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Get Going with Google Adwords

March 25th, 2010 No comments

Google Adwords is the number one advertising option out there, and it’s become a symbol of the growth of the internet since the’90′s crash. Adwords has evolved to offer advertisers a plethora of new options for generating revenue while giving search users accurate results. Largely due to Adwords, websites are no longer just gimmicks, they are viable businesses, but knowing how to use Adwords effectively is your first step to gathering traffic and making your website a profit center.

Signing up for Adwords is something you can do in five minutes or less, and you can fund your new account with as little as $10. The first time you log into Adwords, you will notice a tremendous number of useful tools. But don’t spend time learning them right away. The first thing you need to do is to get a list of keywords.

While you can certainly find keywords on services like Wordtracker, the best keywords will be those you think up yourself. That’s because users judge your site (and Google ranks your pages) on the basis of content, not just keywords. If a keyword has a great KEI and seems like it would roll in traffic for you, it won’t do you any good?and could do you real harm?if you don’t have useful content to match.

Where do you get your list of keywords? Start by brainstorming. Think of a list of keywords your customers would search for, making sure, of course, that they could find the content they want on your site. It’s OK to plug them into the keyword suggestion tool, but just because a keyword pops up that promises to bring lots of traffic, don’t pay for it, unless it matches your site. Many keyword suggestions will not be very useful for you, but anything that stands out as having a high search volume and low competition and also describes your services is a good place to start.

Even if the keyword selection tool suggests hundreds of high-search, low-competition keywords, keep your list to just 10 to 15. Using more than 15 keywords, you will have too much data to analyze as the results of your Adwords campaign begin to come in. You need to be sure your hard-earned ad dollars are being well spent. You can’t do this if you have too many keywords to track.

Google Adwords lets you set your budget in terms of a daily rate. For instance, if your budget is $25 a day, Adwords will run ads until $25 has been spent, and then start over the next day. There is an option that allows you to spend your ad money evenly through the day. You may want to experiment to see which option brings you the most web traffic that generates the most sales. That kind of analysis takes time, which is why it is a good idea to stick to those 10 to 15 keywords until you have some useful data on your campaign.

Google Adwords puts you in charge of how your ads appear and who sees them. It puts you in charge of when your ads appear on the net, and how much you pay for a click. Matching your choices to your profits will make Google Adwords your very best tool for expanding your traffic and growing your profits.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

Building Your Site with Adwords

February 15th, 2010 No comments

Have you heard of Google Adwords? Probably you are already a little familiar with the Internet’s most powerful tool for promoting your business to the largest community of Internet users in the world. There is no bigger opportunity to reach out to customers all over the Internet than Google and its search partners. Using Adwords effectively can make your site pay for itself and earn you huge profits, but if you don’t really know what Google Adwords is and how it works, you may waste your ad money on subpar results.

Step #1 for creating ads that get traffic to your site from Adwords is to make sure you know what your potential visitors are looking for. It’s not all about keywords. You need to get into your visitors’ heads to know what they are looking for when they visit your site.

Do some basic keyword research. List the keywords that are already on your site. Be objective about how the content on your site will attract customers and motivate them to come back or to make purchases. Use WordTracker and Keyword Discovery to find more keywords. Start brainstorming a list of words and phrases that you think potential customers will look for on the net. Make the longest list you possibly can. You don’t have to whittle it down straight away, but you will find a few high performers that will give you high Click Thru Rates (CTR) and conversions as your Adwords campaign matures.

Don’t try to use all your keywords all at once. After you set up your Adwords account, Step #2 is to begin bringing a manageable list of search terms from your comprehensive list of keywords into your campaign. Create that first ad from the most promising keywords. Write just one more ad with the same keywords but different ad copy to see what really encourages your CTR. Making the ads slightly different helps you establish which wording gets you more traffic for your money. You will repeat this process over and over again as your AdWords campaign matures. You will find small changes in wording, punctuation, and capitalization that bring in incremental improvement?and sometimes dramatic improvement?in your click thrus and conversions.

Don’t spend all your advertising budget up front. Be sure you set your budget low until you know which ads and which keywords work best for you. In some niches, $100 a week on Adwords can create a huge impact on site traffic. In other niches, you may need to spend a lot more. But whether you spend a little or a lot, make sure you check your return on investment. Adwords allows you to do this by setting a performance goal, such as units sold. This tool allows you to determine whether your Adwords campaign has earned your investment back, and by how much.

Always aim to make at least 50% return on your investment. A 50% return will ensure a profitable campaign that allows you to fund expansion of your site and gives you some profits to pocket. Paying attention to CTR and conversion rates makes it possible for you to grow your site from the sales you make with Adwords.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

Using AdWords Advertising

January 31st, 2010 No comments

An AdWords advertising campaign is built around short but carefully worded advertisements. Although limited in size these advertisements can be very successful in attracting the attention of users who will then click on the advert and be taken to your website.

Two methods for this advertising practice exist related to the positioning of advertisements. Once you’ve set up your AdWords campaign, you will be presented with the option of either placing your ads on the search or the content network (in this case, AdSense), or on both.

Ads in the search network are linked up with a list that contains keywords that are closely tied to the advertisement’s text and will then hopefully catch the eyes of more potential visitors who are actively seeking out your product or service.

Alternatively, using the content network, your advertisement will be placed alongside an article with content relating to your advertisement. In this case it is read by users who may not necessarily be interested in actually purchasing any product or service, and, put another way, are browsers rather than searchers.

Because of this, contextual advertisements normally do not have the same impact as search advertisements. If your desire is to target both markets you want to create two separate marketing campaigns as this will allow you to expand your target area and inevitably increase traffic to your site.

Advertisers spend a lot of time and money making their advertisements, and they tend to close in on a certain age group, and a certain peer group. And when people in that age group click on the ads, they know they have did what they have set out to do. And they make they money they want.

If you have an AdWords search advert created but yet want to try the content network you could consider starting up a different advertisement series pointed at the content market. Content networks have a more passive audience so simply just copying over your search network campaign will not suffice, you’ll need to complete retool it to make it work.

In summary, a well-run campaign on a search network will generally be the best and most reliable way to generate business. However, with some cleverness and savvy and well-written copy, it is certainly possible that this could be supported by a complementary campaign running on the content network.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

Google Adwords Advertising Tips

January 18th, 2010 No comments

Most of the internet marketers have misunderstood that those keywords which are commonly used are the ones which are good for advertisers. Though it is true, but still it is not the main factor in the competition. It is an important job to choose the suitable keywords for an advertiser which would bring in more traffic.

Providing terms that are descriptive can draw a better group of people. Using a phrase like “cook books” instead of just “books” will commonly result in more conversions due to the fact that it will appear to people actually searching for cook books instead of just books. Providing a term like “Italian cook books” can result in even more conversions.

A low conversion ratio, or readers who click but don’t end up buying, doesn’t help an advertiser in any way despite the high number of clicks. It will only cost the business more money in fees that are not negated by higher sales. By placing very specific keywords to hone in on a niche advertisers are able to get higher quality clicks. This will lead to a significantly better conversion ratio and a much higher ROI.

Creating keywords requires examining your web site and picking out the words and phrases that describe it. You should also look at other web sites in the same target market. Try to figure out why those sites are good or not and look at how they word their advertisements and content. If they are reaching the target market you should attempt to leverage their terms and phrases where possible.

It can also be helpful if you learn to think as a customer would. Google offers the recommendation to list all the things a customer might type into a search engine while looking for a certain product or service. Consider the possibility that there may be several different spellings for those words. As an example, foods which are low fat could also be called “light” or “lite”. Either spelling should be a keyword so that every potential customer is reached.

Keeping track of how effective a campaign is is a critical component. You can use Google’s conversion tracking tool along with Google Analytics to see how a campaign is doing. If you see advertisements that are not generating as much traffic as estimated try to make some changes. Then, keep watching the results to see if the change improved things.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

SEO and Backlink Building

December 27th, 2009 No comments

If you are trying to rank high in a search engine for a competitive phrase, you will need more than SEO tactics. You will need a lot of backlinks.

A backlink is the technical term for linking a website or blog link to another site. Among all options that a website owner can use to make his website more effective, a small number of top quality backlinks can be far more productive than other tools.

When using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN, when someone chooses to link to your site it is as if they have voted for your site. Someone valued your content enough to link to your site, thus it must be important. The more people there are visiting your site, the more obviously important it is.

When you use the internet for your business, make sure you put as much information that you can about it. This will help people get to know who you are and what you are trying to sell them. And if you are up front, then you will get repeat business.

This is the reason why it is desirable to have main keywords incorporated within the anchor text of incoming links. Having understood the importance of backlinks, we will now explore ways to get them.

Qualtiy site content which is unique will be the main reason people will link to your site. You will benefit if your site is different and perhaps even controversial. If people view your site as special they will be more apt to link to it.

Try to make it really easy for other websites to link to your website. Try setting up a “link to us” page to simplify the process. Also, make sure that you include keywords in the anchor text.

Submitting your written articles to directories will allow them to be reprinted on other sites with a link to you in the Resource Box. Just one article could result in many backlinks. Alternatively, you could try personally contacting your niche sites and offer to write a recurring column. Another option is to arrange a trade system in which each site writes for the other, providing backlinks to each other.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.