My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘adwords’

I can’t stress strongly enough how important it is for an Internet Marketer to know what marketing keywords they should use for their products, and how much their competition is willing to pay for those same keywords. This may seem like a complicated process, but it really isn’t. In this article we’ll discuss three free websites that all internet Marketers can use to find this information.

Let’s first talk about keywords… When I say ‘keywords’, I’m referring to marketing keywords. These are the words that your potential customers would use to describe your product. These are the same words that somebody would type in an online search engine to find your products.

If you have a business website and you don’t know which marketing keywords your website is geared to, then you’re website is certainly at a huge disadvantage. Why? Because you will be losing business. And you can bet that your main competition WILL know their marketing keywords, and they WILL be strategically using these keywords in their website and advertisements.

You see, when search engine spiders crawl your website, they’re looking for text in your website that can be indexed and used to describe the content of your website. If your website doesn’t contain the proper keywords that people use to find your product, then your website will likely not show up in their searches. So your website really needs to be optimized with the relevant marketing keywords that the majority of people are using to search for your product.

Another example where it is vital to know your marketing keywords is when using Pay-Per Click (PPC) advertising. Pay-Per Click advertising is typically done through search engines where you pay each time someone clicks on your advertisement (link). Your advertisement will appear after a user goes to the search engine and runs a keyword search (which is just a regular search). The search engine looks at their submitted keyword(s) and then cross references those with the keywords associated with the PPC advertisements. If they match, the PPC ads are then returned with the users search results… Go ahead and go to Google and run a search. The ads you see on the right-hand side of the screen are the PPC ads.

(Note: The order in which the PPC ads are returned are dependant on a few factors: the price you’re willing to pay for each click, the search engine used, the ad Click-Through Rate (CTR), etc.)

Let’s now go through a quick and free process for finding good keywords for your website.

1) Go to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https:adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox)

Enter some key words into the textbox that you think people would use to conduct a search for your product. When you’re done, click the submit button. You will then be shown specific and similar keywords. Write down the ones that you think would apply to your product.

2) Go to the Overture Keyword Selector Tool (inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)

Enter each keyword that you have written down from step 1, then click the right-arrow button. This will allow you to see which keywords are the most popular in Overture. Note: the most popular keywords aren’t always the most appropriate. For example, if your website sells guides on how to rebuild a 57 Chevy, then you will probably want to specifically target ’57 Chevy’ keywords, instead of the less specific ‘Chevy’ keyword. Why? Because you want to get your ad/website in front of the people that are most likely to buy your product.

The above 2 websites should give you a great keyword list that you can now use to optimize your website. But if you want to advertise using PPC, you really need to know what your competition is paying for your keywords. This is an easy task as well.

3) Go to the Overture Bid Tool (uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/)

Enter your keywords into the textbox, and then click the search button. This will return the Overture bids for that keyword. The highest bids likely get the highest placements &ndash meaning the ads are closer to the top position on the first page of the user’s search results. The goal is to get as high as your budget will allow to the top position to ensure maximum exposure of your ad.

There you have it… three great websites that can help your Internet marketing campaigns &ndash and best of all, they are all free to use!

Sincerely,

Michael Ellis

Google Adsense is a unique program that can produce a lot of revenues over time if you are patient. Here is an overview of the basics of Google Adsense.

The Basics of Google Adsense

To understand the basics of Google Adsense, you first have to understand Google Adwords. Adwords is a program where people can bid per click to buy space on platforms Google supports with advertisements. This includes the ads you see on the top and down the right column of results when you search on Google.

Adsense is the result of a crafty little idea wherein Google essentially wanted to maximize distribution of Adwords. With Adsense, Google took the unique approach of letting independent sites place certain types of Adwords advertisements on their pages. This type of advertising is known within the Adwords platform as contextual advertising and advertisers can opt out of it. Most do not.

The beauty of Google Adsense is it creates additional revenue sources for sites. For instance, lets assume someone bids 60 cents in Adwords for the placement of their ads. A site then shows those ads through the Adsense program. When an ad is clicked by a person on that site, Google charges the advertiser and splits the money with the site in question. The exact amount of the split is not provided by Google, but is known to reflect the quality of traffic, click through rates and other aspects.

The Google Adsense program is incredibly simple to use. You sign up through Google and, once approved, are able to select the format of ads you want to list on the pages of your site. Google then immediately generates a java script, which you copy and paste into the html of your pages. You cannot change the code, but you can select any old location on your page you want.

Once you have inserted the code and republished your site, it is time to sit back and watch. Google provides stats within your account area. You can see basic click and revenue information as well as monthly totals. Once you reach a total of $100 in revenues, Google will kick out a check to you. The check is issued more or less at the end of the month following the one in which you hit the magic $100 amount.

Obviously, there is more to Google Adsense if you want to make a full business out of it, but this provides the basics of the game. You will be tempted to click the links on your page. Don’t! Google will ban you from the program.

The use of search engines in locating information has become so central to our daily lives that it is hard to imagine a world where one cannot simply “google” driving directions just before heading out to the car. This availability of information, unprecedented in human history, is still a new concept, yet it has revolutionized the way we live, even in our humdrum, day-to-day activities. Need a new recipe in time for dinner? Conduct a search (and forward it to meConductSearch.com!). Forgot your anniversary and need a gift by tomorrow morning? Piece of cake. It’s become second nature to not only snatch instantaneous solutions from the Internet, but to trust that they will be there.

Just because we’ve so readily accepted search doesn’t mean anyone thinks it’s fully developed. I offer only your typical financial headlines: Google does this, Yahoo does that, Exxon searches for oil &ndash everybody searches! Tech advances beget tech advances and search is still a work in progress, a particularly interesting work in progress.

The concept of search need not even be limited to alphabetical means. Microsoft is firing imaginations with image search…for more imagery. Somewhere in Washington State (I think) teams of cyber savants have been taking steps toward incorporating this imagery hunt functionality into the search engine. The goal is to allow users to input an image file as the search parameter in order to return associated image results.

While the technical process admittedly remains mysterious to those of us not actually working on it, its aim of a searchable database free from the ambiguity of language is a beautiful notion, even if it’s not the end all of search itself.

Let’s say that you were interested in researching a fancy home furnishing company called “Hammer and Co.”. You’d open up your web browser and enter the name in the search bar on Google, right? Your Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) will show hundreds of results…M.C. Hammer, tools, and the like. There will be some, if not lots of, sifting to do. But, were you able to input an image of Hammer & Son’s distinctive purple tulip logo in the search field, you

may get a glimpse of Hammer’s lovely wormwood designs. Heavenly.

Engines utilizing “image search” will distinguish content, spatial qualities, pixel dimensions and placement, the size of images, and various other factors in its comparison. While the technology is not quite ready to be unveiled for general use, Microsoft’s purchase of Vexcel, a specialist in imagery, remote sensing and “photogrammetry” does bolster support for the theory that we are not far off from being able to take a photo of a stranger with a camera-phone and running an internet-wide search for that person instantly.

It seems the internet cannot be further leveraged to the end of radical technological advancement and social change, it is. Web 2.0 expands infinitely outward into a world of possibilities that need only be imagined to become true.

Damian Verutes

Marketing Analyst

MarketingConductSearch.com

ConductSearch.com

If your business is focused on a very particular, small market, you are going to love search engines. The more focused you are, the easier it is to win on the engines.

Search Engines and Small Markets

Once you have identified a small market and built a site, you need to start thinking about Internet marketing. Search engines present the best marketing platform on a dollar for dollar basis. There are two specific ways to go about the process.

Pay-per-click advertising on search engines is a great way to immediately reach your target audience. Google Adwords and Overture represent the two best ppc platforms. Place ads using these two platforms and the ads will appear on the search results for Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and a host of other search engines.

The second platform for getting in front of your market on the search engines is search engine optimization, better known as seo. The goal in seo is to identify the keyword phrases your prospects are using to find things. You then try to get your site ranked in the top three or four positions when the relevant search engines return results for any of the searches. The upside of seo is you don’t pay for advertising and rankings tend to stay high once you achieve them. The downside is it can take a couple of months before you appear high in MSN rankings and up to a year or longer on Google.

Regardless of the approach you take on the search engines, your focus on a small market gives you a huge advantage. By focusing on a lucrative, defined area of the Internet, you have limited the number of competitors you must take on. It is far easier and cheaper to market to “San Diego Mortgage Loans” than going after “Mortgage Loans.” The first phrase has a limited number of competitors while the second phrase is contested by huge sites with lots of advertising dollars. To this end, make sure you stick to your area when pursuing your marketing. If you offer services in a location, only advertise for keywords incorporating that location. Having a person three states over call you is just a waste of time.

Advertising for small, defined markets on the search engines is inexpensive compared to general markets. It is also easier and quicker to get seo listings.

Cruising along 6-lane expressway that skirts east of Kolkata, the city I grew up in, my mind wandered off to my childhood days. Kolkata was then a pleasant place, not overtly intolerant or arrogant. Life was easy, schools nearby, offices not afar, amenities close at hand. Yet, on occasions when we were to visit relatives outside city’s periphery, plans had to be readied in advance. Road connection beyond city was poor, and so moving about longer distance was cumbersome.

Today, many roads have cropped up, many are in making. Places that seemed inaccessible even a few years back, can now be reached without much of a fuss. If this is called rapid urbanization, I feel it has a parallel in the way Google has transformed AdWords. Just as I hardly thought swanky roads would ever come up in so large numbers in my city, it was similarly difficult imagining AdWords would one day be what it is today.

What it is that makes AdWords so dear? I’m not too frequent an advertiser, so I wouldn’t be commenting on campaigns, adgroups and suchlike. Instead, I’ll tell you how the keyword tool of AdWords will make you forget you ever used anything else.

How it started

For long an open secret, but barely touched upon till recent past is that keywords used by surfers have demographic variance to a largish extent. What this means is except for some obvious terms, surfers from different locales of the globe will most likely type in different search terms to look for information on the web. Even in big countries like US or India, search terms used by surfers vary from place to place. Search engines knew this for long, but it took them awhile to chalk out suitable products tailored to be effective in serving aggregate needs on the net.

Talking about Google, products like local search or, for that matter, the advantage of geo-targeting in AdWords campaign are all part of strategy accrued from search behavior pattern, accumulated and studied for nearly a decade.

What are ways to get you the most promising keywords? I’ll attempt answering this formidable question in 2 parts. In this part, we’ll discuss how AdWords’ keyword tool can help you get going. In the next part, we’ll compare AdWords’ keyword tool with some of the best out there. On to AdWords now.

AdWords opens up

Admittedly, AdWords is meant to maximize revenues to Google. What pleases the most is Google’s fatherly approach to ensure that AdWords maximizes returns to advertisers too. And how? Look at how easily you can fetch your choicest keywords from Google’s vast repertoire.

Start at AdWords Keyword Tool and after selecting the country and language you’d like to target (English and United States by default), slip below and select one of the 2 tabs, namely Keyword Variations and Site-Related Keywords. Now on, let’s go step by step to unravel a real wonder that the tool is.

Keyword Variations

If you select this tab (by default selected), just type in some keywords in the box, one in each line (pressing ‘Enter’ after each keyword to go to next line). If you want similarly meant keywords, do not forget to select ‘Use synonyms’. A good idea that, since it broadens your keyword search. For example, I found ‘top 10 ranking’, a very popular key-phrase, as a synonym for ‘top ranking’, which would have otherwise remained unknown to me. Another point stressed upon frequently by veterans is that it is better to begin your keyword search with general terms. As you progressively narrow down your keyword selection, you’re more likely to discover promising phrases along the way.

So you have a long list of keywords presented by Google based upon your few initial keywords. Watch closely, you’ll find Google saying that it’s a list sorted by relevance. What’s that? It’s Google’s way of gently prodding you to begin an AdWords campaign, for the keywords that appear at the top are the most relevant ones, should you consider ad campaign with them.

What would you do now? Well, you may start adding them as necessary, search for more related keywords (link at the bottom of the list), or even download them in your chosen format. But wait before you do anything of these. Look around and see how Google helps you with excellent tools to further fine-tune your list of keywords.

Refining your keywords

Move to ‘Show columns’ and in the accompanying drop-down list, you get to select eye-popping options. Wow! What a help! Choose the first option, ‘Keyword popularity’ and you’ll simultaneously see 2 adjacent columns of data. Click a column heading, the list re-arranges in decreasing importance. In the column ‘Advertiser Competition’, the list shows which of your keywords are hotly sought after. Similarly, the column ‘Search Volume’ gives you a measure of popularity of respective keywords. Still want more specific info’? The generous Google is there for that. How? Amble to far right of the columns and alongside ‘Match Type’, select ‘Broad’, ‘Phrase’ or ‘Exact’ and watch how the scenario changes. What are broad match, phrase match and exact match? Help is just there (a question mark). Click on it to know more.

We’ll now move on to third option in ‘Show columns’, which is ‘Global search volume trends’. This is a recent addition. When you select this, you’ll get to see an amazing display of how keyword popularity changes globally (not only US) through the year in the form of bar-charts. Once again, hook on to ‘Match Type’ (spoken above) and refine your search further.

Start an AdWord campaign?

If you do not contemplate starting an AdWord campaign, you may skip the other 2 ‘Show columns’ options. In case you do plan one, first select ‘Cost and ad position estimates’ and in the ensuing page, choose your currency and mention your maximum CPC. This is the maximum cost you agree to bear each time your ad is clicked on when displayed for your chosen search terms (note this is different from another oft-used term, CTR, the click-through-rate). As you finally hit ‘Recalculate’, your list will turn up myriad combinations of ad position and average CPC for your keywords. If your max CPC is too low, you may not see any value for average CPC.

The remaining ‘Show columns’ option is ‘Possible negative keywords’. This is a tool that assists your keywords to maintain a sharp focus in an ad campaign. Depending on campaign strategy, one has to decide whether or not to include negative keywords. To give an example, for my web marketing website, if my keyword ‘top ranking’ fetches other probables like ‘top 10 ranking’, ‘uptown top ranking’, ‘top ranking universities’ and so on, I might decide to include ‘uptown’ and ‘universities’ as negative keywords, but certainly leaving out the term ‘10’. This would mean that if I select ‘top ranking’ as broad match or phrase match, my ad will not show up for search terms that included negative words ‘uptown’ and ‘universities’. More often than not, expert campaigners will choose one-word broad match and then work on a long list of negative words to disallow unwanted ad impressions.

Site-Related Keywords

Till now, we’ve spoken about keywords you chose and ways of refining them. Suppose you are eager to know what keywords your competition is using! Well, why not? If indeed so, AdWords Keyword Tool comes to your assistance. To start, click the other tab ‘Site-Related Keywords’, enter the URL of your competition in the search box and hit ‘Get keywords’. Don’t forget to check ‘Include other pages on my site linked from this URL’. As you set Google to work, it dutifully comes up with a list of keywords, grouped by common terms with number of occurrences in the entire website within parentheses for each group.

Grouping keywords by common terms is a great help as you’ll find, and each group lists related keywords as in earlier case. If you uncheck grouping option, Google will fetch you a scrolling list of keywords, which may often be uncomfortably huge if you happen to spy on a giant competition. Once there, similar to Keyword Variations, here too you can start working on your keywords with abundance of tools at your command.

AdWords, a facilitator

Keyword Tool is great because it is very easy to use. No doubt Google intends it that way so as to make AdWords less and less daunting for potential ad-campaigners who are afraid to cross threshold for the fear of making unknown mistakes. Let’s remember, businessmen incline to take risks on known parameters, and not something that is difficult to comprehend. To that extent, the newly-designed keyword tool is a good facilitator.

In the next part, we’ll look at how AdWords’ keyword tool fares with other keyword finders.

You’ve been quite some time at the Internet, marketing your products, or other’s products and running multiple Google adwords campaigns. Although your market is a competitive market, your sales letter is amazing, your ads are targeted, your landing pages are specific and well designed, you offer free ebooks to tempt your potential customers, but still you cannot convert your visitors into customers. What is happening? If this is you then keep reading.

Ok, first stop crying please. I know it’s frustrating to work hard and get no results but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Here are some tips that will help you write killer ads that will convert prospects into customers.

There are many factors that affect the quality of your ads especially when using adwords campaigns. Here’s an example of a three line ad and how to write it:

Ad Line 1: The headline. It’s so important to write a good compelling headline. I will assume you already know this. Now, try to use as many targeted keywords and search terms as you can. That means you have to do some keyword research on your topic before you start writing your ad. If you don’t use specific and well targeted keywords when writing your headline your ad is bound to fail.

Ad Line 2: Main text. Here you have to tell your prospects/potential customers exactly what to expect when they click your ad. Don’t use all caps. You may capitalize the first letter of every word, that’s ok. You also have to create interest here. State a fact, a solution to the problem. Create desire and an emotional attachment. What will your product help the customer do? How quickly can your product help the customers accomplish their goal? Don’t be afraid to use cliches like “How To..”, “Amazing..”, “Top selling..” etc. They do work.

Ad Line 3: Call to action. Tell the readers why they should immediately click your ad. Maybe because they will miss some important offer or something like that. Maybe because you offer free shipping for the next 7 days. Maybe because you throw 3 exclusive bonuses. Can you find a clear and cool reason for your call of action? Use it here. Do not forget to proof-read your ads again and again before publishing.

Landing pages

Yes, landing pages are important. Especially if you are on Google adwords campaigns. You should know that your landing pages affect your overall quality score of your ads too, according to Google. Do you have any idea how frustrating can be to decide to click to a quality ad that points to a lousy landing page? Another bad example would be to “hide” your product under adsense ads, images or text. Try to help your visitors to see exactly what they want when they land on your page.

#1 Create a list with all possible keywords that fit to your product, service or whatever you are promoting. The more words you come up with, the more chances you get of finding the niche keyword which brings me to point 2

#2 Niche Keywords. Drill down deep into the word, expand on it. For example, if you are promoting affiliate products related to mothballs. Instead of just mothballs you can use mothballs for sale, mothballs for sale in uk, motballs , discount mothball etc… The possibilities are quite huge. Use a combination of misspellings, adjectives and country locations.

#3 Make use of excluding keywords. If you are promoting a particular product &ndash say an ebook on making mothballs and it is sold for $100 dollars. You bided on the keyword “blue mothballs”. People searching for the term free blue mothballs would see your ad thus making it clickable and lowering its CTR. If you add a ‘-free’ it would eliminate unwanted advertising costs.

#4 I usually choose NOT to advertise on content opting purely for search as they are more targeted and is of higher quality. BUT if I am targeting a highly competitive area where ads are like $0.80 per click, I would turn on advertising for content while disabling adwords for searching(lowering bid price). I would have total control over costs while having traffic extremely cheap.

They are calling him the million dollar man. Jason Calacanis recently revealed in his blog that he is on track to earn a million dollars from AdSense over the year ahead.

And if that number doesn’t wake you up and have you sitting on the edge of your seat, consider for a moment that he reached this level in less than a year. His company only started using AdSense in September 2004.

Calacanis runs Weblogs Inc., a network dedicated to creating trade weblogs across niche industries. And he’s quickly proven that AdSense is a credible advertising partner.

As their network has grown, so has their AdSense revenue. In January 2005 they earned an average of $580 per day. In March it was $737. In May it was $1,585. One day in July, just before he made the blog entry referred to above, they earned $2,335. Remember that is just for one day. If they can take that daily average to $2,740 they’ll be earning a rate of $1 million for a year. And Calacanis predicts that reaching daily earnings of $3,000 or even $5,000 is quite achievable.

That’s quite an achievement. Keep in mind that Calacanis has 103 bloggers on the payroll and nine staffers. Even so, many webmasters would give an arm or a leg to have even a third of that.

Google’s AdSense has been revolutionary. It has become firmly established as the darling of the online advertising industry. Although rumors are heard of major competitors launching a similar service, AdSense’s premier position seems secure for now.

In essence, AdSense has made it possible for almost anyone with a web site or blog to earn some revenue from advertising, without having to employ sales people or spend precious time searching for advertisers.

AdSense works like this. Webmasters sign up for an account in just a few minutes. They receive a small snippet of code to include on their web pages. Google will then automatically serve advertisements that are relevant to the content on the webmaster’s pages. When someone visits the webmaster’s site and clicks on one of Google’s AdSense advertisements, the webmaster earns a fee. Advertisers can pay anywhere from five cents to a hundred dollars per click, and the webmaster receives a percentage of that fee.

Many webmasters are content with earning five to ten dollars from AdSense to cover the cost of web hosting. But many, unsurprising, have higher ambitions. At a popular WebmasterWorld forum, participants share tips and encouragement on reaching a goal of $300 per day from AdSense. So it is no wonder that Calacanis created quite a buzz when he made his million dollar blog entry.

Google have proven once again that they excel at designing innovative Internet services. If you are in the web industry and have not yet used AdSense, then perhaps you should try it out. Or if you are already using it, perhaps Calacanis’ impressive results will encourage you to track the performance of your AdSense units more closely, fine tune their positions and formats, and take your earnings to a new level.

Calacanis’ million dollar blog entry can be viewed at: calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000403051129/