Welcome back kiddies and for those that have stumbled upon this post make sure you check out the first part to this little series for more great ppc tips and tricks.

In the first part of this little series we mostly talked about some easy ways to increase your CTR and Quality Score by making sure your ad groups were very targeted, your ad URL was targeted, and also making sure you send users to the correct landing pages which is targeted.

Shall we get started?

Research Keywords That are Converting!

While this might sound simple enough, most people don’t take the time to do this easy step. Once you create your new campaign for lets say Dating you of course have your first set of keywords that you have researched and put together into some nicely targeted ad groups.

You shouldn’t stop there though! Once you start receiving data, you should be tracking keyword conversions, you will start to find out which keywords are giving you the most conversions and with the best ROI (return on investment). So let’s say that after a week of starting your new campaign you notice that the keyword Local Singles is converting really well for you.

As an example we’ll say that the keyword Local Singles is getting 8 leads a day at $4.00 dollars a lead and your spending $12.00 dollars a day to get those leads. 8 leads a day at $4.00 dollars a lead is $32.00 dollars. So you’re profiting $20.00 dollars a day with the keyword Local Singles.

The first thing I would do as soon as I realize this from my data is go back into my keyword research tool and punch in Local Singles to see what other types of keywords I may get from it. I would then put those keywords into ad groups and continue to do the above steps for all my keywords that I find are converting.

Again, fairly easy tip yet most affiliates don’t do this and they lose out on potential income and also they lose out on the ability to scale their business!

Research Keywords That are Converting!

As I said via the last post, please make sure you subscribe so that you get the next PPC Tip and you don’t miss out!

Popularity: 34% [?]

Hey guys, so I was reading an article on some PPC tips today and when I was reading some of the tips and tricks that the blog had listed I realized a lot of them just wasn’t true. Then I noticed the day, May of 2005! So I figured I would give a couple of my own PPC tips and tricks that are easy and very quick to implement.

Make Sure Your Ad Groups Are Laser-Targeted

This is especially true when using Google Adwords, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that is also very important when using YSM (yahoo search marketing) and Microsoft Adcenter.

Laser-Targeted Adgroups simply means that you make sure your keywords in each ad group are closely related. For example if you have a campaign about “Widgets” you would want all your keywords about “Red Widgets” in one ad group, “Blue Widgets” in another ad group, and “Green Widgets” in yet another separate ad group.

You’ve probably heard about this in Google Adwords and why its important because of their quality score, but most people don’t think too much about it when it comes to the other two major PPC engines. So why do you need to worry about this when using YSM or Microsoft Adcenter?

While YSM and Microsoft Adcenter doesn’t have much a quality score one very important thing that they do measure to determine what spot your ad is placed and how much that spot costs you per click is your CTR% (Click Through Rate).

Naturally if your ad groups are laser targeted, its going to mean that your ads are going to be targeted better also as each ad will relate to a specific set of keywords. This means, that your ads will have a higher CTR% because people know from your ad that they are getting exactly what they are searching for.

Use Your Display URL Wisely!

Another mistake I see people do in PPC is not using their ads display URL to their advantage. Let me explain what I mean.

So according to the last tip above you should now have your ad groups tightly targeted. So why aren’t your ads? Most people write their ads to go along with their keywords, for example again, if you have a group of keywords for “Green Widgets” then your ads for that ad group would also contain the keyword “Green Widgets” but what about your URL?

I would say 95% of affiliate would make their display URL for that ad Widgets.com when really they should have their URL as Widgets.com/Green-Widgets. Again, not only will this make your ad stand out a little, but it will also let people know they are getting something fulfilled that they were looking for so it will also increase your CTR% which we all know is very important if you’ve read the first tip of this article!

Avoid Your Homepage As Your Landing Page

Again continuing with the above tip, don’t send all your PPC traffic to the Homepage of your website. Instead you should have a separate landing page for each set of keywords. So as we said above if your display URL is Widgets.com/Green-Widgets your actual URL should lead to that page as well.

You should have a separate landing page for each group of keywords so you would end up with something like this for your URL’s if you use the example we have been using thus far in this article.

Widgets.com (Your Homepage)
Widgets.com/Green-Widgets (Your Green Widgets Landing Page)
Widgets.com/Red-Widgets (Your Red Widgets Landing Page)
Widgets.com/Blue-Widgets (Your Blue Widgets Landing Page)

Again by doing this simple step you can instantly increase your conversion rate and also convince your users even more that they are on the right site to fulfill their needs.

Remember this simple phrase…

Land People In The Relevant Place!

So that wraps up the first part of this article and I truly hope you’ll subscribe to our feed in order to make sure you’ll receive the next article as well!

If you have any suggestions or questions you’d like to see answered in the next part of this series please feel free to leave them in the comments below!

Popularity: 45% [?]

Most affiliates that have been running any type of profitable campaign know that there are certain hours when customers will convert better than other hours.

The question is what can you do about this phenomenon to help increase your ROI (return on investment)? The answer is actually quite simple and easy, Dayparting!

First lets start off with the basics…

What is Dayparting?

Dayparting is a tool that is currently available in Google Adwords, as well as Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Adcenter, that allows you to set bids automatically depending on the day of the week, hour of the day, or both!

A definition of dayparting would be something like:

“Dayparting, the practice of adjusting pay-per-click campaigns based on time of day or day of the week.”

How does dayparting work?

Dayparting is currently available in all of the major search engines PPC program. In Google, dayparting is actually referred to as Ad Scheduling.

To make this alot easy let me give you a few examples of what you can have dayparting do for you and your search campaigns.

Let’s say that you are running an affiliate offer for Payday Loans. Now, we have found out by tracking that between the hours of 1:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M. we don’t get any conversions at all.

We can now go into Google Adwords and go into our campaign and click on edit campaign, now look for ad scheduling and turn it on and we can now go in and completely turn off our payday loans campaign during those hours. So from now on between the hours of 1:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M. our campaign will automatically pause and then resume once it hits 6:01 A.M.

Lets say that we notice instead though that between the hours of 1:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M. we are still getting conversions only not as many and we have a lower ecpc because of a lower conversion rate during those hours. What we can do is go inside of Google Adwords and the ad scheduling and instead of pausing our campaign during those hours, we can instead just lower the bids by 20% across the board and then they will automatically go back up after 6:00 A.M.

So by now you should be seeing the picture and understand why dayparting can significantly increase your ROI, because not only can you lower your bids during certain times, but you can also raise them during certain times. If you notice between the hours of 4:00 P.M. and 6:00 P.M. your conversions really pick up, you can then raise your bid 20% across the board during those times.

Again, the great thing about this is its all automatic. Once you set it up, you never have to worry about it again, it will continue to do it everyday as long as you have it on!

Popularity: 28% [?]

One of the most asked questions I receive from people starting out or even people that have been in the affiliate marketing game for a couple months is what is the best way to track which keywords are converting.

Now there are tons of ways to track keywords and its not as hard as most people think, its just hard to find good information on how to do it. So, in light of that, this topic has been born. Now this post is specifically going to talk about tracking which keywords are converting in your Google Adwords account. Again there are other ways, including using PHP, subid’s, in house tracking, and more.

This method is completely free and very easy to setup which is why I wanted to show it. Your going to need a few things in order for this to work.

First and foremost, You need to be advertising an offer where the advertiser allows you to place a pixel on their website. Most CPA companies now allow this including, Azoogle, NeverblueAds, Copeac, and others. The best way to find out if your Affiliate Company does or not is to simply ask your Affiliate Manager.

Secondly, you will need to have a Google Adwords account obviously hence the blog post title!

To get started Log into your Adwords Account. Once you log in at the top in the navigation bar you’ll see a link that says Conversion Tracking. Click on that Link and you’ll see the following screen.

From the Screen above, you’ll want to check the box that says Other and hit Continue. The next page you’ll see after you hit continue is this.

On this page you are able to choose how the Google Sites Stats button will look on the offer page. I normally always just choose a white background with black text. After you have chosen this you can go ahead and hit Continue again.

On the next page you are able to select the Language, Site Security (meaning http:// or https://) and also your code is displayed that you’ll need to copy and give to your Affiliate Manager to place on the site for you. Every time I have used this it has always been http:// security. However, make sure to ask your AM first to make sure. I’m honestly not sure if it makes a difference or not.

Here is a screenshot showing the part on the third page of language, site security, and the code.

Now go ahead and give your pixel code to your Affiliate Manager and have them place it on the offer page. They will know where it goes. After they have it placed go ahead and press continue and you’ll get a screen that says “Your new Adwords tracking setup is complete. Now, test the results.” Now of course the only way to test the results is to wait until someone clicks one of your adwords ads and completes the offer. However, if you did it the way instructed above and your affiliate manager placed the pixel on the correct page you should have no problem.

Disclaimer: Some people don’t like this type of tracking as Google has all your data on which keywords are converting. I use this method on a lot of campaigns that have been running for months and I’ve never seen anything bad happen. Its totally up to you whether you track your keywords this way or not. However, it is a FREE and EASY way to track which keywords are converting for you and if you don’t have the PHP know how or don’t wish to pay for another piece of tracking software, it’s definitely better than not tracking your keywords at all.

Also, Adwords Conversion Tracking allows you to setup tracking for your Non-Adwords Campaigns which you’ll see the link on the last page. Its called Cross-Channel Tracking. I’ve never personally used their Cross-Channel Tracking so I can’t vouch as to if its good or not, but if your not tracking Yahoo or MSN with another means its definitely worth a look!

Last but not least, here is an example of how it looks with the conversion tracking on in Adwords.

Popularity: 54% [?]

Wow, so I happened to check the Adwords blog today and Google has announced that you can now have the option of CPC bidding for placement targeting. So what does this mean to you! Well, first off when they say placement trageting they are refering site targeting. They changed the name of what it was called when they announced some new features.

Up until now, you could only bid on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model. This allows you to take sites where you were getting alot of impressions but no clicks for example and now only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad. So you may find a site converts really well when the user clicks on your ad from that site, but because your ad doesn’t get clicked a lot, for example maybe they have their adsense ads all the way at the bottom of their page. With the new interface you could make the site become profitable now.

I haven’t fulled around with it too much, so I’m not quite sure how it works yet as I just haven’t had the time yet. You can bet I’ll be doing some major testing with this though, and I’ll be doing that testing very very soon!

For more information please visit the following link: Google Announces CPC bidding for Placement Targeted Ads

Popularity: 5% [?]