Jagger

First, let’s discuss Jagger… Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they’re universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website’s ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple… With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients’ money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there’s nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they’re not considered ‘black-hat’), they don’t really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.

In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the world’s smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that’s exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites which actually deserve a high ranking. It is hoped that these mistakes will be ironed out with future minor updates, but that’s a topic for another article…)

From a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article, http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/Jagger. To summarize, Jagger:

1. Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2. Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3. Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to #1 & #2)?
4. More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain?
5. Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6. Possible introduction of CSS Spam filtering?
7. Overall Blog demotions?
8. New and unresolved “canonical” issues?

Some more interesting effects were reported by WG Moore in his Jagger article – http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/nov/9.html. Mr Moore runs a number of test sites for SEO purposes. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:

“all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way… During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.”

In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands – if not millions – of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

Interestingly, article PR (article submission) came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. My SEO copywriting website, for example, went from no.4 to no.1 worldwide for “copywriter”, and I’ve employed article PR almost exclusively. Whether it was promoted or the sites around it were demoted, one thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.

Google Analytics

The second monumental event to occur recently was Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html. Google Analytics is a free web-stats solution which not only reports all the regular site stats, but also integrates directly with Google AdWords giving webmasters and insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, ” Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.”

Why is this such a landmark move? Because for the first time ever, Google will have access to your real web stats. And these stats will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa – http://www.alexa.com . Furthermore, Google’s privacy statement (http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html) says: ” We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services.” Now let’s put two and two together:

1. Google is ‘giving’ every webmaster in the world free access to quality web-stats.
2. Millions of webmasters will accept this ‘gift’, if only because it integrates directly with their Google AdWords campaigns.
3. Google will then have full access to the actual web stats of millions of commercial websites.
4. Google will have the right to use these stats to develop new technologies.
5. What’s the next logical step? Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings, of course!

It should come as no surprise. It’s been on the cards – and frequently discussed – for a long time. For example, Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen, recently published an article on this very topic http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/The-Future-of-WebSite-Ranking.html. She quite rightly asserts that:

“Google’s “democratic” vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms.”

In fact, the Jayde Online network already owns and operates a search engine, http://www.ExactSeek.com, which incorporates user popularity statistics in its rankings.

The Future of Search & SEO

To date, ExactSeek is the only search engine which uses visitor stats as criteria for its rankings. But Google isn’t far behind. We all know that Google specializes in taking a good idea and implementing and adapting it brilliantly. This is exactly what we’ll see in this case. By combining link popularity and user popularity statistics, Google will be the only major search engine to consider both what other sites think of your website and what your visitors think of your website. And because they have the most advanced algorithms for assessing link popularity, and will soon have access to the farthest reaching, most accurate web stats to assess user popularity, its competitors will be a long time catching up.

So if that’s the future of search, what’s the future of SEO? The future of SEO is undoubtedly one where:

* one-way text links from relevant pages continue to be the most valuable links
* reciprocal linking continue to decline
* the ’shotgun’ approach to link buying declines
* mass email link requests decline
* free directory submission declines
* niche directory submission increases
* article PR (article submission) increases
* article submission sites (e.g. http://www.ezinearticles.com , http://www.goarticles.com , and http://www.articleblast.com ) play a much bigger and more important role in helping online publishers locate quality articles (due to the increasing article volume)
* user popularity is just as important as link popularity, which means:
o the quality of article PR improves in order to increase site traffic, credibility, and loyalty
o the quality of website content improves in order to convert traffic and encourage repeat visits

Clearly, the choices for SEOs will be pretty much limited to paying for links at niche sites and/or engaging in article PR. Being an SEO copywriter, I may be a little biased, but for mine, article PR is the hands-down winner in this comparison:

* It satisfies Google’s criteria for relevance and importance. Linking site owners include your article and link because, in doing so, their site becomes more useful to visitors, and their business gains credibility and authority.
* It generates hundreds of free links quickly enough to make it worth your while, but not so quickly as to raise red flags at Google (in the form of link dampening).
* Links are permanent and you don’t have to pay to keep them there.
* You get a lot of qualified referred traffic who already trust you and your expertise. This satisfies Google’s visitor popularity criteria, while at the same time bringing you a lot of extra customers.

For more information on article PR, read ‘How to Top Google with Article PR’ (articlepr.com/SEO_Article_Submission.shtml).

Conclusion

The lesson from Jagger is, don’t try and trick Google! They’ve got more money and more brains than virtually any company in the world. It’ll only end in tears! Don’t spend time and money trying to make your site look important and relevant. Instead, spend that time and money actually making it important and relevant! Content – the real content behind the optimization – is the answer. After all, whether it’s an article or a web page, it’s the content that keeps ‘eyes on paper’, and that’s what it’s all about.

Happy optimizing!

Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company, Article PR, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit DivineWrite.com or ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Glenn_Murray

Sign up for the Google Adwords program is free but they require a $5 USD deposit before they will start to display your ad copy. Google provides an excellent interface to work with. A pleasant modular design groups all of your work into nice “containers” that can be manipulated and viewed in a variety of ways.

The system reporting is by no means real time but the delay on their results display is palatable when comparing them to the other major PPC provider, Yahoo-Overture.

A nice feature that sets Adwords apart from other PPC providers is that your ads display almost instantly after you place them in their system. They have built a lot of their editorial guidelines into the ad entry system.

Their system will flag your ad before you can enter it if it doesn’t meet their terms of service . That is a lot better than waiting 2-5 business days to find out if your ad had a problem or not. Time is money.

Also provided with your Adwords account are a number of free tools to help you with your campaign management.

While several of these tools are great starting points I have found the need to augment what Google provides through my own online research, tools and software as well as e-book purchases.

The lesson learned, everybody that uses Google Adwords has access to the same tools that you do, including your competitors. It goes without saying that if you want to get an advantage here you will need other resources to supplement your knowledge other than what Google provides.

Having said that the Google Adwords system is still extremely powerful . Providing you with keyword suggestions, automated bid management, campaign optimization (by Google staff), geo-targeting, roi tracking, and all the reporting you can handle, their system allows you a b level of control over your spending and the ability to truly identify who your customer really is.

What I really like about the Adwords system is the fact that the guys with the most advertising dollars are not guaranteed to win any particular market.

Google tracks the Click Through Ratio (the percentage of people who see your ad and click on it) for each of your ads and keywords. Their system gives you a better position in their display listings if more people are clicking on your ads.

Why do they do this?

To reward people who take the time to write relevant ad copy and marry that to a tightly relevant keyword list.

You see, Google will reward you for doing your homework . The time you invest studying and learning their system will save you money , which can be just as rewarding as making money.

Hey, if I could afford 5 dollars a click I would pay it, but I can’t. I need to lower my advertising costs while at the same time generating as much targeted traffic to my site as possible.

Unfortunately, my experience with their support system does not paint as rosy a picture of the mighty Google . In general, their online information is pretty good. It will solve your routine questions such as “when exactly does my credit card get billed? ) ” quite well.

Google’s support system seems geared towards keeping you off the phone with them. They like to refer to their repository of online documentation and use template driven email communication.

In instances where I needed specific information (i.e. why is this keyword disabled even though I created a brand new campaign to put it in?) I received “canned” emails with my support persons name “pasted” into the email.

Often times I was required to send them another email asking if they had even read my first one and to get the answer I was REALLY looking for.

At the end of the day I was left feeling that eventually my problem was going to be solved I just wasn’t sure when that was going to be and how many times I would have to contact them in order to get the answer I really wanted.

Typical Costs associated with Running an Adwords Campaign

There’s two ways to approach this:

Are you going to manage your own campaigns?

or

Do you want to leverage someone else’s experience and invest money in a company that can manage your Adwords campaigns?

Let me suggest that you manage your own accounts at least in the beginning . Start small and start collecting reference materials while you learn how the system works.

Search for other products and resources that can help you but keep in mind some of them won’t work out . Don’t let that stop your research, there is material out there that can truly help you and save you a lot of money.

Investing in a $40 e-book is a lot cheaper than blowing $500 or more with Google while you are learning the ropes .

Having said that if you want to get a successful campaign started now you can enlist an SEO company to manage your Adwords campaigns.

The question is: How will you know who to trust?

You can burn several thousand dollars for overpriced, untargeted traffic if you let the wrong companies manage your campaigns. How can anyone honestly know what to look for in an Adwords Management company if you haven’t even tried the system out for yourself? Food for thought. If you manage your own campaigns at first you will get a feel for the system.

Campaign Costs

Ok, let’s talk about the typical costs you can expect running a Google Adwords campaign. The good news is Google Adwords gives you the potential to reach millions of surfers in a matter of minutes for pretty much as little money as you want to spend.

The bad news is after the novelty of having an Adwords account and setting up your first few campaigns wears off it can begin to feel like a ball and chain. There are a lot of monotonous tasks that have to be managed daily and it can be a tough thing to manage unless you are a disciplined person.

Before you spend money on campaigns and resources acquire this mental discipline. Realize before you begin that it isn’t going to be fun after a while. Google Adwords is a business tool, one of many, and as such it has it’s advantages and flaws . It can make you a lot of money or it can cost you a lot of money and create a lot of stress for you depending on your ability to consistently manage your campaigns.

Ok, your minimum initial deposit is $5 to get started as we learned above. Start here, and I suggest resisting the urge to JUMP in and start spending like crazy… stay at or near this $5-$50 level of investment until you use it up .

You’re not going to see any returns on this investment financially but you will gain valuable knowledge of how best to use the Google Adwords System to generate income without learning the hard way.

You have a lot of learning to do before you want to start pouring money into your account. Google is in the business of making money and their system makes it “REALLY” easy to spend as much as you want.

Minimum bids start at a reasonable $0.05 USD. After developing your keyword list and dumping it into Google’s system you have to start making financial decisions.

If you take Google’s suggested bid prices for your keyword list you can pay a lot of money for your web traffic depending on how large your keyword list is and how much traffic these keywords generate.

Rest assured Google’s system will provide you a lot of traffic quickly if you want to pay for it. It’s not uncommon for Google’s big management system to suggest max bids in the $20 – $30 range.

You don’t have to accept these outrageous suggestions of course so your first big money saver is to lower the max bid to something you find acceptable and enter it for all of your keywords.

Please note Google’s system will not charge you this full amount unless someone else is willing to pay that much for the keyword. Leave this number set higher if you want to produce a lot of clicks quickly.

Bidding into position’s 1-3 will deliver the most traffic, but will be less targeted than position’s 4-6.

Position 1 will get the most clicks but many of these clicks will be untargeted “impulse” clicks. Taking the time to scan all the way to position 6 in the listing and click on the advertisement at that position suggests that the searcher is extremely interested in the subject being advertised.

Over time you will learn which keywords are making you money and which one’s are simply too competitive for your budget. Google’s campaign tracking abilities in conjunction with other 3rd party ad tracking software can help you identify these profitable keywords and track your website visitors.

Unfortunately every system can only provide so much traffic and you will find the larger companies can afford to bid pretty high for more general, high traffic keywords because they can afford it.

Large companies will pay $5 for general keywords like “credit cards” because they know over the lifetime of using a credit card they will recover their investment.

The big boys can squeeze you out of the Google Adwords World just as easily as in the “real world”. Of course it’s not all “doom and gloom”. You still have a powerful and relatively inexpensive tool in your hands if you can exploit niches and find the “bargain” keywords.

Google’s system of tools leaves you high and dry in this respect unless you have a lot of money to blow on “throwing out a wide net” by trying a large keyword list and then refining your campaigns as you start to get clicks and track your conversions.

You can get a lot of garbage clicks by bidding your way to the top for general keywords . This is expensive, less targeted, and lower converting than if you bid to position 3-5 or spend time finding the less expensive niche keywords (using your third party software or e-book techniques).

Chances are when bidding on more general high traffic keywords you will be competing with large companies and competitors using SEO company services to manage their campaigns.

These companies can afford to pay a lot more than you or I for their clicks. In order to counteract this you need to tightly target your campaigns and find niche keyphrases to be profitable with Google. I can’t stress this enough.

To make proper decisions you will need to gather as much data as you can on how the Adwords system works. Obviously, you won’t have this data until you run a campaign or two which is why I suggest running your own Adwords Campaigns for a while to get familiar with their system.

Study the stats provided by Google which are really quite good in conjunction with one or more 3rd party stats tracking packages.

You will start to notice trends in the numbers which will allow you to make more effective use of your time and money by bidding only on the keywords that are generating sales.

Analysis may also prompt you to tweak your site content if you notice a niche you want to start competing for (better yet start up another site or tier two web page on your site targeting that niche and remove these keywords from the original campaign moving them into a new campaign pointing to your new content).

Minor tweaks can save you BIG money using Adwords

Some Notes on Scalability:

Google allows you to bid on 3 types of keyword matching options which immediately gives you three times the keywords to bid on without any more brainstorming on your part.

Each matching option provides different results and should be managed on a keyword by keyword basis.

Google also provides two methods of displaying your ad on their network: Content Match Listings and Search Network Listings .

Effectively this allows you the potential to be noticed by:

1) anyone searching on Google’s portal

2) anyone searching portal sites that get their search results from Google

3) anyone viewing a site displaying Google’s ads that has content related to the keywords you bid on.

4) anyone reading an email with content related to your keyword at Google’s free email service Gmail.

That’s a lot of options and a lot of potential exposure. Tweaking to find the right combination for your particular situation and spending requirements is something you simply have to do on an ongoing basis. I think the benefits are obvious to you by now.

A final word on costs. You may have noticed that I didn’t use a lot of numbers in my discussion of campaign costs with Google. What I think I have illustrated is a Google campaign truly can cost as little or as much as you want it to.

It can get you as much or as little traffic as you want it to. What kind of traffic it brings and how much it costs is up to you.

Where will your ads be displayed? More places than you might think:

At the time of publication AOL, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, AT&T Worldnet, EarthLink and Excite all get some or all of their search results from Google.

Content Match Listings vs. Search Network Listings

When user’s do a search on one of the Google family of portal sites your paid listings appear either along the top of the search results highlighted as sponsored listings or to the right of the actual search results in text boxes.

Your position on these search pages is determined by your keyword list and your bid for that keyword.

Your results with the Search Network Listings can be quite successful as long as you manage your account using some of the techniques suggested in this article.

Use the included Geo-targeting capabilities built into the Adwords system to ensure your ads display only in areas that are potential customers for you.

Content match listings appear as inserts on web pages not in search engine results pages. My experiences with the content Match Listings haven’t been as successful as with the Search Network Listings although I still use this option for some of my campaigns.

Google’s system analyses the content of web page and serves up ads to those pages based on the what it feels the page is about . A web page on motorcycles may feature ads about buying motorcycles, motorcycle catalogues, parts distributors … I think you get the idea.

And this idea is a good one since the ads it displays are usually pretty close to what you would think they should be. When you display ads on your website using Google’s Adsense program for example, you are effectively joining their content network.

A drawback to the content matching system is you can’t really know who is clicking on your ad. It could even be a competitor clicking on your ad from their own site! Google gives you the option of disabling either of these display methods if they aren’t working out for you with the click of a button.

You can do this on a campaign by campaign basis only enabling/disabling what is working for you. If you want to minimize your risk but still utilize the Content Matching system you do have an option.

You can set up a separate campaign with lower bid prices for your keywords and only enable content matching for this campaign. Remove the content matching option from your original campaign and voila! you’ve minimized your risk.

A few more notes on Google Campaign Optimization

I can’t stress enough the importance of getting a good Click Through Ratio (CTR) for your best target keywords. Google has really offered you a chance to save some big time money if you know how to get a good CTR for your ads and keywords.

Getting a good CTR allows Google to sell more ad space which makes them more money. Google transfers some of this money to you the advertiser by increasing your ranking within their search results it displays for your keywords, at no additional cost.

That’s right, if you can write relevant ads for your target keywords you don’t necessarily have to pay the higher bid prices for those keywords that your competitors are paying. More money saved!

Advantages of the Google Adwords System

- Highly configurable system with an intuitive web-based interface.

- Reporting system is near real-time so you can tweak campaigns on the fly

- Since their system is web based you can access your account at any time.

- Good list of Free tools and guides (although third party tools may still be required)

- Rewards advertisers that pay attention to providing relevant content to their search clients not necessarily the highest bidder. Get a better CTR and your ads are cheaper.

- Geo-targeting capabilities. Target by City, Country or display your ads Globally.

- Multiple ad delivery systems. Content and Search listings, Partner Network listings, Email.

- Multiple keyword matching options including the ability to ‘filter’ keywords.

- Reasonable minimum startup cost of $5 with no monthly minimum spend requirements

- They have licensed their search results to several other large search engines improving your web site’s exposure to people that don’t use Google as their main search portal.

- Free ROI tracking tools.

- Minimum bid is a reasonable $0.05 USD.

Disadvantages of the Google Adwords System

- Learning curve can cost you a lot of money.

- Not the most expensive PPC search engine but certainly more expensive than all other PPCs except Yahoo-Overture

- Click fraud is an unavoidable risk.

- Content matching system does not always deliver the same ROI as their search listings. If both ad delivery systems are enable for a particular campaign the content match results can lower your overall campaign CTR and get keywords disabled.

- Support system is email template driven. It can take you a few tries to get the information you REALLY need from Google’s support.

- Interface does not indicate what your competitors are bidding, only the maximum bid for any particular keyword, making the implementation of bidding strategies much more difficult.

Google Adwords Resources: Google Adwords Homepage

About the Author

Michael Lawrence is the webmaster for the Cobrasurf Directory of search engine optimization resources. He also publishes an SEO Blog, SEO Web Guide featuring SEO articles, news, tools and services.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Lawrence

I’ll be covering some of the most vital areas you need to know to be profitable in Google Adwords.

I’ve hidden some of the very best Google Adwords tips throughout this whole article – so be sure to read each and every word in this lens to find out these golden nuggets!

Where Will My Ads Appear?

You ads will on the right hand side of any search results in the Google search engine – the sites listed here are what we call as “paid listing”.

Those sites listed on the left of the Google search engine are what we called as “organic listing” – and whenever someone clicks on these links, the website’s owner need not pay for anything – it’s free traffic.

As to how you can get your website listed in the first position in the Google search engine in the “organic listing” will depend on many factors – you’ll need to apply Search Engine Optimization (SEO) skills here.

Understanding Terms Used In Google Adwords

The following are some of the terms most commonly used in Google Adwords and what these terms are:

1. CPC (Cost Per Click)

CPC, also known as Cost Per Click, is how much Google Adwords charges you when someone clicks on your ad.

2. Maximum CPC

Maximum CPC is an amount you are willing to pay at maximum for a click on your ad.

You’ll have to state a maximum CPC for all your keywords when you create a new campaign – Google Adwords will NOT charge you beyond your maximum CPC.

3. Impressions

Impressions is the number of times your ad has been displayed for each keyword.

4. CTR (Click Through Rate)

CTR, also known as Click Through Rate, is a percentage generated by Adwords for each keyword – it is calculated based on the following formula:

(Number of Clicks / Number of Impressions) * 100 = CTR (in percentage)

In general, the higher your CTR is, the more relevant Google think your ad is, and as such, over time, as your CTR increases, Google Adwords will charge you lower per click when someone clicks on your ad.

5. Quality Score (QS)

Quality Score is a score that’s calculated by Google Adwords based on a number of factors – the quality of your destination page (page at which you’ll lead your visitors to when they click on your ad), your keyword’s CTR, maximum CPC that you’ve set, etc.

The page in which you’re going to send visitors to when they click on your ad is very important here – if your page is just a very simple page that provides no information but to ask them to enter their first name and email address to proceed, chances are you’ll get a very poor Quality Score, and as a result, you’ll have to pay a very high Cost Per Click.

In essence, the better the Quality Score is, the lesser you need to pay when someone clicks on your ad.

4 Keyword Types In Google Adwords

There are 4 main keyword types in Google Adwords, and I’m going to explain what these keyword types are with examples:

1. Broad Match

Broad match keywords are keywords without any inverted commas (”) or square brackets ([ ]) in between.

Let me give you an example of a broad match keyword – learn golf.

Your ad will be triggered whenever the keyword phrase a person types in contains both “learn” and “golf”. Also, your ad will also be triggered for related terms relating to the words “learn” and “golf” as well.

Here are some examples of keywords that will trigger your ads:

- learn how to play golf

- golf learning websites

- master the art of learning golf

- golf learn lessons online

This type of keyword will allow for your ad to be shown most of the time. However, it is sometimes very untargeted traffic.

I personally do not like to target broad match keywords in my Adwords campaigns.

2. Phrase Match

Phrase match keywords are keywords that has inverted commas in between – for example “learn golf”.

Your ad will only be triggered if the keyword phrase a person types in contains the word “learn golf” in that sequence.

Here are some of the keyword phrase examples that will trigger your ad:

- i want to learn golf online

- learn golf on the internet

- where can i learn golf

- learn golf swing

However, your ad will NOT be triggered when someone types in the following:

- learning golf

- learn how to play golf

- golf learn

3. Exact Match

Exact match keyword phrases have square brackets in between them – for example [learn golf].

You ad will ONLY be triggered when someone enters the words learn golf in that sequence. Nothing else in front or at the back.

I love to target my ads with both exact and phrase match keywords – as they give me the best targeted traffic to my website.

4. Negative Match

Many people neglect having negative keywords in their ad campaigns. You need to find as many negative words as possible to eliminate unwanted ad impressions and unwanted clicks.

Let me give you an example – if you’re selling a digital book product on golf entitled “beginner golf tips”, you wouldn’t want your ad to show up when someone is looking for free beginner golf tips, beginner golf tips torrent, beginner golf tips download, etc.

All you need to do here is to precede these keywords with a negative (-) sign, for example

-free

-torrent

-download

This is very important: You MUST build up your list of negative keywords. To look out for negative keywords, simply make use of the free Google Keywords tool or free Wordtracker tool, type in the keyword which you want to target, and browse through the list to see if there’s any keyword terms you do not wish your ad to appear if someone enters them in.

I normally have a list of about 500 – 600 negative keywords in any Adwords campaign that I have – this will ensure that my ad will only appear for the most targeted keyword terms, and thereby bringing me better profits.

Understanding Your Potential Customer’s Buying Life Cycle

Understanding your potential customer’s buying life cycle is very crucial in you deciding the type of keywords you should target for any Adwords campaign that you’re going to set up.

There are basically 3 categories of keywords – namely the Browsing Keywords, Comparison Keywords and finally, the Buying Keywords. Just what these categories of keywords mean?

Let me explain this with an example. Take for instance you are promoting BMW 7 series car as an affiliate – which keywords you should target for the best results:

1. Browsing Keywords

In this stage, your potential customers probably doesn’t know what model or even what brand of car he/she wants. But he/she is interested in getting a new car.

So he’ll just enter keywords like the following to find out what types of cars and models are available:

- fast cars

- cool cars

- sports cars

- nice cars

- smart cars

The list doesn’t stop there – but just to give you an example of keywords they’ll possibly enter. This is the browsing keywords phase.

If you are promoting a BMW 7 series car and you’re targeting keywords like these, chances are you’ll get lots of ad impressions, you may get lots of clicks, but no conversions – the reason is because people who type in these keywords do not even have an intention to buy.

I don’t normally encourage you to target such keywords for your Adwords campaign. It’s just a waste of time and money.

2. Comparison Keywords

After some research, you potential customer decides he wants to buy a BMW car – but doesn’t know which model he wants. At this stage, he wants to find out more about BMW cars, so he’ll enter keywords like:

- BMW for sale

- BMW reviews

- compare BMW models

If you have a created a landing page to collect your potential customers’ first name and email address in exchange for a free report, email series, video series, audio series, etc. to educate him/her on the types of BMW car models available, and eventually convince him why he/she should get the BMW 7 series car which you’re promoting, then you should target these keywords in your Adwords campaign.

This is the comparison keywords phase. Remember, in this phase, your customers know what they want – in BMW, but he/she doesn’t know whether BMW cars is the best choice for him, or he/she doesn’t know which model to go for. With the right marketing techniques, you may be able to get some sales here.

3. Buying Keywords

Your potential customer know what he/she wants – a BMW 7 series car, and is ready to buy. So he/she will enter keywords like:

- buy BMW 7 series

- cheap BMW 7 series

- BMW 7 series offer

- BMW 7 series car sale

The list goes on – These are called “Buying Keywords”, and that’s where most money will be made from – this is where you must target your keywords – all instances of keywords containing the phrase “BMW 7 series”.

You’ll get the highest number of conversions from these buying keywords.

Tools For Keyword Research

I usually make use of these 3 free tools during my keyword research for suitable keywords for my Adwords campaigns:

1. Google’s Keyword Research Tool

2. Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Reseach Tool

3. Keyword Discovery’s Free Keyword Research Tool

How Much Should I Bid For? – Tips For Determining Your Maximum CPC

As a rough estimate, I’m going to assume that I’m going to get 1 sale every 100 clicks (you can take this assumption as well)

Let’s say the commission you’ll receive for this product is $47 for every sale. Therefore, your maximum CPC should be:

Commission Paid for 1 Sale / 100

Which in this case will be $0.47 – you can set your maximum CPC as $0.47.

However, you may also want to assume that you will be able to get 1 sale in every 50 clicks. In such a scenario, you can set your maximum CPC as $0.94.

Normally, I will be able to get a sale every 33 clicks on the average (that’s my average) – so for me, I can set my maximum CPC as $1.42.

Is It Possible For Me To Set My Maximum CPC To Be The Same As The Minimum Bid Specified By Adwords?

Before I answer this question, let me explain what this minimum bid specified by Adwords means – this minimum bid is the minimum amount you need to set as your maximum CPC in order for Google Adwords to display your ads.

If you set your maximum CPC to be lower than what is specified in the minimum bid, then Google Adwords will not show your ads.

Back to the question, yes, you can set your maximum CPC for each keyword to be the same as the minimum bid specified by Adwords. By doing so, your ad will most likely be placed in the tail end for the keyword you’re bidding for.

Let’s say if there are already 10 ads for this particular keyword you are bidding for – your ad will be placed in the 11th position.

Targeting Search & Content Networks – Or Not?

When you enter your campaign’s settings you’ll see a column called “Networks” which lets you state the networks in which you want your ads to appear in.

1. Google Search

When this is checked (this must be checked), your ad will appear when someone enters the keyword you’ve bid for in the Google Search Engine.

2. Search Network

When this is checked, your ad will appear when someone enters the keyword you’ve bid for in Google’s Search Network – such as Froggle, Google Groups, AOL, Netscape, Ask.com, Shopping.com, Earthlink.com, Compuserve, AT&T.

I personally don’t recommend you to check this option because the clicks are not very targeted (based on experience)

3. Content Network

When this option is checked, you ads will appear in related websites on the Internet in which the webmaster has Adsense modules in.

I do not recommend you to check this option also because the clicks you get are very untargeted (again based on my experience)

How Can I Write An Effective Ad Copy?

Writing an effective ad copy is very crucial to get a very good CTR – because your ad will stand out from the rest and this will definitely catch people’s attention and click on your ad.

One good way to create an ad copy is to create your own “swipe” file – this file will contain good ad phrases that you can use.

You are probably asking me now how can you find good ad phrases you can use – easy. All you need to do is to look into your local newspaper – which ever ad that caught your eye will be a good ad – copy the exact phrase in the ad that caught your eye and place it in this “swipe” file of yours. If this ad phrase manage to catch your eye, it is very likely that it will be able to catch the eye of others as well.

Another way is to look at the ads that’s in the Google Search Engine for the various keywords that you’re looking to place your ads on – see which ad caught your eye – and for the ad that caught your eye – what ad phrase did the advertiser use? Copy this ad phrase into your “swipe” file again.

Over time, you’ll have a “swipe” file full of eye-catching ad phrases that you can use in your ads to have an effective ad copy, and thereby improving your ad’s CTR.

What Is Google Slap?

What exactly is a Google Slap? To put it in layman terms, it simply means Google Adwords penalizing advertisers by slapping them with a very high minimum bid for a keyword – from a minimum bid of $5 or $10 per click for a keyword.

The reason why these advertisers are penalized is most likely due to the quality of the destination page they lead people to when their ads are being clicked.

As you already know, Google loves unique content, and they detest spams – so if you’re going to lead someone to a destination page where it contains nothing but 2 form fields to ask them for their first name and email address, you’ll most likely be penalize by Google – by needing to pay a very high cost per click.

How Do I Know If I Have Been Google “Slapped”?

Very easy, all you need to do is to look at the “Quality Score” column in your campaign ad group page.

If you look under the Quality Score column, you’ll see a “Minimum Bid” under your Quality Score for each keyword – if the minimum bid is $5 or $10, it means to say you’ve been Google “slapped” for that particular keyword.

When that happens, it means that Google deemed that the destination website you’ve led the visitor to when they click on your ad is not relevant to the keyword you’ve submitted bids in or the destination website has very poor quality contents. You’ll have to look into improving the destination website.

Are There Any Other Pay Per Click Sites Where I Can Place My Ads In?

Some of you may find Adwords too competitive (there are really lots of competition in some of those very hot niches).

You may want to consider placing your ads in other Pay Per Click Search Engines, as the competition is lesser, and also you need not pay too much per click.

Here are some of the other Pay Per Click Search Engines you might want to consider placing your ads in:

- Yahoo Search Marketing

- MSN AdCenter

- 7 Search

- LookSmart

- Miva

- Enhance

- AdBrite

I did have successes in some of these other search engines – some of those really competitive keywords only cost me $0.01 per click in some of these search engines!

For more free tips on how you can profit from your Google Adwords campaigns, please visit my site Google Adwords Tips

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