Google Adwords Expert

Traffic Siphon Review

2010-09-01T14:39:00.000-07:00

Traffic Siphon is a new product by George Brown and Andrew X to generate huge traffic to the website for free. The product is going to launch on September 14, 2010 and I will keep you update at my Traffic Siphon Blog.

http://trafficsiphonreview.org
http://affiliatemovieprofitsx.com/links.html

FB Siphon - Dominate Facebook Ads

2010-07-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

FB Siphon Course is a facebook ads domination system consist of 15 videos those exactly tell you how to get super cheap targeted clicks to get best return on your investments.

You might be surprise to see facebook ad article on Google Adwords Blog but this is just because a lot of people are not able to use google adwords any more. Reasons can be a google slap or higher cost per click and so on.

Facebook ads are really getting popular these days. One reason is the the google adwords policies itself. Also the people are sick of conventional advertising. But the main reason is the facebook itself. 400 + million people place which is growing with a great speed. Facebook do not allow direct advertisement. Like you can not say your viewer that "Buy this", "Sign up now" and so on. They say its a social networking place and they will keep the same spirit for the ads as well.

That's where FB Siphon help you to let you know how to use facebook ads to get maximum out of it. There is nothing technical in creating a facebook ad campaign but because of certain restrictions as I discussed earlier people fail to get results out of it. FB Siphon course will solve this problem and
will show you how to do it in a better way to generate return on investment you are looking for.

FB Siphon will show you how to setup profitable campaigns using facebook ads that makes fast money will affiliate offers. Also it will uncover the niches that works best with the facebook ads.

Visit FB Siphon website for more details.

Google Bridge Page Policy Issue

2010-06-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

I know many of the website owners are victims of Google Bridge Page Policy and facing a problem in running adwords campaigns. There keywords quality score goes to 1/10 and ultimately campaign stops working.

To provide the best possible experience for our users and advertisers, Google does not permit ads for bridge pages that are solely intended to direct the user to the parent company's website. Pages with multiple ads leading to the same site provide less relevant results and a lower quality experience for our users.

To comply with Google's bridge page policy you need to choose one of the options below:

Option 1: Refine your web page so that it provides a unique user experience and has an overall unique look and feel.

Sites have a unique user experience when one of the following is true:

- The landing page for each ad offers different products or services (for example, a large manufacturer with two product sites, one solely for stereos and one solely for computers, both running on the keyword 'electronics')

- The landing page for each ad serves a different purpose (for example, one site focuses on product information only and the other site focuses on product sale only)

- Any product overlaps on the landing pages are not significant enough to affect user experience

- The pricing difference offered by each site is significant and based on the same criteria (for example, if one site includes pricing with tax, the other site must include pricing with tax)

Option 2: Redesign your web page to offer multiple, competing offers from different companies for related services. For example, a web page promoting a specific book could have links to four online bookshops from which one could purchase the book.

Option 3: Link directly to the parent company site, using the appropriate Display URL.

You may wish to contact your affiliate parent company directly to ensure that any changes to your page are in line·with your affiliate agreement.

Choose any of the option above and apply to your website and contact back to google and particularly say them that you are fulfilling this particular option. Hopefully they will allow your site. If still not then you need to put in new marketing strategy. In this scenario FB Siphon will help you a lot.

Best of Luck!

Google Lanched "AdWords Certification Program"

2010-04-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

Google has replaced Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) Program with a new Adwords Certification Program. The new program provides agencies with comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts.

A grace period of 6 months have been given to the GAP's to upgrade otherwise they will have nothing. The have removed the minimum spend requirement for individual qualification and decreased the minimum spend for last 90 days for companies to $10,000.

Now there will be two exams to pass. First one is Advertising Fundamentals and other one is advance exam.

You know Why some online Businesses fail‏?

2010-03-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

Internet Marketing is not easy. You may find it hard to get an internet business up and going. Here are some reasons why internet businesses fail.

1. No one wants your product.
You should really concentrate on a market and audience, not a product. When you find a market of consumers who have a need, and you can fill that need for them, you are on your way to success. Rather than selling, you are just standing in front of the traffic and letting it come to you.

Take a note from Bert Ingley who makes well over six figures a year selling Madden Football information online. Bert himself will tell you he visited Madden Football sites, chatted with players, and posted in forums long before he had a product. He came with his product AFTER he learned what the people in his market wanted and needed.

Could you do the same? How much to you know about your potential customers? Google you own keywords. Visit related websites, even your competition and see what people are saying. Post on forums. Chat with people. Answer email questions. The more you know about your potential customers, the better you'll be able to market to them.

2. Talking about features, not benefits.
You probably concentrate on features of your product or service in every other aspect of business. You are probably adding features to product as the market demands or standards change. Many of your thoughts may be feature oriented.

In marketing, you never want to talk about features. Instead, you need to talk about what the feature will mean to the customer. Will it save them time? Will it make their task or life easier? Will it save them money? These types of things are benefits. In your marketing, you want to talk about benefits, not features.

3. Trying to do it all yourself.
Many times you may try to do it all yourself. You may not want to relinquish control or spend the money on outsourcing.

But, back to Bert Ingley again, he hired a professional writer very early on. Sure Bert new his product and his market. However he also knew that others were more knowledgeable and also better writers. Bert outsourced the writing and he concentrated on the marketing.

4. Not being patient.
Internet marketing is not easy. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to write articles, build an email list and split test messages.

Adwords Keywords Quality Score - Page Load Time

2010-03-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

Adwords began calculating Quality Scores for ads for each consumer search in September 2008. Part of the new calculation is page load time. You'll learn what is page load time, how does it affect your Quality Score and what can you do to improve it.

What does page load time mean?

Page load time is the time it takes for your page to render after it is requested. The life cycle of a page is straightforward.

1) The request for the page is made

2) The server will perform any server side processing, like dynamically generating content or accessing a database. When the page is completely constructed, it will proceed to the next step. NOTE: Static HTML pages do not have server side processing, only PHP, JSP or ASP.NET pages have server side processing.

3) The server begins transmitting the response over the internet

4) The client computer receives the response

5) The client begins rendering the response in a browser window. Additional requests are made for flash scripts, graphics and javascript.

6) When the page is completely rendered, and all other requests are complete, the page has loaded.
Adwords must really be measuring the time from the request until the response is read. I doubt Google can actually be attempting to time to render the page on the client computer, and make the child request for graphics and so forth. Google would have to add some javascript code to the page in order to know when the client side rendering was complete. I seriously doubt they would do this.

How does it affect your Quality Score?

Google has this to say about why it considers page load time.

"Two reasons: First, users have the best experience when they don't have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate."

Based on this paragraph it seems Google is trying to crack down on Advertisers using server side redirects and interstitial/ad pages. A server side redirect would be when the destination url is requested, the server side scripting language redirects the request to another url. This really performs two requests, and thus increases the page load time. An interstitial page is an advertisement page that is shown (briefly) before the content, and may be achieved with a redirect.

It also seems that Google is saying if your page takes too much to respond, it's likely doing something sneaky.
What can you do to improve your page load time?

1) Optimize your server side scripting

If you do use PHP, JSP or ASP.NET, make sure your server side code is optimized. This is especially true when using a database. You need to optimize both your database, and your code for speed.

2) Get dedicated web hosting

Most cheap web hosting happens on a shared server. That means that many websites from many website authors are all on the same server. All of these websites compete for server resources, like bandwidth and memory. Heavy traffic to some other website on a shared server can slow your page load time. A dedicated server is one where only your website(s) resides on it. It's more expensive, but you get dedicated resources.

3) Compress the size of your page

A web page is really just a file. That file must be transmitted from your server to the client computer over the internet. If you can decrease the size of the file, the file will transmit faster. You can compress your pages by removing white space. You can remove any unnecessary HTML tags. You can use relative urls instead of absolute urls. Do anything to decrease the size for the file.

4) Lose the Flash Animation

Flash animation is generally rendered on the client side, so it may not factor into the Page Load time. But then again it may. Either way, Flash animation tends to be slow, so get rid of it for the sake of your customers. Sure it looks great, but you can't afford to lose sales because nobody waits around for the Flash animation load.

5) Strip out unnecessary elements from the page

Again, elements rendering on the client may not affect the page load time. Then again they just might. Remove any unnecessary graphics or images. These take a long time to load. Minimize javascript or CSS includes. Additional requests need to be made for these files, so keep it to a minimum.

6) Optimize your page

As a final effort, you can optimize the HTML itself. For example, table HTML tags tend to render slower than a CSS/Div layout. If you have tables, you might consider switching to a CSS/Div layout.

Inside the Quality Score - Geo-Targeting‏

2010-03-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Google began determining a Quality Score per search for Adwords Ads in September of 2008. Prior to this time, a Quality Score was determined once and used across multiple searches. Determining Quality Score per search gave Google the opportunity to use geo-targeting. Learn what this means and how you can use it to your advantage.

Geo-targeting is when Google boosts an Ads Quality Score, thus giving it higher ad positions, traffic and CTR based on the geographic location of the advertisers. Google determines the geographic region of the consumer by checking his IP Address. Google must check the geographic region of the advertiser by the IP Address of the landing page. If both the consumer and advertiser are in the same geographic region, the advertisers ad will get a Quality Score boost.

Could geo-targeting hurt a nationwide or global campaign?

Potentially, yes. A nationwide or global campaign may face competition in metropolitan areas. If other advertisers in these metropolitan areas are deemed "local" merchants, they could get Quality Score boosts. This lowers the ad position of the nationwide or global advertiser. A lower position results in fewer clicks and less CTR. This damages the Quality Score further, resulting in lower positions and higher costs per click.

Is it good for the consumer?

One large appeal of the internet is to be able to view goods and service offered by merchants outside of a local area. If the internet offers no more diversification than driving around town, the internet is likely to some of its appeal.

How can you use this to your advantage?

Adwords experts often recommend using a high cost per click for two or three weeks to get a high CTR. When a CTR becomes established, you can often lower the CPC bid with losing ad position because of the high CTR.

You could use a similar tactic with geo-targeting. You could limit your Adwords ad to run only in the geographic region where your hosting service is located. You would then get a Quality Score boost from the geo-targeting, result in higher ad positions. High ad positions translate to better CTR. Then after two or three weeks at a good CTR, you can allow you ad to running nationwide or globally while still reaping the benefits of a high CTR.

Also, you could have two identical or similar websites, one hosted on the East Coast of the United States and the other hosted on the West Coast. You could target your ads for specific regions, and send visitors to the correct website for their region. Perhaps more granularity is needed than just East Coast versus West Coast, but you get the idea.

What to do if you still have a Poor Quality Score‏

2010-03-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

If you think you have done everything recommended by adwords gurus to get your quality score up. But, Adwords has still assigned you a Poor Quality Score. What do you do? The following list of items are the things you want to check to raise that poor Quality Score.

(1) What is Adwords saying is wrong?

Adwords provides some diagnostic information when they assign a poor Quality Score. Take a look inside Adwords and see why Adwords gave you the poor score. When you know what Google thinks is wrong, you can attack the problem. Adwords reports on three categories of problems.

(a) Keyword relevance
Generally this means you have a poor CTR. More on how to fix it in a moment.

(b) Landing Page
This means your Landing Page is not tailored to your keyword. Create a unique landing page for your keyword and optimize the page for it.

(c) Landing Page Load Time
Your Landing Page was too slow. Start removing images, javascripts, stylesheets and any other elements not directly related to your message.

(2) How is the CTR of the ad?

Once you begin to get traffic (impressions) of your ads, the CTR becomes a major factor in the quality score. Google is letting the human consumers determine if your ad is relevant to their searches. If the ad is relevant, human consumers click your ad and the CTR goes up. If the human consumers don't click your ad, the CTR goes down. Google alters the quality score based on the CTR. It's a survival of the fittest ad when you begin to get impressions.

The rule is you must have a half percent CTR to maintain a Quality Score. But, I recommend shooting for a 2% or 3% CTR. If you don't have a CTR of at least 0.5% you should do one of the following...

(a) Improve the sales copy of the ad.
This is crucial if you want to keep the keyword. Your ad needs to be compelling enough to make consumer want to click it. If you don't have a 0.5% CTR your ad isn't doing it's job.

(b) Increase the max CPC bid.
You can increase the max CPC to get a higher ad position. A higher CPC bid means higher ad position, more traffic, and (hopefully) more CTR. After you have achieved a CTR of 2 or 3% for two weeks, you can start lowering you CPC bid because the CTR is likely boosting your Quality Score, and you can maintain the higher ad position without spending as much.

(c) Delete the keyword.
The Quality Score of your entire campaign can be damaged by poor performing keywords. Delete them if you can't keep the CTR above 0.5%.

(3) Revise your Landing Page.

Can you optimize the landing page more? I assume you have the keyword in the page title, meta tags and heading tags. Have you used it throughout your sales copy as well? Adwords likes to see the keyword in the content. Assuming you have read the Advanced Guide, you can still use PHP to dynamically insert the keyword just like you did for the page title and meta tags.

Starting of with a high cost per click‏

2010-03-11T08:18:00.001-08:00

You want to start off your Adwords campaign with a high cost per click. For anyone on a marketing budget, that certainly sounds counter intuitive. But the simple truth is you are looking to save money in the long run.

Setting an initial high cost per click is one of the best kept secrets of the Adwords industry. The number of consumers who click your ad largely determines your quality score for any keyword. Google allows the marketplace to determine the best ads in a Darwinian survival of fittest game. The more clicks your ad gets per impression, the more Google increase the quality score.

Lets assume you've already optimized your Adwords ads and landing pages according to the Adwords Strategy Guide. When you do so, your ad starts with a high quality score. This is important so that you will get better ad positions and more traffic for a much lower cost.

But if you bid a low cost per click your ad is going to show at lower ad positions. That means your get impressions, but since you are not in the top 3 ad positions you are going to get fewer clicks. Impressions without clicks lowers the CTR. Lower CTR causes Google to think the ad is not relevant and lower the quality score. You need a CTR of at least a half percent.

Instead, you start with a high initial cost per click. You bid for the top three ad positions, or perhaps the top ad position. Keep in mind you'll still get the top spot cheaper with the Adwords Strategy Guide than without out. Now your getting many clicks per impression and your CTR is on the rise. Your quality score goes up.

About two weeks after the launch of your campaign you can begin to slowly lower the click per click. Your high CTR will allow you maintain your top three position while the cost per click is dropping. As long as the CTR remains high, you can keep dropping the cost per click and still maintain your ad position.

You will have a few weeks of a high cost per click. However, in the long run you will be able to have cheaper costs per click because of the CTR you captured in those first few weeks.

Why You Should Avoid Broad Match Keywords?

2010-03-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

Broad match keywords in adwords has now a days really become a big source of earning for google. I am a google adwords qualified individual working with about 20 clients at the moment. I have stopped using braod match keywords because of showing ads against irrelevant keywords which result if lower ROI. I track each keywords of the campaign and add the negative keywords on daily basis. I am having very bad experience with broad match keywords in the last 6 months or so (even the long tail). I would like to give particular example of the irrelevant keywords triggering ads. I will just give example of two broad match keywords from March 10, 2010.

1. Keyword in the campaign is {Generator Installation} and the keyword user searched for and google triggered the ad {windows movie marker upgrade}.

2.Keyword in the campaign {electrical services} and the keyword user searched for and google triggered the ad {ggmain}.

This is a kind of thing that I see daily with some of the campaigns I am working on.

But there are industries where using broad match keyword don't create any problem. Like moving industry and other.

So be careful when you are going to launch your campaign otherwise you will end up doing nothing.

Better & Effective ad texts, better performance!

2010-03-05T09:42:00.000-08:00

As a basic rule, use clear, well-written, and specific ad text that highlights what sets your product or service apart from the competition.

Below are some specific tips to help you create compelling ad text. You can also watch this short video demo:

Create simple, enticing ads.

What makes your product or service stand out from your competitors? Highlight these key differentiating points in your ad. Be sure to describe any unique features or promotions you offer.

Include prices and promotions.

The more information about your product that a user can gain from your ad text, the better. For example, if a user sees the price of a product and still clicks the ad, you know they're interested in a potential purchase at that price. If they don't like the price, they won't click your ad, and you save yourself the cost of that click.

Use a strong call-to-action.

Your ad should convey a call-to-action along with the benefits of your product or service. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your ad and ensures they understand exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page. Some call-to-action phrases are Buy, Purchase, Call today, Order, Browse, Sign up, and Get a quote; while 'find' and 'search' may be accurate verbs, they imply that the user is still in the research mode, and may not encourage the user to perform the action you'd most like them to take.

Include one of your keywords in your ad text.

Find the best performing keyword in your ad group and include it in your ad text, especially in the title. Whenever a user types that keyword and sees your ad, the keyword phrase will appear in bold font within your ad on Google. This helps draw the user's attention to your ad and shows users that your ad relates to their search.

Choose the best destination URL.

Review the website you're advertising and find the specific page that has the information or product described in your ad. If users do not find what is promised as soon as they arrive, they are more likely to leave your website. Be sure that any promotions and particular products mentioned in your ad are visible on your landing page.

Test multiple ads in each ad group.

Experiment with different offers and call-to-action phrases to see what's most effective for your advertising goals. Our system automatically rotates ads within an ad group and shows the better-performing ad more often.

Five Emotional Triggers for your sales copy

2010-02-25T05:55:00.000-08:00

A consumer will not buy a product. Consumers purchase solutions to problems they are having. They make a purchase in order to fill a need or a want. You can encourage a consumer to buy your products by making your sales copy trigger an emotional response. They are five major emotional appeals sales copy uses to persuade consumers.

The primary emotion is curiosity. You've probably seen many ads making outrageous claims. These ads attempt get attention by making consumers want to know if such statements are true. In general, the more shocking the claim, the more you can peak curiosity. The more curious you can make a consumer, the further they follow you down your sales funnel.

Internet marketing Adwords ads tend to work on curiosity. Have you seen the ads where the marketer claims to me making $90,000 a month? Have you been curious to find out if that's true or how he did it?

Another emotion is insecurity. Almost everyone has certain aspect about himself or herself that they are insecure about. In addition, certain demographics tend to share insecurities. For example, teenagers tend to be insecure about their popularity in school. Your sales copy can promise to address feelings of insecurity.

Good examples of insecurity in advertising are commercials for insurance for senior citizens. These commercials appeal to the health concerns of the elderly, and promise security with their policies.

Fear is the third emotion you can use. Consumers have many fears, death, financial debt, loss of someone close to them, aging and more. Your sales copy can appeal to these fears, and them promise alleviate them with your product.

Pharmaceutical commercials for high blood pressure or heart disease tend to rely on fear. These commercials use statistical figures to provoke fears of disease and death.

Vanity is the next emotion. People tend to want to improve themselves. Your sales copy can promise to make them look better, feel stronger or be healthier. Fitness equipment uses vanity in their advertising. How many home gym machines promise all three of the above?

Greed is another powerful emotional trigger. Almost everyone could use more money. Internet marketing ads make use of greed, promising more traffic, more sales and bigger returns.

Your goal as a copywriter is to use these emotional triggers and tie them to your product or service. Explain to a prospect how your product will benefit them. Persuade them that your product will make their life easier or safer. Promise to make them happier and healthier. Appeal to their wants and desires.

Avoid Dynamic Keyword Insertion‏ (DKI)!

2010-02-22T07:22:00.000-08:00

Dynamic keyword insertion is widely touted as the greatest thing to happen to Adwords in the last two years. The biggest benefit may be to your CTR. When a consumer sees the exact search term in your ad, it can be very compelling. CTRs will often rise when using dynamic keyword insertion.

However, dynamic keyword insertion is not for every situation. You must be careful not to over use or abuse it. The following problems can arise when using dynamic keyword insertion.

1) Dynamic Keyword Insertion doesn't increase the relevancy of your ad.
Adwords likes to see the keyword you are targeting in the headline or ad description. It will increase your quality score if the keyword is part of the ad. However, it doesn't consider dynamic keyword insertion to be the keyword. So you miss an opportunity to improve your quality score.

2) Dynamic Keyword Insertion can lead to poorly written ads.
You've seen ads that don't seem to make sense when you read them. You can be sure that such ads are using dynamic keyword insertion and that accounts for the poor sales copy. When you use a large keyword list, it's practically impossible to write a single ad that will make sense and be compelling.

3) Dynamic Keyword Insertion can't help your landing page.
You may have read that your landing page can benefit from dynamic keyword insertion. It can't. Your landing page is outside Adwords. Dynamic keyword insertion only occurs within Adwords. Want proof? Stick the token {KeyWord} on your landing page and view it a browser. The token will not be replaced.

4) Dynamic Keyword Insertion may make it difficult to track ad performance
Split testing your ads and sales copy is a proven method to improve your ads. However since you won't know exactly what you ad said at any given time, it makes if difficult to test changes to your sales copy.

You must be aware of the advantages and drawbacks before you use dynamic keyword insertion. You must then make an informed decision if it is right for your situation. You are generally better off without it if you customize your ads and landing pages.

Should you scare your customers?‏

2010-02-12T05:40:00.000-08:00

Should you scare your customers? Should your sales copy persuade visitors by attempting to scare that they are missing something vital without your product or service.

Machiavelli was an Italian renaissance author who wrote a work called the "the prince". His book was intended to instruct the young Italian rulers of various city states how to govern. One of the main points of the work was the conclusion that it is better to be feared than loved.

Could you use fear to persuade your customers to buy from you?

Much of the sales copy in Adwords ads today focuses on making the consumer either curious or greedy. This is particularly true in the ads for internet marketing. Most of them make an outrageous claim, like "see how I'm making x dollars a month". This ad is designed to appeal to marketing consumer by appealing to his greed. Plus, the more outrageous the amount, the more curious the consumer is to see how the advertisers is doing it.

This is a very good tactic. Appealing to these two emotions is a great way to approach sales copy.

But, in a column of Adwords ads, you want your ad to stand to out. You should always strive to stand and be noticeable in the crowd. So, if other advertisers already advertisements of this type, could you profit from a different tactic.

As Machiavelli discovered, consumers also respond to fear. In recent years, political campaigns have tried, or accused each other of tried, to use fear to get candidates elected.

You could appeal to a fear your consumers have in the first line of ad. Your second line then informs them that your product or service provides a solution. This will compel your consumers to click your ad.

Factors Influence your Keyword Quality Score.‏

2010-02-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

What determines a Quality Score? You've read the free guide and you know that the higher the quality score, the less expensive it is for you to buy traffic from Adwords. But what is at the heart of the quality score? How does Adwords assign a quality score?

* CTR within Adwords

The most important factor of your quality score is it's CTR. Google realizes that everything it's robots scan a page for can be manipulated. In fact, Google encourages this manipulation. Google tells you that the landing page must be relevant to the keyword. Therefore Google expects you to optimize your landing for a keyword.

But at the end of the day, the CTR is pretty much written in stone. The CTR is the clicks divided by the impression. If a human consumer find your ad relevant to the keyword / search term, they click your ad. Conversely, human consumers won't click on irrelevant ads. Google counts the CTR so heavily because it's based on the real human visitors to their search engine. Google is essentially letting the consumers drive the process. Google does this because the daily human consumers are a better judge of relevancy than any program.

Google assigns initial quality scores based on other factors. Nut once the impressions start, your ad will sink or swim based on its CTR. It's a Darwinian game of survival of the fittest.

* Ad Copy and Ad text relevance to query

Google examines your ad copy when assigning a quality score. Google likes to see the keywords in the ad headline or text, and rewards you with a higher quality score.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion tokens are not counted as keywords. So while Dynamic Keyword Insertion is likely to appeal to human consumers, Adwords will not boost your quality score. In fact DKI may damage your quality score id you remove the actual keyword from your ad in favor of the DKI tokens.

* Historical keyword performance

Google keeps your keyword historical data, primarily the CTR. That means deleting a keyword will not remove the already generated data. So, if you are deleting keywords and re-adding them to try to clean the slate, it's probably a waste of time.

Adwords considers the recent history to have more impact. This allows you to adjust poor performing keywords in the hopes of increasing their CTR. Without this consideration any keyword that performed badly historically would have a low quality score.

Deleting keywords is still an important task of campaign management. Like pruning plants, you must remove poor performing keywords to raise the overall quality of your campaign.

* Landing Page Relevance

A relevant landing page lowers your minimum bid and potentially increases your ad position. Google now considers the landing page relevancy when determining a quality score. A higher quality score translates to lower bids and higher ad positions.

In conclusion, Google has this to say about quality scores.

"There are over 100 factors that can affect quality score. However, not all will be triggered depending on the conditions involved."

How negative keywords improve your CTR?‏

2010-02-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

Negative keywords help qualify traffic and make it more targeted. They do limit your traffic, but the traffic you do get will be more focused. This will pre-qualify your traffic before it clicks your ad.

A negative keyword is a word that you have decided not to show your ad for. You have regular keywords and phrases, and adding negative keywords tells Adwords not to display your ad when a negative keyword appears in the search terms with you keyword.

The most basic example of a negative keyword is the word free. Imagine an online retailer selling running shoes. That retailer may have the keyword phrase "running shoes" as a phrase match in their Adwords campaign. But, the retailer is obviously selling shoes, not giving them away. So, the phrase "free running shoes" may be undesirable. The retailer uses the negative keyword "free" and chooses not to show his "running shoes" ad for any search containing the word free.

Why do you want to eliminate traffic? If your goal is just pure traffic, you may not want to limit your traffic. But if you are looking for qualified leads, negative keywords help you screen out unwanted impressions and traffic. Screening out traffic means that a consumer who is unlikely to make a purchase with your website doesn't click on your ad. That can save you wasted clicks. But, negative keywords also stop the ad from appearing, which reduces the impressions of your ad. The CTR measures the clicks per impression, so if you limit the impressions of your ad to targeted traffic, your CTR should improve.

Continuing the running shoes example, a keyword search turns up the phrase "running shoes clipart". The retailer is not interest in consumer looking clipart. You would not wants impressions or clicks from someone looking for clipart. So, clipart is a good negative keyword.

You establish negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level. At the ad group level, you are eliminating impressions of you ads for all searches with the negative keyword. At the campaign level, you are applying the negative keywords to all ad groups, which filters down to all keywords.

Adwords Impression Fraud is More Harmful than Click Fraud.‏

2010-01-30T05:34:00.000-08:00

Click fraud is a well known type of Adwords fraud. Impression fraud is a lesser known tactic your competition could employ against your Adwords campaign.

The most obvious method of Adwords fraud is for your competitor to click your ad repeatedly. This called click fraud. The hope is that this will exhaust your daily budget and cause your ads to stop running.

Click fraud has the unintended side effect of raising your CTR. A higher CTR is a higher quality score and then a lower CPC bid. This offsets the damage, and prevents this fraud from becoming more rampant

A second type of fraud is impression fraud. Here, your competitor disables his ads and then proceeds to search for your common keywords. The attack is designed to create a large number of impressions of your ad with clicking the ad. This lowers your CTR. Your ad could have it's position lowered, or become disabled due to the lower CTR. This allows the competitor to obtain higher ad position.

There is no side effect offsetting impression fraud. However, an advertiser is not likely to turn off his ads during prime business hours. The fraudster would likely wait until the early morning hours where there is little traffic. This would make a good time for him to disable his ads and inflate the impressions on his competition. A spike in impressions during normally low traffic periods could be an indication of impression fraud.

Google is quite capable of recognizing multiple identical searches from a single computer or network. Adwords should be able to identify a large number of any impression fraud attempts. However there may be large, sophisticated networks that could appear to be from many different sources, thus fooling Google.

Difference in actual versus maximum CPC

2010-01-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

What is the difference between the actual CPC and the maximum CPC per bid? Knowing the answer can help corner that top position on Adwords and explode your traffic.

Every Adwords advertisers knows what the maximum CPC bid is. This is price you give Adwords as the absolute most you're willing to pay for a click.

The actual CPC is what you pay. These two numbers are almost never them same. You will almost always pay less in the actual CPC. The actual CPC is the cost to raise your ad above the next advertiser, based in part on your quality score.

For example, let's say your maximum CPC bid of $0.25 would get you the 3rd ad position. Adwords will charge you just what it costs to beat the 4th ad. This could be $0.10, $0.20 or the full $0.25.

This is known as a Vickrey Auction.

Another important point is that prior to 2007 Adwords based your ads position on the combination of the actual CPC and quality score. Since 2007, Google changed to base the position on the maximum CPC bid and the quality score.

The quality score component of this formula is closely related to your CTR. The better a CTR/ quality score, the cheaper it is for you to achieve top positions. For example, an ad with a 2% CTR and $0.25 max CPC bid is the same as an ad with a 1% CTR and a max $0.50 bid. If both bid $0.50, the ad with higher CTR wins.

You can use this to your advantage. You can set your maximum CPC bid much higher than you really want to pay. You know that the actual cost will be less. Plus, you can be assured of a higher ad position because Google will base the ad position on this inflated maximum CPC.

You could theoretically bid $100 per click. This would guarantee you the top ad position, because Google will base the ad position on the high bid. You would know that your actual CPC would be nowhere near $100, but instead just enough to beat out the second ad. A keyword with no competition would cost $0.05 or $0.10 assuming you had a good quality score.

Assuming you have a good CTR rate of 1% or better, it would impossible for any other advertiser to take the top position from you. Since google bases the top position on the maximum CPC, and you are at $100 per click with a good quality score and CTR, you would be unbeatable.

But there are some risks with inflating the maximum CPC. A competing advertiser could increase is maximum CPC. You would still have the top position, but it would more expensive to beat the number 2 ad. It's quite possible for the actual CPC to go beyond your budget or comfort level. You would need to be very vigilant to make sure you do not cross this threshold.

Common myths regarding the Quality Score‏

2010-01-23T05:59:00.000-08:00

Myth 1. Your account is assigned only one Quality Score

Your overall quality score is an aggregate of numerous quality scores. Each component of your account is assigned an individual score. Here is the break down, from top to bottom:

Overall Quality Score
Content Campaign Quality Score
Search Campaign Quality Score
Ad Group Quality Score
Ad Text Quality Score
Keyword Quality Score

This seems like a lot of scores that you have to keep in check; however, it's not so daunting if you keep your wits about you. When trying to improve your quality score you should focus on improving your ad texts and keywords and everything else will naturally fall into place.

Myth 2. Optimizing your account deletes your history

"Optimizing" your account consists of restructuring your campaigns and ad groups so that your keywords and ad texts are as specific and relevant as possible.

In order to deliver the best user experience, increase your click-through rate, and enhance your Quality Score, your keywords need to be tightly grouped and your ad texts need to highlight these keywords. As your account grows and matures you will learn how best to group your keywords so optimizing is a natural progression for account management.

When restructuring your account you will move keywords and ad texts from one ad group, or campaign, to another. Moving your keywords does not delete their history. However, your keywords may lose their history if you delete and re-insert them into another campaign or ad group. And moving keywords within your AdWords account is extremely easy when you use AdWords Editor.

Myth 3. Dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) is a sure-fire way to improve your Quality Score

DKI is a helpful tool. Simply using DKI does not automatically improve your quality score. Crafting your ad texts so that they are relevant and appealing to your audience (and you may utilize DKI to this effect), will increase your click-through rate, which can have a positive impact on your Quality Score.

Keep in mind that you should use DKI sparingly. Or, you should need to use it sparingly. When your ad groups have tightly themed keywords, then you shouldn't have to use DKI within your ad text. If the only way the majority of your keywords can appear within your ads is by using DKI (because you have hundreds of keywords in your ad group) then you should think about restructuring your campaign. And since optimizing your account doesn't delete your account history, what do you have to lose? In summary, DKI doesn't automatically help your Quality Score, and you shouldn't use it as a crutch.

Myth 4. Higher ad positions benefit your Quality Score

Increasing your bids to get a higher ad position is not a good way to enhance your Quality Score. Sure, if you increase your bids and a get higher position, this may increase your click-through rate which in turn could have a positive impact on your Quality Score. With this method you will certainly increase your cost-per-click, and that's the only certainty you'll get.

The Quality Score actually works in reverse of this theory. If you take measures to increase your click-through rate (other than raising bids) and create great landing pages, then your quality score and ad position should increase and your cost-per-click will actually decrease.

Inside AdWords: Click-to-play video ads for AdWords

2010-01-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

We're very excited to announce the release of click-to-play video ads on the content network. Here's Bismarck, from the Video Ads team, with the details on this new feature:

In the coming days, we will be adding click-to-play video ads to the line-up of text, Flash and image ad formats currently supported by the Google content network. At launch, video ads will be available to AdWords advertisers in the US, Canada and Japan - but we plan to roll them out to other regions shortly.

Now, let's talk about the details.

First, as with all AdWords ad formats, video ads will compete for placement on sites in the Google content network with other text, Flash and image ads -- and, as with our other image ad placements, you can choose to bid on a CPC or CPM basis.

Second, these ads will be supported by both site- and keyword-targeted campaigns. You can choose to serve your video ad on a specific site or on pages in our content network that relate to your product or service. As always, you have the ability to geo-target your video ads internationally, nationally, or locally.

Finally, unlike some intrusive advertising, users will have complete control. When a page loads, only a static image will be visible; the video will not start playing until the user initiates it. He or she will be able to advance the video, pause it, adjust the volume or click through to the advertiser's site.

But, you may say, video is only for big branding oriented advertisers. We beg to differ. This feature makes video ads much more accessible to all advertisers. Now, an owner of a small bed & breakfast in Lake Tahoe can put a video tour of his beautiful chalet right next to an article that talks about skiing the epic slopes of Squaw Valley.

Inside AdWords: Click-to-play video ads for AdWords

Free Google Adwords Made Easy E-Book

2009-10-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

I am going to give you a FREE copy of Brad Callen's "Google Adwords Made Easy" e-book. This is most powerful book with regard to learning and also provide strong strategies to outclass your competitor in any Industry. So click on the image and Download it to become Adwords Expert.

Google AdWords Expands Opportunities Tab Beta

2009-09-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

The Google AdWords Blog announced they are expanding the limited opportunities tab beta to more advertisers in the US, UK and Australia. And in the next “few days,” Google will make this new tab available to all “English-language accounts.”

If you see the new tab and are a bit confused about where the tools and some other features went, you will want to check out the AdWords blog post. In that blog post, they answer a few frequently asked questions about the new tab and where some of the other features have been moved to.

Tips on Optimizing Google Adwords Ads

2009-01-24T13:33:00.000-08:00

I called this ABC Ads‟ because we‟re dealing with only three lines of text in an ad, and ABC perfectly describes the purpose each line should serve.

A is for attention, which is what the first line, your headline, should do. It should grab the attention of a potential customer and draw him or her to read your ad.

B stands for benefit, which should come in the second line of the ad. Give them a benefit they‟ll experience from your product, preferably one that allows them to avoid pain or gain pleasure.

C is call to action and the third line of the ad should compel them to click.

I have written a complete book on optimizing google adwords ads. It can increase your Click Through Rate drastically.

Google is Offering $250 Free Adwords Account Advertisement!!!!

2009-01-18T00:31:00.000-08:00

You might think that am kidding but its true. $250 in adword advertising is worth to experiment with until January 31, 2009.

Try it: http://www.google.com/ads/250/v.html.

If you already have an account with them, you need to open a new one with a different credit card. Also, be smart, don't just use this money anyhow. Investigate the most lucrative keywords with tools such as Adword keyword tool, Wordtracker and others.

Good luck in your adword advertising!!!!!

Adwords introduced Display ad builder ads

2009-01-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

Quote by Google Adwords:

With the AdWords display ad builder, in just minutes you can create professional-looking display ads that run across the Google content network, often driving more clicks and conversions than with text ads alone. Since launching, we've added several features to make the display ad builder more useful to you:

More space for text characters: With automatic text resizing, we'll shrink text to better accommodate more characters, as you type.
Image picker: You can now choose from previously uploaded images - rather than having to repeatedly upload them from your desktop - when creating your ads.
Real-time editing: See what your text and other customization edits look like, automatically -- without having to click the 'update preview' button.
Additional templates: Choose from even more templates for customizing your ads.

To get started, choose "Display ad builder" on the "Create an ad" page within a new or existing ad group in your AdWords account.