Most of you have heard of Tracking202 from Wes Mahler.  It’s a service that’s completely free to use and allows you to track which keywords in your PPC campaigns are converting and which ones aren’t.  This allows you to bid higher on keywords that convert and get rid of keywords that don’t.  Sound pretty simple right?  We’ll believe it or not, most affiliates have a very hard time tracking keywords and most new affiliates don’t have the money for a paid tracking tool.

Also, most people don’t like that idea of sharing which keywords are converting with these companies that allow you to track for free.  For example, Google Adwords Pixel, Yahoo’s Pixel, and even Tracking202.  This is where Prosper202 comes into play.

Prosper202 is a free PPC keyword tracking application from Wes Mahler and his crew.  It’s the same people that created Tracking202 only this tool (Prosper202) allows you to host the application directly on your hosting account if your not willing or are feeling nervous about your keyword information being out there on someone else’s server.

You can visit their site for more information about the product and all of it’s features, as I’m only going to touch on a few of the products features.

• Works with Every Single PPC Network Out There!
• Cloaks Keywords from Advertisers and Affiliate Networks keeping them a secret!
• Works with Landing Pages or With Direct Linking!

Again, it seems like a great tool, I’ve only been able to play around with it for a little while but I definitely think you should check out the service being provided by Prosper202 if your in need of a great keywords tracking application.

Also, just to give you guys a little recap and to give a little more insight on some of their other “202″ tools they have available…

• Tracking202 - PPC Keyword Tracking tool that is completely FREE of charge.  This application is hosted on their servers.  Good if you don’t have a server to put Prosper202 on and you wanting to use this program.
• Prosper202 - Same thing as Tracking202 only you can use this version on your own server thus allowing you to keep all your secret ninja like stuff from getting into the wrong hands.
• Export202 - Allows you to easily convert campaigns from one PPC campaign to another.  Currently works with Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN Adcenter.  Again this program like the other two is completely free to use.

Again, I think Wes Mahler and the team are doing a great job and I can’t wait to see what other tools they release under the “202″ brand.

Popularity: 46% [?]

I was reading the Click Consultants Forums and someone asked the question, Should I be using PPC to drive traffic to my affiliate pages or should I be using SEO? This is a question that I get a lot, and I see a lot of people ask on other blogs and forums, yet I never really see a definitive answer and a list of the benefits and cons of each. That’s why this post has been born, to help you decide which is best for you and for your situation.

First, let me come right out and ask you all a question. Why would you only do one or the other? Now you may have a very valid reason for doing so and I’d love to hear it, however, I personally use both PPC and SEO to my advantage in my affiliate marketing career. Thus, this is what I recommend you do and I’ll explain why in this post.

Let’s get started with PPC first.

Advantages to using PPC (pay per click):

• Instant Traffic! Your ads are visible and clickable within minutes. Visitors will be to you site within minutes of setting up a PPC campaign.
• Extremely targeted customers. Since you choose the keywords you know your visitors will be looking for exactly what your selling/offering.
• You Control Everything! Unlike SEO, you decide where your ad is placed, how it looks, what it reads, the price you pay, the amount of time it runs, etc.
• You only pay for Clicks! You don’t pay unless a visitor actually clicks your ad when your advertising via PPC.

Disadvantages to using PPC:

• It’s Not FREE! Unlike SEO, this traffic costs you something and you have to be careful about going over your budget or spending more than you make!
• There is a Danger of Losing Money! While it’s easy to setup a PPC Campaign, it does require time and experience to learn how it works and how to use it effectively.
• Requires a lot of Tracking. When your using PPC you need to track everything!  You should be tracking landing pages, ads, and keywords to see which is converting better.  This means you should be split testing your landing pages and ads.

Now, let’s move onto SEO:

Advantages to using SEO (search engine optimization):

• Completely FREE Traffic! Unlike PPC, the traffic that you receive via your SEO efforts is completely free.  Doesn’t cost you a penny.
• Can Lower PPC Costs! When used in conjunction with PPC it can help you increase your quality score in Google Adwords thus reducing the amount you need to pay in order to secure top positions in PPC.
• Excellent long-term Potential! Although SEO takes a while to rank for certain keywords, the benefits can last for years to come.  With PPC you will always pay for clicks, with SEO, you will always receive those clicks for free.  So, its a great way to build a long-term campaign.

Disadvantages to SEO:

• Requires Time! Unlike PPC, SEO can take some time to rank for certain keywords, as much time as a month to several years!
• Requires Extensive Knowledge: In my opinion, learning SEO will take you a lot longer to learn than PPC.  There are tons of factors to SEO, whether they be big or small, so be prepared to spend time learning!

Now to wrap up this post!  The reason I listed the advantages and disadvantages to each is because well, there isn’t a right or wrong answer as to which one you should be using.  That’s a decision you need to make.  As I said above I personally use both methods and in the next paragraph I’ll explain why I do and why I think you should as well.

PPC and SEO go hand in hand the more intelligent algorithms become.  Google Adword’s Quality Score looks at tons of factors to consider how much you should pay for a top spot in their PPC engine.  Some of these factors include things like Ad CTR%, Bounce Rate, and Relevancy.  However, it also includes things like how many sites are linking to yours using relevant anchor text, if the keywords on your landing page match those in your PPC account, etc.

As you can see, not only do they look at PPC factors when they decide your Quality Score, they also look at things that would be considered SEO factors.

Also, as mentioned above, SEO traffic is free!  So even if your not a die hard SEO person, like myself, it still makes sense to at least try it out in order to receive free traffic.

Personally, the way I do it, is to first build my PPC campaign and after I have it up and running and making a profit I’ll start doing some SEO work to my site as well.  Again, as I said above, it’s a great long-term strategy.  As more and more people use PPC, prices are going to continue to rise so what would be a feasible amount to pay for traffic now, may not be feasible in 2 years from now.  However, if over those 2 years you’ve used SEO to your advantage, your campaign will still be receiving tons of traffic thus it could still be quite a profitable campaign even if you stop doing PPC on it.

Let me know what you guys think in the comments and if you have any advantages or disadvantages to using either PPC or SEO.  Also, let me know what method you personally use and why!

Popularity: 55% [?]

In the third section of this little series I’m doing I want to talk about keywords. However, I’m not interested in talking about how to get more keywords, how to scale your campaign, or anything like that.

Instead, I would like to talk about Negative Keywords! These are keywords that if you are using they will increase your ROI significantly.

The problem with most keywords and keywords groups is that no matter how well you target your ad groups and weed out your so called bad keywords, your still running a campaign that most likely is using the broad option as the match type. What does running a broad match type mean?

Well, let me give you a little example. Let’s say that you run a site that sells Power Tools so in one of your ad groups you have the keyword Power Tools. Now with the broad match type your ad will actually show up for a lot more keywords then just Power Tools. Your ad will most likely show up for other keywords such as Buy Power Tools, Rent Power Tools, Repair Power Tools, etc.

So what doesn’t negative keywords have anything to do with this? Well, if your selling power tools and running a campaign using a keyword such as Power Tools, but you don’t rent or repair power tools, your spending money on keywords that just aren’t going to convert for you! That my friend is where negative keywords come to save the day!!!

In your negative keywords list you can place the keywords Rent and Repair for example and that will stop any keyword that contains those words from triggering your ads thus increasing your ROI (return on investment) in just a couple easy, quick, and painless steps!

Enjoy and don’t forget to subscribe to get more great PPC tips and tricks!

Popularity: 75% [?]

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: 55% [?]