How to Boost Clicks with Superior Quality PPC Ads
Anyone can create a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertisement. Sites like Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and 7 Search are just a few.
In many cases these services attach a quality score to an Ad. This among other factors help decide positioning of the Ad.
In order to increase the click rate of your advertisement, craft a superior quality Ad. More visits to your website presents an oppertunity for more sales.
When I say superior, I mean better than a low quality advertisement. I also mean better than the competitions Ad. Badly written Ads can garner high impressions, but under 1% of those people are clicking through.
It doesn’t matter if it’s search traffic or content network traffic. You can tell your Ad is weak when thousands of people view it, and too small an amount visit your site.
If you’re this far along on the marketing path, then you should have a fair idea of howin demand your offering is.
But there is time tested techniques to use that improve the click rate. These have been employed by traditional marketers for decades. It’s hardly any different from todays online marketing.
People have used Pay Per Click to drive visits to their website for years. More often than not, it’s the quality of the advertisement that determined the amount of people coming back to their website.
At that point, it was up to the Advertiser to convert them into sales. This puts the control back into their hands.
With countless testing on variations, their now capable of writing high converting Ads. Some now offer this as a stand-alone service.
Do you want to know what these methods of improving quality score and click rates are?
When targeting a specific keyword or phrase, that’s what needs to be in the first line. Using the exact word the person is searching for. Thisshows precise relevance.
But just including the search word is not enough. It must be included properly in the Headline. The headline of course being the first line. It must sound like a normal sentence.
The description is usually two lines of text. Use these wisely to communicate the benefit of your offering. Clearly outline the features or value of your product or service. Again, use normal sentences.
Tell the person viewing the Ad what to do. Use a call to action. This is classicadvertising. Command them to click, call or visit. Directing the next action is the most powerful use of your advertisement. This should only be done on the last line of the description.Give them a price. Don’t make this a mystery . What do you have to hide? If you don’t, then you’re not confident in the pricing. It means you wouldn’t pay that for your own product. If the price is not right, you need to fix it.
Use these techniques however you want. Test various Ad layouts to see which brings the most clicks. Not only will it improve the quality of your advertisement, but it will surely boost the amount of interest in your product or service.
5 Factors That Affect Search Engine Result Placements Of A Site
Search engine rankings are extremely important for any web master. For a majority of the blogs and websites, search engines are the biggest source of traffic. To get a good ranking in search engine rankings especially of Google, there are a lot of factors that come into play. However, there have been continuous increase in our knowledge on what are the factors that are important for a blogger to improve their search engine rankings.
Here are five important factors that affect search engine results placement of a site:
External Links: The number of sites linking to your site is the most major factor of your search engine rankings. But you should always go for high-quality links rather than focusing on the quantity of links you get. If you are getting two to three links from PR6 and PR7 blogs it is much more valuable than a hundred links from PR1 and PR2 blogs. So always focus on getting your blog as many links as you can from high page rank sites. Also remember never to get linked from link farms or bad neighborhoods as Google and other search engines will blacklist you.
Domain Age: Google loves aged-domains that have been in use for years. It has been seen by experience that Google trusts domains that are aged. So you can either buy domains which are old or you can get links from aged domains that will help you improve your worth in the eyes of search engine bots. It is always observed that older domains rank higher in search engine results.
Frequency of Posting: The frequency at which you post on your blog can be more important that you thought. Google is always in the look out for fresh contents. Google generally gives you a lot of authority if your blog is updated regularly. But this does not mean that you begin to post short or unoriginal content on your blog as it will only make you rank lower. Update regularly, but with unique and useful content. A posting frequency is important not only to keep your readers engaged but to maintain a good position in search engine results.
Page Load Time: This is the latest factor which Google has become to consider in their search engine algorithm. Senior engineer from Google, Matt Cutts has already confirmed that the page load time of a site will also be considered in the search engine rankings from now on.
Research Content: It is also known now that research related content to any topic is preferred by Google. Meaning long articles will always be ranking better than short articles that only last between 100 to 200 words. Keep your articles long and keyword rich. This will help you rank really well for a lot of keywords for Google’s search engine results.
So these are among the most important 5 factors that Google has begun to consider for placing your site in its search engine results. It is important that a blogger focuses his efforts to improvise on these factors so that he can get more traffic out of strong search engine results placements.
4 Secrets To Select A Money Making Niche For Your Blog
A blogger is always is in a dilemma about which niche to choose for his blog. A good niche can make or break his dreams of making money online. Niche blogging is a great way for you to ensure that your blog gets a loyal readers base and has a firm footing in a particular topic. Unfortunately, most bloggers make poor judgements while choosing niche for their blogs. This is where intelligent thinking is required, so as to select a niche that will reward you well.
Here are 4 secrets to select a money making niche for your blog:
Your Interest: this is the point of paramount importance before you select a niche. Are you interested in what you are blogging or are you simply typing meaningless words on your blog without any passion? Always choose a niche which you are interested in – it need not be something always that you are very passionate about, but it should be something that you would like to give attention. Your interest is important in any niche you choose because otherwise you will lose interest in writing on your blog – which will be a big loss to you.
Trending: You must make it a point to study the trending of the niche. Because not all niches are evergreen, furthermore, there are also a few niches that are seasonal. So you must be sure to understand what is the trending of the niche. Is it a niche that will be able to provide sustainable income in the future as well or will it just be a temporary asset for you. You must carefully ponder upon this and then choose the niche.
Income Sources: Everything is based on this fact – what is the scope for money making from a niche. There are various monetizing techniques of a niche – such as PPC campaigns, text link ads, affiliate products, banner ads etc. Keep in mind that all niche cannot make use of these monetizing strategies. Some niche perform well in affiliate products while other perform well for PPC campaigns. You must do the required research on this parameter before deciding any niche.
Competition: All smart bloggers take this point seriously before jumping into any niche. Even if you find that the niche has an evergreen value and that there are lots of ways you can monetize it – you might want to reject it. The reason is – competition. If the niche you plan to enter is a hyper-competitive market then you might want to think again. Creating your own set of readers or simply getting noticed in a crowded niche can become cumbersome for you and can affect your enthusiasm adversely. This is a major reason why many bloggers fail in few niches – it is because of the sheer competition in those niche.
No doubt that selecting a niche is not an easy task. There is a lot that goes behind the thought-process. No one should finalize any niche before a thorough research on the market demands and its trending is performed.
How To Create Highly Optimized Links Search Engines Love
Great search engine optimization is a very important goal for any website that lives on the traffic it generates. There are many factors when it comes to search engine optimization, one of them being correct usage of url links.
An optimized link will help direct search engines to their correct destination while providing you with greater search engine placement based on your chosen keywords.
It’s not difficult to develop an optimized link habit but many people still neglect this simple trick that is costing them thousands of visitors each month.
Here are 3 ways you can create highly optimized links that search engines love.
1. Avoid String URLs
Many ecommerce websites use dynamic page generation for product pages and articles.
These pages often look like http://www.example.com/?=9821_Article.
This type of link structure, although still possible to index, is highly troublesome and irrelevant for search engine spiders.
Most CMS systems provide a method to change dynamic links to keyword rich strings. Modification through the htaccess file is also possible but does require additional technical knowledge.
To build a highly optimized url (without strings) you should focus on the main keywords you want your page to rank for.
Omit unwords such as:
• the
• and
• of
Converting your string url structure to a keyword rich url will help with your search engin optimization, placing you higher within search results, driving you a fair amount of traffic.
2. Use Keyword Rich URLs
The previous example touched on the use of keyword rich urls but to further explain the importance of these urls here are a few more reasons.
Search engine optimization is often broken down to:
• Off Page Optimization
• On Page Optimization
When you provide a link in a blog comment, author byline or anywhere within your previous articles, using a descriptive and keyword rich url string instead of the traditional “click here” helps tell the search spiders what the next page is about.
Instead of using “Click here to jump to page 2″, you could use “View Additional Information About Bicycles” if you happen to write about such topic. This method can be applied across any niche or topic, simply substitute out the words.
The point is to create a link that users want to click that also provides additional information.
3. Go For The Long Tail
The long tail keyword is simply a search phrase instead of one or two keywords internet users type when searching for information in search engines.
It’s very difficult to rank for a single keyword because major businesses pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to rank high for the term.
The more practical way to rank well in the search engines and improve your search engine optimization is to target long tail keyword phrases users type.
Instead of “bicycle” you could narrow down your urls to include phrases such as “how to ride a bicycle”. This method of optimizing your urls will be much easier and give you more relevant traffic as you know people are searching for specific information.
Adopt An Optimized URL Habit
Once you become accustomed to creating keyword rich urls, you’ll be able to interlink, back link and develop your url structure that converts sales and gives you better search engine placement.
Apply these tips across your website to give search spiders an easier time to find your content and rank it for the correct terms you aim for.
V2.03 datafeed import plugin for WordPress released
I have released a new version of my datafeed import plugin for WordPress. This version includes a couple of minor bugs but also includes tow new great features which are link cloaking which is great for masking affiliate links and also click tracking.
If you would like more information on the plugin please visit the Datafeed Import Plugin for WordPress website.
This release comes as I work on other WordPress plugin projects which will soon be released. Version 2.0 of the Amazon import plugin for WordPress will be released very soon, I have a few issues I need to iron out first, but I hope to have it released sometime over this weekend.
I have also been working on a new plugin WordPress Advertiser. This is not specifically targeted at affiliate marketers, but it does have a market for all WordPress users. It manages the whole process of creating advertising slots on your WordPress blog, and then selling adverts via paypal subscriptions.
The WordPress Advertiser plugin can also be used by affiliate marketers who wish to manually add affiliate adverts to their WordPress blog without the sell advertising side.
I hope that this plugin will complement the other plugins I have.
How To Use Blog Commenting To Drive Incredible Traffic To Your Website
Everyday thousands of blogs appear on the net, giving each writer a voice and a platform for readers to share their opinions.
The fundamental difference between a blog and a static website is the interaction. Blog commenting gives readers the ability to continue a topic of discussion while simultaneously promote their own links.
Proper and respectful blog commenting is a very simple and effective way to drive traffic to your website.
With millions of niche websites and blogs on the net, becoming an authority and being active with blog commenting will put you right in front of the same rabid visitors that are eager to learn more – by directing them to your own website.
The following is a few ways you can use blog commenting as a way to increase your search engine optimization and drive wild amounts of traffic to your website.
1. Use Correct Etiquette
Blog owners use their precious time to write articles for their readers. Commenting is a natural way for readers to extend the topic but there are certain guidelines you should obey when leaving your own comment.
First off, you should never spam comments. Comment spam is detrimental to both the blog owner and blog reader. Spamming links will place a negative image within the minds of people interested in your niche while being promptly deleted by the blog owner.
Second, you should try to keep the topic flowing. Derailing the topic with hateful speech or drama is a quick way to break proper blog comment etiquette – don’t do it.
Lastly, don’t leave a comment that doesn’t fit within the scope of the blog. If a blog is talking about tech news, it doesn’t make a bit of sense to leave a comment and link about a diet product, it comes across as spam and is very rude.
2. Provide Helpful Insight
Blog commenting is utilized to keep a discussion going. Although a writer will do the best to their ability to cover the topic of the post, blog commentors will be able to pick up from where it left off, lending helpful and insightful information.
To drive traffic to your website, comment on blogs within your expertise, continue the discussion and give more than you take. When users come to know how helpful you are, they will follow through your provided link, landing on your page.
Likewise, a reader which provides excellent comments can sometimes be highlighted by the blog owner. As appreciation for your interaction on the blog, they may talk about you in later posts, giving you additional links and spotlight to drive traffic to your website.
3. It’s All In The URL
Common blog format calls for:
• Name
• Email
• URL
The URL is your opportunity to share additional websites that fit within the scope of the blog or blog post. Readers will be eager to seek out additional information and when you are on the forefront with your link, they will follow through, driving free traffic to your blog.
Why Blog Commenting Matters Most
When you provide helpful, respectful and informational comments, you capture readers that are already hot on topic.
These “hot” readers are now emotionally driven to find additional information or products. Being active on blogs within your niche will help add authority, branding and traffic to your website.
Not just random traffic, but highly motivated readers that will devour your content.
The ABC’s Of Marketing On The Web
Here is a major problem we all face as business owners: generating more revenue. You may own a successful business but you always feel there is more your business can accomplish, this is the sole reason why you decided to reach the mass market of the web.
Unlike traditional marketing plans that apply to offline marketing, the web has introduced a new set of guidelines for marketing on the web. If you don’t know these new guidelines, you will be left in the dust.
To take a moderately performing business into a great business, website owners need to know how to correctly use the web for their marketing needs. There are many products and services available online that will teach you how to make an impact within the web but the ABC’s of marketing detailed in this post will easily get you started today.
There is no magic solution for internet success. It takes years of learning and implementation to truly understand how you can make an impact online. This is why I’ve created this post, so you can learn the ABC’s of marketing on the web.
Awareness
Awareness plays a large role in marketing on the web.
To conduct your business blindly on the web means you are missing out on the chance to find additional revenue and gain valuable feedback about real world customer satisfaction.
Companies that strive on the web are ones that are aware of their business. They are able to know when people are talking about their business and respond to customers which may not always be directed at you.
The web has allowed us consumers to actively voice our opinions about companies to the masses. In a split second a business could errupt in termoil from a single bad review or customer experience.
We are all listening to each other, the web is one giant word-of-mouth platform.
To be aware of your business and successfully market on the web you must take the time to learn new applications.
Applications such as Google analytics gives us insights on how our customers interact with our business. Twitter also allows us to monitor chatter about our business – giving us valuable customer interaction opportunities to build a better relationship or mend a broken one.
Branding
All great business need a brand at their core.
Branding, unlike the traditional sense, does not necessarily mean having a strong logo or flashy website. You could pay thousands of dollars in designer services to create impactful images but branding is what truly builds your online business.
Branding goes beyond the idea of setting your self image. On the web, you must always strive to keep your brand relevant and interesting to your customers and prospects.
Building communities through Facebook and a following on Twitter gives you an early start but there are many other options for each business.
A great brand will be able to win you customers but more importantly, to keep them.
A brand swells up emotional response from customers and prospects. It keeps your name on the tip of their tongues.
The main aspects of a great brand are:
• Emotion
• A strong logo that conveys your values
• A consistent image
• An online presence which drives a great user experience
These aspects should be applied to every party of your online real estate from your website to your social media campaign.
When your brand become synonymous with your products and services, people will fall in love with you which will lead to greater customer satisfaction and more revenue for your business.
Care
The rules of marketing have changed and not just for the web.
Unlike mass media marketing which is cold and far too broad, marketing on the web allows you to personally interact with your leads and customers.
People have become jaded by marketing because it fills their daily life to the point of exhaustion. Large companies have outsourced customer relations, only infuriating customers with the hassle of trying to get help.
Part of your marketing campaign should be dedicated to caring for your customers and prospects. Mass marketing cannot convey the same devotion to solving problems as a direct connection to your customers.
A caring company will meet the needs of each and every one of their customers. With such high competition within your market, every customer counts – especially in this downed economy.
By caring for your customer’s problems and answering their questions and comments, you will begin the path of a long term relationship. This long term relationship is built just like you would a friend, legitimately caring and interacting with one another.
When a customer knows you care for them and can voice their opinions with ample feedback from you, you will win them over and keep them for years to come.
How To Find And Sell To A Niche
Out of all the promises of how to make money online, there is really only one way that the average web user can truly make a living and that’s by finding a niche market.
Wouldn’t you love to write about a topic you love and make money online from selling products to others that are just as interested?
It’s a very enticing thought but there’s one MAJOR problem, how do you find a niche?
If you are passionate about making money online and gaining passive income, continue reading to find out how to find a niche market.
What is a niche?
To learn how to find a niche, you have to understand what a niche is.
A niche is simply a highly focused interest in a product, service or idea within a larger market. The easiest way to understand a niche is to think of it as a hobby, something that people place a lot of their time discussing and, if it’s a product, using.
For example, ‘Shoes’ is a large market, something that everyone will generally search for and buy. Running shoes is a micro market, it’s more focused but still has a broad consumer market. Women’s orthopedic running shoes, that’s a niche market.
See where I’m going with this?
A niche is singling out a single product or service and providing a solution to the problems within the niche.
How To Find A Niche Market
So let’s try and example to understand how to find a niche market.
Open a tab on your browser and type in ‘Shoes’ within Google, what do you get? Nearly 200,000,000 million results!
200 Million searches sounds like a fantastic idea to aim for a market but the problem is that your competition is very fierce and aiming to monetize on such a large market is virtually impossible for the average user interested in making money online.
So, let’s try typing in ‘Women’s Running Shoes’ into Google, what do you get? Over 17 Million results, we’re getting more focused.
However, we still have the same problem with this micro market. The competition is still high and the costs would be too far out of reach for the average web user.
Finally, let’s do a search for “Women’s Orthopedic Running Shoes”, what do we get now? A little over 92,000 search results.
We’ve hit our niche market!
Understanding a niche market
Okay, we have an idea of what a niche market is, we are using the example of ‘Women’s Orthopedic Running Shoes’ but you may be asking:
Only 92,000+ searches? I surely can’t make a profit selling to so few people?!
But you can.
When you choose to enter a niche market, you are going up against few few others, meaning your costs to market and dominate the niche is miniscule compared to the mass market.
Imagine if you only pulled 1,000 customers from our example ‘Women’s Orthopedic Running Shoes’ and say you sold a pair to each for $30 a piece. You’ve just made $30,000!
You see where I’m going with this?
You don’t always have to reach a mass market because we already know that people searching for ‘Women’s Orthopedic Running Shoes’ are highly targetted and highly interested in obtaining them.
Solving a problem within a niche
Up until this point I’ve talked about how to find a niche market and gave a great examples but what do you think you could actually sell to the people within the niche?
Was your first thought shoes?
Well, step back for a second and think of what else the people within the niche are intersted in or have a problem that needs to be solved.
What about if you sold an ebook or video series about:
How To Develop The Perfect Running Schedule To Lose The Most Weight?
Now we’re getting to it!
A niche doesn’t necessarily need to be a physical product, it can also be information.
The example above solves a problem with the niche. When people buy running shoes what is their intent? Generally to lose weight and to be fit. What’s another problem? Time management because who has enough time to dedicate their valuable time just for running?
Now, because we’re so focused within a niche, we can also conclude two additional details:
• The people in the niche need orthopedic support
• They are interested in their health and their body
Just these two examples gives us a whole wealth of knowledge of what we can do with our niche.
How To Sell To A Niche
Now that we’ve identified the problem, let’s talk about a few ways you could sell to people within your niche.
One of the easiest ways to make money online within a niche market is to sell info products such as ebooks or video series.
Another idea, and a larger step, would be to find a manufacturer or wholesaler which sells specific products within your niche.
The easiest method of making money online within a niche is to create a blog and post valuable content for those interested. After the blog has become established and you’ve built authority within your niche, you are primed to release an info product to those that are eager to have their problems solved.
These sales could be through email marketing, direct sales, affiliate marketing and so many other methods available online.
Finding Your Niche Market
Now that we’ve run through a general example on how to find a niche, ask yourselves these few questions:
• Do I have a hobby or am I passionate about a product or information?
• Could I create enough content to build a following?
• Do I know enough about my subject to build authority?
• Can I find products to sell to my niche community?
If you can answer these questions, you’ve found your perfect niche market. I don’t want you to get caught up with all the technical details on how to set up your niche market just yet, these are answered in other posts but gaining a sense of how to find niche markets will start you off in your goals to make money online.
Once you’ve developed your ideas and know how to find niche markets, the sky is the limit, think of what you could do with an additional niche market, why not 5 or 10! You’ll soon see the power of niche marketing and how great your life is once you earn passive income from making money online.
3 Powerful Ways To Drive Free Traffic Using Youtube
Youtube has now become one of the most used websites in the world, rivaling Google in terms of search traffic and website usage. But what does this mean for a website or business owner? One word: traffic.
If traffic is the lifeblood of the internet, than more traffic to your website or ecommerce stores simply means more revenue.
Youtube has many opportunities to drive traffic to your website, this article will take a look at 3 of the most powerful ways.
1. Demonstrate Your Products or Services
When web users begin their search to learn new skills or catch up on particular hobbies and interests, they often turn to Youtube. It’s a no brainer, many more people would rather watch a video than read an article.
With Youtube, you could easily create a video on-the-fly to demonstrate your products or services. This visual approach to showing what you offer can better display the benefits you can give to viewers and potential customers.
If a pictures speaks a thousand words, a video must be millions.
How-to videos are some of the hottest and most searched after videos on Youtube. By doing just a little work converting your copy to video, you’ll be able to capture viewers while using Youtube.
Google, with its caffine update, has begun placing video within top search engine placement. If a keyword is too expensive or difficult to obtain, video will help you land in that prized spot – just remember to include a link back to your website.
2. Voice Your Opinion About A Product Or Service
On the opposite end of using Youtube to promote your own products or services, you could turn the tables and use video to highlight others.
Product and service reviews are highly sought after by many web user. Traditional write ups by marketing teams are quickly ignored as they come across as too “salesy”. A honest video review will help users decided wither or not a product or service is worthwhile.
Think about it for a second, how many times have you bought a product or service simply because a friend or family member raved about it? That’s the power of video.
If you can tell an honest story and review to your viewers, you’ll easily be able to convert them to sales. Be sure to add a call to action within your videos, telling the user to visit the destination website, click a link or subscribe to your channel.
3. Go Viral And Build Links
The greatest benefit of video is the ability to go viral. Viral video spreads across the net at an incredible speed.
Often enough, these videos are created by average users however many companies have tried their hand at crafting viral videos – with great success.
As your video spreads across social media, blogs and websites, people will be able to identify your brand, click your link, visit your website and drive massive amount of traffic for next to nothing.
You’ll be the talk of the net with the correct video hit, it just takes a little bit of massaging to create a video that is viral worthy.
As you can see from these 3 powerful examples, Youtube gives website owners many great options to drive massive amounts of free traffic to their websites.
Video production is becoming easier each day with simpler programs and outsourcing. The cost of an ad campaign could easily cover the costs for a handful of great videos.
The web is transforming from a dominant text medium to multimedia, video is the future, how are you going to harness this powerful way to drive free traffic to your website?
Recent Affiliate Projects
I have recently been putting together some simple websites using both the datafeed import plugin for WordPress and the amazon import plugin for WordPress. These have both enabled me to rapidly create my affiliate websites like I have never been able to before. These sites have taken at most 2 hours including setting up the sites, adding the content, adding the design and also writing the unique content that is so important.
One of the biggest problems that I have had with my affiliate marketing is dedicating too much time to the design and development of sites rather than the marketing and finding the right affiliates to join and also I have neglected something that I feel is important and that is developing relationships with the affiliate networks.
The sites that I am taking about all have keyword domains, which I am hoping will aid in the SEO of the site and as such improve affiliate sales.
Have a look at the following sites:
http://www.microhifi.net
http://www.walkingboots.me.uk
http://www.miniskateboards.co.uk
http://www.steelwok.co.uk
I have also registered several other keyword domains that I will be developing in a similar manner to these over the comming weeks. I will report back on this blog their progress and any tweaks I make to try and bring in the affiliate sales for each of the sites.
Now I need to do some marketing, to brings in some affiliate clicks and commission.