiliate offers to compensate.

Check Out Zac’s Comments

Make sure to also read the comments on Zac’s post. He answers relevant questions and gives more tips. For example, here is a question by one of his commenters and Zac’s response.

Mike C: Wow there is so much information here. Am I curious to know if there is a minimum amount of click throughs that you can pretty much count on. Would you say you can convert at least 1% of the click throughs?

Zac Johnson: On the content network, if you can pull 1% CTR… you are super lucky and good! Setup multiple offers, don’t just focus on one too long.

So, as you can see, you don’t need a high click through conversion rate to succeed with Zac’s PPC method. You just need a lot of profitable campaigns (even if the profit margins are small), so go for the high paying offers and setup many different campaigns.

If you want to try out PPC but don’t want to deal with quality scores and landing pages, check out Zac’s guide.

Found via: Internet Marketing Sucks!

I’ve used it, hated it and loved it. I’ve used PPC for testing products/markets and Affiliate Marketing. I have come to the following conclusions.

You can earn great deals of money using PPC and Affiliate Marketing - you do need some fundamental qualities to make money or turn a profit from PPC, this will come, if you dedicate enough time, money and hours to it.

Note: If you’re looking to profit from PPC always look to start small and then build up bigger campaigns.

PPC Affiliate Marketing:

Huge Keyword lists are more 2002 than 2007 - the days are gone of the 1000 keyword campaigns Affiliate Marketers would use to milk their Affiliate products. Identify the market you like, grab a few targeted keywords and start testing. Here’s how I do it.

The product you choose is 90% of PPC Affiliate Marketing. For quickness, I’m going for keyword first in this guide. I have found you can have the best CTR keyword in the World, but choose the wrong product and you’re going to lose money fast!

Going the keyword way is the lazy way, sometimes you can hit the Jackpot but I have found you must keep and eye on the keyword(s) and get out when the product(s) you’re promoting stops selling.

I like the look of the keyword “halo 3 beta” according to Zeitgeist this is in high demand at the moment. Using the Google Keyword Tool I use this mainly to find out the average CPC, I’m not interested in the other terms Google throws up, I’m going for the brand and the most popular term and seeing as I’m going to write a highly clickable advert I shouldn’t need anymore keywords to convert well for this product.

CPC for the keyword “halo 3 beta” is 0.04. Game keywords can be volatile so I need to be careful, I should generate high CTR and possible low ROI, I don’t think so though. I need to keep as very close eye on this campaign and only allow 50 clicks to see if I produce a sale. Remember we are always in test and stealth mode at first with Affiliate Marketing.

I know need the product to go with the keyword.

I head over to Amazon where I am already an Affiliate (you could look for another merchant) they will pay out 5% of any sale generated for this product. I search to make sure they are selling it, it look’s like I’m targeting xBox users as that is what Amazon are showing. I thought it may have been PC users, after some research I found the majority are looking to play it on the xBox 360. The game is on pre-order which is fine as I will get paid when it ships to the customer.

Before we move on, here are the numbers -

0.04 CPC - I would imagine Google will be more like 0.06 x 50 clicks $6.00/£3.00

Halo 3 Price $59.99 - I take 5% of this.

Profit = $2.99

I would lose out at this rate, I will keep the campaign running for another 50 clicks until I hit 1/10 ratio 1 sale to 10 clicks. (That would be a 150% return on investment) If I don’t get this, that’s it! get out, move on and find another keyword/product. Never hang on to a keyword because you like the subject, you’ll die a sad and lonely PPC Affiliate Marketer’s death.

Writing the ad is simple, I’m going to write an advert that will produce the best CTR I can get, (be as relevant as you can and never deviate by being clever - relevance is key).

This is going to be a short campaign eithier way as its a console game and once the the buzz is over you need to get out before you lose as mentioned earlier. Make sure to add your negative words to your campaign so you get the best valid clicks/visitors you can for you cash, a quick look at Wordtracker gave me a good indication of what to add to my negative list on Adwords.

Here is my finished advert:

This is what I know as a small part of Affiliate Marketing using PPC. Please let me know if you’re doing well in this area of making money online and if there is something you can add?

Another Note: I don’t like to overdo PPC Affiliate Marketing it gets boring and tedious. Just jump in using some online tools to see whats HOT, make some cash then rinse and repeat. Never let a keyword or product beat you, don’t get tied down thinking it’s worth holding onto a losing campaign as 9 times out of 10 it isn’t. There are always plenty more products and keywords out there to use.

I can’t say I entirely approve of Google’s latest Adsense targeting feature: stereotype-targeting. Until now contextual advertising has been the say all end all of Google advertising, but stereotype-targeting may be overtaking that very soon. Stereotype-targeting is basically the practice of using profiling to best target a website’s demographic and then presenting them with relevant ads. For example, a tech site like TechCrunch will serve more nerdy ads (like ThinkGeek T-shirts) due to its geeky demographic. It is currently just in beta but is set to launch publicly this month.

The problem, however, arises with some of the more … offensive ads that the stereotype-targeting units have been displaying. I’ve seen a few lately that have deeply offended me. I took a screenshot of just a few of them:

I believe the absurtity in each one of these speaks for itself, so I will not go into why middle-aged women should be allowed to own whatever car they want or the fact that some white people can actually jump. What I am going to do, however, is start a petition against this awful new advertisement targeting system. It is outrageous that Google would fall into the same profiling traps as MTV (isn’t it nice how every person on the Real World portrays every stereotype imagineable?!)

If you want to join me in my fight against these new ads please comment here showing your support. If there are enough comments we can convert it into a petition to smash into Google’s face.

I’ve never had much faith in Google’s ability (or willingness) to actively pursue and snuff out “click fraud”. I put “click fraud” in quotes because I’m using this term with a somewhat unordinary definition. Google, YPN, and others have typically viewed click fraud as when a publisher clicks his or her own ads or if ads are clicked excessively in an attempt to boost revenue. An alternative definition of click fraud, and one that I definitely agree with, is using ad placement to trick or confuse visitors in order to receive more ad clicks. These clicks generate revenue for the site owner but absolutely no value to the advertiser.

I’m not talking about well blended ads, in-line ads, or anything like that. What I’m talking about is people who use, for instance, a text ad string and put it off as navigation. That to me is click fraud.

Recently Google has taken measures to alleviate this form of click fraud. We saw a month or so ago how they put their foot down on the problem of images being placed next to ad blocks. Publishers were placing images next to their ad blocks to not only simply draw attention to the ads but to confuse visitors into thinking that the images were related to the link - thus increasing their CTR but adding no real value to the advertiser’s conversions.

Arrington has a very nice write-up about Google’s new PPA (pay-per-action) advertising system that is currently in testing.

PPA advertising is meant to mitigate the risks of click fraud. Now the advertiser pays only if a customer has been delivered to a website and takes a further action, such as buying a product or filling out a web form.

This is definitely a sign that Google may finally be doing something about the serious problem of click fraud. Will they continue with this method as they slowly realize that worthless clicks account for a large part of their revenue? Who knows? The point is, however, that this is at least a step in the right direction. When advertisers buy space on a site they should at least have some sort of guarantee that their ads not only target the right demographic but are only engaged when the user is interested, not when they were trying to click a link and clicked an ad instead due to shady placement.

I’ve also just read news on CNN Money that Yahoo! is now taking measures to combat click fraud more directly:

Yahoo Inc. has named a senior executive to lead the company’s efforts to combat click fraud in its Web search advertising business, the company said, in a bid to reassure advertisers.

Yahoo, the No. 2 provider of pay-per-click ads behind rival Google Inc., said Wednesday that attorney Reggie Davis, a seven-year veteran of the company, will take on the newly created post of vice president of marketplace quality.

The article also claims that the amount of fraudulent clicks in the Yahoo! Publisher Network is somewhere between 12 and 15 percent. I doubt this number was deduced using the broad definition of click fraud, but perhaps that will also be something addressed by the new “marketplace quality” executive.

I also believe this position is a good sign that YPN! will be coming out of beta before too long. With more and more questions being raised about Google’s marketplace quality, hopefully YPN! will make that one of their biggest concerns (and ultimate selling points over Google) when they take their service public. At the end of the day, however, these are both good steps for contextual advertising. Click fraud is a serious issue that few really seem to actually be taking seriously.