Bad performing keywords delete or temporary pause:

If you are running PPC campaign for a long time you would have come across lots of keywords that either doesn’t perform well or not converting properly. So what do we do with these keywords I recommend deleting non performing keywords than just pausing them.

Non performing keywords are always non performing they will never perform even if paused. If you pause non performing keywords later you will have double mind whether to re-enable them. It’s better to delete keywords so that you are not confused. There is only one disadvantage when deleting keywords in Google adwords you might lose quality score that you had before for that keyword. But then again if the keywords are not performing I am sure they will not be worth even if they have decent quality score. From my personal experience most non performing keywords are not properly related to the landing page or website. One other reason is the keywords are more generic than the products you are selling. So I recommend just delete keywords that are not working for you and relax.

You need to decide carefully which keywords you need and don’t need.

Bidding rules using bid management:
-Great converting keywords and low CPL’s -> own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% sov and bidding for pos. 1
-Great converting keywords and medium CPL’s -> Own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% SOV but bidding according to lead needs at that time/in that country (the whole quantity vs quality debate)
-Great converting keywords and high CPL’s -> Own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% SOV but bidding for lower positions

-Converting keywords and low CPL’s -> up budget and bids for 100% SOV
-Converting keywords and medium CPL’s -> same budget but lower bids
-Converting keywords with high CPL’s -> minimum budget and minimum bids

-Non converting keywords with low cost and low positions -> Look at relevance, if relevant up bids for higher position in low budget campaign. If not relevant delete
-Non converting keywords with low cost and high positions -> Look at relevance, if relevant keep as is, if not relevant delete
-Non converting keywords with medium and high cost -> delete

Then all is left is setting objective standards for High, Medium and Low: impressions, positions, CPL’s, number of leads and budgets.

Ads texts are always set up as follows:

-2 per adgroup; both are similar except for one line
-Always make the ad – line 1: headline with keyword, line 2: benefit, line 3: offer/call to action
-Only keyword insertion on relevant long tail keywords
-After enough data has been collected (look at statistical significance) we decide on a winner ad, pause the other and make one additional ad (with again only one line changed). This is a continual process.

More ad variations – instant positive quality score:

Recently few of the keywords I setup for my client got a bad quality score around 3-4 and were rated poor. My client was worried and he complained we need to fix it immediately. I know we are good with landing pages just our ads are not too relevant. So I told my junior to make more ads relevant to the keywords that got bad quality score and boom next day the quality score of the bad keywords were back to 7 or 8.

I have seen many people afraid of this quality score. Personally it’s an excellent feature if done right you can use it to your own benefit. Some high quality score keywords can perform better even with lower bids. So make sure you maintain a healthy quality score for all the keywords you are advertising in a ad group.

Remember if you are an affiliate site you are not welcomed both in PPC and SEO. Bad quality scores are common in affiliate PPC campaigns.

Bad conversions when PPC ads show up in Yahoo shopping search.

Unlike Google products adwords ads, yahoo shopping search seem to have people only looking around and not buying anything. We have many clients who do yahoo PPC and when we get clicks from yahoo shopping search conversion rates are below 0.15 %. For Google adwords we have conversions ranging from 0.8% from content network to 2% in search network. But yahoo conversion rates are poor especially traffic from shopping search is bad.

We tried blocking yahoo shopping search but there are no options for it. We are unable to stop ads from showing up in Yahoo shopping search if anyone has ideas on that please let us know.

Is PPC dead or on the death track?

Some suggest PPC is dead or heading towards to a lower trend there are other online marketing ideas taking over PPC. But is PPC really dead?

I don’t think PPC is dead at all, in fact I think that in a lot of industries it is about to blossom. There are a that a lot of companies have been throwing money at it, and needing a second or third purchase to return a profit, but many companies are pulling back on that now, as they can’t afford a loss leading marketing channel, so they’re focusing on a realistic CPA and account optimization, and in many cases I believe they are finding that they can generate a similar level of sales with a “clever” campaign, rather than a “money black hole” campaign.

I read an article on tech crunch that PPC traffic is flat in January or even less in February but I feel its mostly due to people’s spending power in this crisis period. We are still in global crisis and people are holding back their money. I am sure when things get back to normal people will start using PPC more.

PPC is far from dead there is still a lot more to go in PPC sometimes PPC is better than SEO and will be here for a long time.

Ideas to learn affiliate marketing:

Affiliate marketing if done properly is one of the most successful strategies in online Business. If you hit the right way to do it I assure quality income from it.

Affiliate marketing is mostly trial and error. You need to try different types of affiliate marketing programs and select the one best suit you. There are 1000s of good affiliate programs available online and there are people making 10s of 1000s of dollars from being a good affiliate.

1. Learning to be an affiliate will not come in a day you need to keep updating yourself from various quality resources. A forum like webmaster world is a good start you can go through the affiliate programs thread. You can find tons of quality information from great affiliates in this forum.

2. EBooks’: Most eBooks’ are meant to be sold to the customer don’t get over excited about eBooks’ thought some eBooks’ provide some decent advise most of them are just sales copies.

3. Using Adwords and other PPC programs for affiliate marketing has been around for a long time. But now Adwords also penalizes site that are strictly affiliate so be careful and make a site valuable for your visitors.

4. Time and money is important: Be prepared to spend 2 to 5 hours per day (depending on how fast you read and learn), a minimum of 4 days a week, for at least two months to really know if this is something you want to become a profession at or if you want to peruse something else.

5. Attend WebMasterWorld conference or affiliate summit and network with other affiliates. This is a community I recommend for new affiliates, there’s a lot of noise there, but there’s also some real good people that will help you some, like this place as well, but there it’s all affiliate subject matter.

Some tips from an affiliate:

“I didn’t go looking for the highest paying offer or the latest fad or any of that.
I took a look at my life and the various systems I’ve developed for doing various things, and asked myself if there was anything I was doing that was relatively unique to *me* – maybe an uncommon way of performing a common task or need, and could I find a niche there?
Didn’t take long, because I have several such. I took the one I thought had the most ‘commercial’ appeal and went to see if the vendor for one of the products I use for this had an affiliate program, and lo and behold – they did! Not only that, I found a vendor for some accessory products as well.
Then I built out the site on a Word Press format, adding my own personal experiences with this system, why I thought it was better than the ‘standard’ way of doing things, and I’m now in the process of making some videos to demonstrate it, and adding various other enhancements.
It’s early yet, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be a success, because I’m not just tossing up a product feed and relying on the thing to sell itself; I’m adding my own personal experiences, my own methods, video demonstrations, related stories, tips, etc.
It’s also a pretty expandable topic, so if it takes off like I hope, there’s a lot more I can add to it, including guest posts, new products, recommendations, reviews, the possibilities are pretty endless.
THAT kind of affiliate site has no problem doing well with Adwords (and in fact, I have no quality score issues at all so far) It brings more value than just the product offer, and that makes it a lot easier to deliver a quality user experience.
The world doesn’t need more sites with outsourced content devoted to weight loss berries.”

Good keyword research tools for your PPC campaign:

Keyword research is one of the primary factor when it comes to effective SEO / PPC campaigns. Good keyword research before any PPC campaign will increase your ROI considerably. People tend to search more and more targeted phrases if they cant find for generic phrases. So its important to have a good list of keywords to get started with your PPC management campaign.
Today there are lots of keyword research tools, leading the market in keyword research tool is ofcourse Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool.

Google Adwords tool can be gauged more accurate since it comes directly from Google itself. Google can relied for their data because it tends to be more accurate. They use Adwords real time data to feed the keyword suggestion tool and this works out to be effective and reliable.

Word tracker: A traditional hit tool which has been online for more than 10 years long before Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool. This tool formerly used Google data to populate keyword suggestion. It seems to be the same case right now. Wordtracker helps website owners and search engine marketers identify keywords and phrases that are relevant to their or their client’s business and most likely to be used as queries by search engine visitors. Marketers can also determine how many competing sites are using those keywords and can identify the phrases that have the greatest traffic potential.

PPC rap – interesting:

This is fantastic; it’s now standard training material. “Special Sauce”?, why is it every SEM guru uses this Macdonald’s term? Very funny, keep it up. How about a rap on Content? This rap has more to it than sex, drugs, and swearing unlike the stereotype.

I always wondered why most online marketing acronyms rhymed, now I know. God has a plan for us after all. We need to take your message to the streets!

Complying with advertising standards when you advertise

When you advertise, the claims you make for your product or service must comply with a number of standards to ensure fair trade. They must also comply with regulations protecting:

• the intellectual property rights of copyright holders
• registered trade marks
• all groups protected by discrimination law

The major pay per click (PPC) providers will ask that you comply with copyright, trade marks and anti-discrimination law when you use their services.

PPC terms and conditions will typically set out that it is your responsibility as the advertiser to:

• check your right to use any copyright or copyrighted content – i.e. you must not promote copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder
• not advertise products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods (a replica item contains the trademarked name or logo of a designer brand, but is not made by that brand)
• avoid using words that could be considered discriminatory or offensive to any protected group

Choosing a pay per click agency

Pay per click (PPC) advertising agencies can help you start your PPC campaign and attract quality sales traffic to your website. A good place to start your search for an agency is to open your favourite search engine and search for one in your area. If you find a name in the top ten generic results and again in the top three sponsored links, you could click through and see whether the landing page matches your expectations.

Before contacting an agency, consider the skills and competencies you expect of an agency and your marketing goals and objectives.

There are certain similarities with traditional advertising agencies – eg you’ll want prospective PPC agencies to provide testimonials and customer references or case studies. See our guide on how t0 choose and manage advertising agency.

However, PPC agencies must have different skills and a different mind set. Ask prospective agencies whether they’re accredited as a Google AdWords Qualified Company, a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador and/or a Microsoft adExcellence member.

A good agency should have proven experience in the particular complexities of a stand-alone PPC campaign and Internet marketing campaigns that include PPC and other online marketing strands – eg banner adverts. They need to be able to show:

• an understanding of the pros and cons of the top PPC providers
• a good grasp of your market sector and competition
• proven experience and the necessary technology to set up, manage, track and analyse PPC campaigns
• a creative approach to PPC essentials – keyword research, bid management, daily budget, website optimisation and advert writing
• excellent strategic analysis and web analytic abilities
• how they set and achieve agreed targets
• how they plan to report to you and how often
• how they intend to maximise and measure your return on investment
• how they intend to charge you (eg a flat fee, a percentage of the campaign expenditure or on the basis of campaign performance)

Writing the advert is a critical point in your pay per click (PPC) campaign. You need to attract targeted leads and you have barely 100 characters to

Writing the advert is a critical point in your pay per click (PPC) campaign. You need to attract targeted leads and you have barely 100 characters to do this. Your copy needs to be compelling and you must attract the right buyers – ie those who want your product or service.

PPC gives you the flexibility to run different adverts in different regions, at different times of the day – or night – and target your copy to specific audiences. Because of the immediacy of the internet, you can prepare several adverts and test which works best, changing them every day if necessary.

Adverts have four short lines, the most important of which is the web address from which potential customers will click through to the landing page on your website.

Key points to consider when writing your adverts are to:

• include your keywords
• use phrases that relate to your keywords
• be specific – if you only serve a particular city, include it
• offer benefits – if you have a time-limited offer, say so
• your URL is part of the advert – make your keywords part of it
• keep your copy simple