Continue reading »]]> 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.

Continue reading »]]> I am currently puzzled by what seems to be lost clicks. While running a PPC campaign on Google Adwords, I tend to track their performance in real time, or as near to real time as Google and the affiliate networks allow.

I have noticed that the clicks that Google Adwords reports differs from the clicks that the Affiliate Network reports.

Take Yesterday for example. I am running a PPC campaign on Google Adwords for an Affiliate on AffiliateWindow. Google Adwords reports 102 paid clicks, while AffiliateWindow reports only 89. So where have my lost clicks gone? Should these not be identical?

Thinking that this must be a one off, I checked other campaigns for Yesterday and then went back several days and I have noticed that there are regular discrepancies.

Research time I think!

Useful links:

Web Hosting

Fasthosts Internet
1&1 web hosting
123Reg Domain name Registration

Affiliate networks

TradeDoubler
Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future

Text and Banner Advertising (for affiliates and publishers)

Text-link-Ads – free $100 worth of advertising for signing up
AuctionAds – $25 for simply signing up!
Bidvertiser - $20 in free clicks

Continue reading »]]> A report today on BBC online confirms what we all already new, Google is dominating the web. Their report states that Google Powered more than half of the search requests on the web in August, totalling 37 billion searches out of a total of 61 billion searches by over 750 million users.

That makes the few pence per click we spend trying to attract just a minuscule percentage of those users to our sites or adverts.

Useful links:

Web Hosting

Fasthosts Internet
1&1 web hosting
123Reg Domain name Registration

Affiliate networks

TradeDoubler
Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future

Text and Banner Advertising (for affiliates and publishers)

Text-link-Ads – free $100 worth of advertising for signing up
AuctionAds – $25 for simply signing up!
Bidvertiser - $20 in free clicks

Continue reading »]]> I have been setting up some PPC campaigns on Adwords. I have been working with many 100’s of keywords.

What I tend to do is create my keyword lists externally then paste them into Adwords, however I have been coming up against a problem where it keeps rejecting wanting an ‘Online Pharmacy ID’

At first this was fairly intelligent; I has some keywords for some sweets called ‘sherbet tablets’ and it rejected the tables. I can understand this, and I have taken out those keywords.

When adding a number of keywords for clothing I came up against the problem again, this time rather more frustrating and not so easy to accept. I added a keyword of “Snugpak Pile Shirt” and guess what…? Yes it rejected the pil.

See the screen shot below, very very frustrating. Come on Google, we all know what you are trying to do here, but cant you become a little more intelligent about your algorithms?

Click image to see Screenshot

Useful links:

Web Hosting

Fasthosts Internet
1&1 web hosting
123Reg Domain name Registration

Affiliate networks

TradeDoubler
Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future

Text and Banner Advertising (for affiliates and publishers)

Text-link-Ads – free $100 worth of advertising for signing up
AuctionAds – $25 for simply signing up!
Bidvertiser - $20 in free clicks