How To Get Laser-Targeted Traffic From Your Adwords Keywords

If I had to give a brief answer to How Do You Make Money on Adwords or any other Pay-per-Click program I'd answer with this. Success boils down to three very important things - Targeted Keywords, Landing Page, Tracking. Did I mention landing Page? I'll talk about that later. But let's presume you are just starting out. You've found your keywords. Now all you've got to do is load them into Adwords (or whatever) and away you go right? Wrong. The default setting for your keywords is set by Google to "broad" - that's how they make their money. But it's not how you make your money. I think I'll get the Adwords Expert Perry Marshall to explain it from here. This is from a thread on his 4 Man Roundtable Coaching Program of just a few weeks ago? Check this out -

Perry, over the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to increase my overall search campaign CTR (which is +3%!) by continuously pausing the high impression - low CTR keywords from my campaigns. I figured: OK, take out the dogs that are not a good match for my market, and shoot for 6%, just
to see if I can do it.

What I have found is, I can’t do it, no matter how many .5% or less high impression keywords I cut.

I am still in the 3-4% range. My theory: Broad Match Keywords are the cause.

Since Google is loosening it’s standards, our broad match keywords are showing up more and more to the unwashed masses, where they are less relevant, in order for them to keep their click income up. It’s like they are taking our search keyword campaigns, and throwing them into the content network.

The more keywords you have in a broad match long tail, the easier it is for Google to justify doing this.

I am going to pause my broad keywords completely in some of my campaigns to test it.

Any other theories???

John

~~~

John,

I think that is a very sound theory actually. I should blog about this…. I can’t think of any other explanation.

Strategy, then:

Broad match in a separate ad group. Makes a lot of sense actually…..

Perry

~~~

Perry,

Early test results show that we were right. CTR is soaring on the exact and phrase match words. Some broad match keywords have a very high CTR, while the rest tank.

Google Broad Match = The new Content Network-rebranded, since they weren’t able to make that fly the way they intended to.

Here’s to the poor unsuspecting fools out there who are making Google rich.

Talk to you later today…

John

You get it? Because of the current recession advertisers are spending less with Google. So what does Big Brother Google do? It adjusts its ad formula algorithms. It's fiddled with the Broad Match Keywords. So your ad gets served to Searchers who may or may not be looking for what you've got.

For example let’s say you sell Blue Widgets.

What you need to do is bid on

[blue widget] (exact match only)
”blue widget” (phrase match)

Don't bother with the Broad Match option - it is over-ridden and triggered by the other two anyway. If you just put blue widget your ad will show for all sorts of nebulous stuff - “blue widget used”, "blue widget with extra battery" and other stuff that is sort of, kind of, could be, related.

So what you need to be doing is Tracking - watching the CTR (Click Through Rate) and working out your ROI (return on investment - there's no use spending $10 to make a $1 sale. More on this later). And you need to be constantly adjusting your bid.

Most of the bozos out there are just bidding on the broad match and they're getting all sorts of junk traffic. You can track this with the free Analytic Code that Google Adwords supplies. You want to watch the Bounce Rate - if it's high you know your visitors aren't interested in what's on that Landing Page.

All this stuff is outlined in Perry Mason's...I mean Marshall's excellent The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords

Google Cash Scam

I'm getting a lot of visitors coming here looking for information on GoogleCash and this Chris Carpenter dude (that's supposedly him on the left). Here's all the info you need - it's just another scam. But I must admit they have a very seductive landing-page. Makes you want to believe all the hype - how you can make thousands a month sitting at home in your underpants writing Adwords spots. Dream on. Let's have a look at some of their claims -

How to to become a Super Affiliate: This is where the big money is ... and I will show you exactly how to get there (and how to stay there!)

Discover the 'Secret Weapon' That Makes Or Breaks Your Campaigns:
This is crucial to your success. This information is worth 10 times the price of the ebook! It's a proven set of techniques, that allows long-term success ...

Learn how to choose money making keywords: There's a definite art to this ... and I will show you how. Just follow my easy, step-by-step instructions.

Learn how to create profitable advertismenets: Writing Google Ads is the key to getting lots of clicks, and if you don't know what you're doing, you can waste time and money. I will show you how to write persuasive advertisements!

Discover the secret of filtering expensive keywords: This strategy is critical to staying on budget. It's super powerful, and a lot easier than you might think.

Learn why you should NOT be placed in the #1 position in Adwords:
The top spot is not always the best. I will show you where to rank, and why!

Find out how to test your Ad before you even launch your campaign! Testing is simply a must, and this process helps you accelerate online profit, while also lowering your costs. These tips will save you thousands of dollars ...

Learn how to tap into the lucrative overseas market: Quite possibly the best kept secret in Adwords today. Most people don't want to mess with it, but my system shows you how to take full advantage of this enormous gold mine.

Learn how to find keywords with ZERO competition: Talk about a treasure chest! Profitable keywords are ripe for the picking... if you know where to look.

Sounds just the ticket doesn't it? But there's nothing new here. I suspect its all been rehashed from the Bible of PPC -
The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords

BTW I have my doubts whether this Chris Carpenter character even exists. I suspect the headshot of the buffed and bronzed guy standing on some tropical beach at sunset is just a stock photo. And of course the snapshots of his supposed Clickbank earnings don't impress me at all. You can doctor your own shots here.

Hey if you want a copy of the shitty Google Cash just send me an email and I'll give you the pdf file. But I gotta warn you, it's very basic. You're not going to learn anything earth-shattering about making money with Pay-Per-Click. In fact they should be calling it GoogleCash4CompleteIdiots.

Update on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at 9:00AM by Malcolm Lambe

Nonwithstanding the above comments, I've just bought Google Cash Detective and boy is it expensive - a thousand bucks to join and then $97 a month after that. Yeah, ouch. I've opted to pay in four instalments of $350 so it's actually costing me $1400. Why have I bought it? I was looking for a way to copy/clone successful affiliate campaigns and this seems to be the best of the bunch (it launched yesterday). I bought a couple of Brad Callen programs - Affiliate Elite and PPC Shadow and neither one lived up to its hype. Very clunky. Anyway I haven't had time to read all the info and watch the Google Cash Detective videos yet but I'll be blogging about it here in a dedicated post. Put me on your RSS feed if you want to know how I go. Currently I'm in the hole for thousands on Google Adwords so I'm hoping (yet again) this program might pull me out.

The interesting thing about it is they show you how to Direct Link to Affiliate Landing Pages without being penalised by Google. And without having to set-up your own landing pages which takes a bit of time and effort.

Meanwhile I crashed the Mac putting a virtual PC heap-of-shit program called Guest PC on it to run Affiliate Elite. Haven't been able to restore the hard drive yet. If I had a gun I'd be shooting the pricks at Lismore Technologies who sell this POS. Not cheap either. Cost me $100.

Update on Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 1:24PM by Malcolm Lambe

I've changed my mind about Chris Carpenter. I've watched a lot of his training videos and I now believe he's the genuine article. I've just started using the Google Cash Detective tool. It works. So far haven't made any money but it looks promising. If you want to get in to the program this year you have until Monday March 16 to come up with at least $350 to get started. Click Here To Order

BTW Firefox doesn't seem to like that link for some reason. Try reloading the page. Worked for me.

Update on Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 3:00PM by Malcolm Lambe

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE. This has been a complete fiasco. I'm exhausted talking about it. I'll do a thread on it soon but if you want to know the latest go across to The Warrior Forum and read all about it.

In short - It's a rip-off and I've asked for a refund. More later. Sick of fighting these bastards. Took 5 days for them to reply to a Support Ticket. And it took 5 support tickets to even get a reply. Now it looks like I'll have to fight for the frigging refund. GRRRR. Chris Carpenter - if I see you in the surf, you're a dead man.

What Is This "Yahoo Glitch" Anyway.

I've been looking all over the net for the much celebrated Yahoo Glitch which these idiots claim to have exploited to make zillions on Yahoo Search Marketing. And for the life of me I can't find it. I've found plenty of references to a Yahoo Glitch being responsible for blatant overcharging - one woman was slammed $41,000 and had to wait ten days to get it back - but there's nothing much about a glitch that makes you heaps of money on their sad Pay Per Click program.

One of the most recent posts concerning a Yahoo Glitch is this one from a WebmasterWorld Forum -

I have never been more mind-boggled by a change in the T&C's of a major corporation as I am by the recent change in YSM, which I shockingly have not seen reported in WebmasterWorld?

First, READ this:

"OPTIMIZATION. In the U.S. only, for those advertisers not bound by an Insertion Order, we may help you optimize your account(s). Accordingly, you expressly agree that we may also: (i) create ads, (ii) add and/or remove keywords, and/or (iii) optimize your account(s). We will notify you via email of such changes made to your account(s), and can also include a spreadsheet of such changes upon your written request. If you would like any of such changes reversed, please reply to such email within 14 days of the change(s), and we will make commercially reasonable efforts to reverse the change(s) you specifically identify. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you remain responsible for all changes made to your account(s), including all click charges incurred prior to any reversions being made. It is your responsibility to monitor your account(s) and to ensure that your account settings are consistent with your business objectives."

So let's summarize here. Yahoo now has the ability to ADD keywords, MODIFY ads and make overall optimization changes to your account, at any time, and it is YOUR responsibility to pay for the charges incurred by these changes.

As Andy Beal (MarketingPilgrim) commented, "Can you imagine if your investment adviser started buying stocks on your behalf or switched your portfolio from bonds to hedge funds?"

I am in SHOCK right now.

From what I can gather, the word on the (online marketing) street is that Yahoo is going down the tubes. They've lost further market share to Google for starters - 16.1% to Google's 64.1%. I guess the scuttling of the proposed deal with Google didn't help the bottom line either. They were set to rake in $800M on that deal alone. Anti-Trust anyone?

Aaron Wall of Seobook reckons Yahoo and the smaller search engines can work for some niche keywords. But he's adamant that you need to be on Google. Here's an interesting video he made called Pay Per Click 101 - there's some good stuff on there. It annoys the crap out of me the way his voice sounds like he's asking a question at the end of each sentence (like some Australians and they tell me the Brits are starting to talk like that too after watching "Neighbours" on television.) but the content is good.

Which brings me to the YahooCash4Idiots scam. That's right - scam. Scam, Scam, Scam. It's built around the premise that Yahoo Search Marketing has a glitch you can exploit to rake in the big bucks on Pay Per Click Marketing. And of course once you buy the frigging thing you discover it's just a re-hash of existing PPC marketing books. Here's what one PPC marketer on the Warrior Forum had to say about it -

there isn't a single thing in this book that anyone but a rank, green, just off the street newbie wouldn't already know. They make it sound like using misspelled words is some earth shattering discovery. That's really about as meaty as it gets. They talk about their 2 brilliant strategies all through the book. But when you get to that section, it turns out that the two strategies are using search and using the content network. But nowhere is there any "Yahoo Glitch" of any kind discussed. Just the stuff the rawest newbie probably already picked up in this forum.

So don't be fooled by the slick marketing. The Landing Page sucks you right in with all sorts of spurious claims -

By accident I discovered something that would skyrocket our profits even more...a secret Yahoo glitch that no one knows about or has access to. So profitable but at the same time so simple. It took us months to perfect, but now it's so ridiculously easy to use - even a complete idiot could do it.

Step this way complete idiot...

Look, there is only one place to go to learn how to use Adwords properly. And that's
Perry Marshall's "The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords". That is the bible of PPC. Perry Marshall's best-selling books on Google advertising are easily the most popular on the planet. Google it. He's quoted by USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and Entrepreneur Magazine and other journals.

Why pay $77 for a crappy rehash on stuff about Yahoo PPC when you can go to the source and get "The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords" by the King of PPC Perry Marshall for just $49?

Update: I notice they are flogging that YahooCash4idiots for $39 now. What does that tell you? I checked its refund rate on CB Engine recently and saw it was enormous. Seems quite a few happy campers haven't been particularly thrilled with the famous Yahoo Glitch.

Oh yeah. The first Perry Marshall book was "Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords" but the newest is "The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords" which includes sections on the Latest Developments - the notorious "Google Slap", Google's new Minimum Bids and Landing Page Quality Scores. BTW when you start your Google Adwords account be sure to use the new Website Optimizer tool. That's invaluable. Not sure if it's still in beta.

Malcolm Lambe is an Australian married to a French paediatrician and living in Paris with their two small children. He makes a living online writing about Internet Marketing and other stuff. He thinks Clickwank is just one giant affiliate fraud site busy taking money off gullible people who get conned into buying crap like "Water4gas", "Google Clicks Free" and "Enlarge Your P*nis".

Make Your Own Adwords Video

Want to whack up a video on Adwords quickly and easily? SpotMixer have just signed a deal with Google. They've been appointed the first official "authorized reseller" of Google's AdWords service for videos.

To create your video, simply select a template, upload your own photos and video (or use some of ours), add some text and you're done. If you want, you can even record a voice-over and select different music.

SpotMixer charges a minimum of $49 per month for access to its online tools. I made the video here with it. Took me 5 minutes.

The vids on their site were pretty cheesy. I gotta take a closer look but I'm sure I can make a better one with my Canon HV20 HD video camcorder.

How To Get Boned By Google Adwords

Yes that's a photo of Herr Hitler checking out a model of the prototype people's car - the first Volkswagen. Nothing to do with Google Adwords or Making Money With Pay Per Click Marketing but hey...I like it. Now where was I? Oh yeah. Big Bad Adwords.

I just read an interesting story on another internet marketing blog about how they moved their established Adwords campaigns across to a new account and the traffic went berserk - in the wrong direction. I'd give you the link but I don't want to lose you to these sharks so I'll just paraphrase -

Everybody knows that Google gets tons of traffic so why is it that lots of new Google AdWords advertisers fail?

We did a radical test last week to get to the bottom of what is going on.

We had been running a couple of very successful campaigns for one website for over one year.

We paused the campaigns on our existing Google AdWords account and created a new Google AdWords account. We then launched the identical campaigns on a new Google AdWords account.

The results after the first week were nothing short of devastating!

Our new Google AdWords account got crushed! Our average daily click count basically dropped to zero and we got hardly any impressions. However, nothing changed!

In total, we moved over 200 Ad Groups across 10 campaigns and the results are the same across the board.

What can explain this? The only difference is History!

Everything was kept constant except moving campaigns from an existing Google AdWords Account to a new Google AdWords account. Seems when you move accounts you lose its history.

Have you had an Aha moment? Me too. Google puts a lot of credence in history. Its the same with their Search Engine. They tend to favour domains that have been around for awhile. And, apparently, they tend to favour domains that are registered for years ahead. Do you do that? I don't. I have heaps of domains but I only register them for a year at a time. If I felt really strongly about a killer name I might buy five years registration. But it starts to get expensive doesn't it? Hundred bucks here and a hundred bucks there. Back to the story -

Why is history so important? * In Google, everything is based on the Quality Score which is a combination of how your ads have been performing over time relative to ads of the competition.
* Ads with a higher quality score will get surfaced more often and have a dramatically lower required bid minimum. When we drilled into the new Google AdWords account we saw bid minimums that far exceeded the maximum bids that we used previously. So, if your account has no history, you might have to spend extra to establish a good history by bidding high just to get started.

You've heard that before haven't you? Bid high to start and then tweak your CPC after you have position. Sometimes it's painful. I've just started an Adwords PPC Campaign for this blog and I've had to bid €3 to get first page position on some of the keywords. Ouch! About $4.50. I hope I don't have to pay that. It soon eats into the daily spend. I would have to pick a bunch of expensive keywords.

* We also know that ads with a higher click-through-rate will have a higher quality score and that ads that start appearing in a higher position will have a higher click-through-rate because people click on more links that appear higher on the page. So, once again, new Advertisers will have to spend extra to quickly drive up the Quality Score.

So what they are saying is Go For the Jugular when you start your campaign. Try and get Good Quality Score and Good Position before you start trying to save money.

If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about you need to scoot over to Perry Marshall's site and pick up a copy of his PPC Bible ($49 or something) - The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords. (And that my friends is a shameless affiliate link - I gotta eat too)

BTW I just noticed Google has indexed this site already. That was quick. Two days. I think it's a combination of several things - * I'm buying Adwords spots that link here. * I'm on Squarespace which Google seems to love, * I'm linking here from my main blog which has history and good juice and * I'm using Google's Webmaster Tools Tracking Code embedded in my Header so apparently I must pass muster with their Crawling: Does Google know about your site? Can we find it? Indexing: Can Google index your site? Serving: Does the site have good and useful content that is relevant to the user's search?

Hip Hip Hooray for Google!