Google AdWords Conversion
Google AdWords Conversion
I first started experimenting with Google AdWords last year to drive traffic as a clickbank affiliate. After all was said and done I spent $300 on AdWords and made $220 from Clickbank. I ran 3 different Google AdWords campaigns with a budget of $100 each. In the end I lost $80 trying to promote other people’s products, it was quite frustrating.
Since then I have learned valuable lessons that I’ve used to create successful adwords marketing campaigns. These lessons are what have helped me make money using Google Adwords.
Important Terms:
IMPR – Impressions
Every time your ad shows up on Google, a Search Partner, or part of their Content Network it counts as an impression. This means that the viewer may not have clicked it but they were able to view it.
CTR – Click Through Rate
If you’re receiving impressions from Google but your click through rate isn’t high enough your ad won’t be displayed as often and you’ll get even less impressions. Google has programmed its advertising system to display ads with a better CTR more often because the more clicks an ad receives the more often they get paid.
CPC – Cost Per Click
Setting a maximum CPC for every campaign is very important. This tells Google that you’re only willing to pay a certain amount per click and to display your ad accordingly. The more competitive a keyword a keyword is the more it will cost you to display your ad on the first page.
AVG POS – Average Position
For every keyword in your campaign that receives impressions you can see where your ad shows up. For example, if your average position is 3, your ad is being displayed the 3rd from the top.
Lessons:
1. Promote a High Paying Offer
Make sure you choose an offer that pays well enough that you can generate enough traffic that you won’t have to convert every single click to make money. If you promote an offer that pays $4.00 but it costs an average of $3.50 to convert it’ll be difficult to stay ahead.
I suggest promoting an offer that pays $10.00 or more per lead/sale.
2. Don’t Expect a Conversion Every Click
In order to avoid failure operate on the 1% rule. If you can generate 100 visitors at least one of them should convert in to a lead or sale. This should give you enough of a margin to profit.
For example, you’re promoting an offer that pays $10.00 per lead/sale.
You want to profit at least $5.00 per sale.
Take that $5.00 you’ve budgeted and divide that by 100 to get your CPC budget.
$5.00 divided by 100 is $0.05. Your maximum CPC is $0.05.
3. Choose Less Competitive Keywords
The keywords with the most traffic usually have the most advertising competition. This means that you’ll be paying more per click to show up on the first page and it’s often outside of your budget.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help you find keywords or keyphrases used to generate your target audience that will show up on page1 for only $0.05 per click.
4. Improve your Ad Copy
The more appealing your ad copy is to visitors the better your CTR and you’ll receive more visits. Google AdWords allows title variables and this is one way for you to attract clicks for the keywords you’re trying to target. If a searcher types in Fly Fishing and you’re targeting that keyword Fly Fishing will show up as the title of your ad.
Example:
{Keyword}
{KeyWord}
{KeyWord:Click My Ad}
If you choose to use variables in your title Google will display the search keyword in the title of your ad. Using the {KeyWord:<alternative title>} will tell Google to use the KeyWord and it can’t to display your default title.
5. Create a Landing Page
Creating a landing page allows you to direct your visitor to a custom page create by you. This page is typically hosted on your own domain with a sales pitch and an affiliate link to the product or service you’re trying to promote.
Conclusion: Most Important AdWords Advice!
Try to be patient and don’t overpay for clicks. Originally I lost money using AdWords because my campaigns weren’t receiving enough impressions and I just wasn’t getting the amount of clicks I wanted. Do not cave in and blow your money paying too much for clicks that won’t convert!
My biggest problem was that I was targeting keywords too competitive for my budget and in order to compete for those clicks I increased my maximum CPC and wasn’t able to get the conversions I needed to profit. Take your time and set up hundreds or thousands of Google AdWords campaigns that generate small amounts of affordable traffic before overpay for traffic that won’t convert.
Aim To Rank For Long Tail Keywords
When new bloggers start out writing about their favorite topic, they are excited and just writing away. They then start to investigate why they don’t really have much traffic, and they start learning about search engine optimization (SEO). So, they start targeting their main keyword. Let’s say it’s a blogger writing about his debt, and how he hopes to end his debt through blogging. He starts to target the keywords “debt management.” After doing some SEO basics, and maybe a little bit of link building, he still is frustrated by not being in the top few pages on Google for “debt management” so he starts to give up. Instead of giving up, he should aim for long tail keywords.
His problem was that he was trying to blog about a keyword that many people are competing for. When there’s a lot of competition, it’s harder to rank higher in Google, therefore less visitors from Google. So, how can this problem be solved? By using long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are groups of keywords that are not too common when they are by themselves, but when they are grouped, they will be able to draw more customers to your website. Also, since those groups of keywords aren’t as popular, then it will be a lot easier to rank higher in the search engines. And since you’ll be targeting a fairly specific set of keywords, the people searching for those keywords will be more valuable customers since their search results will be laser targeted.
So how do you find long tail keywords for your site? The first step is to dive into your site statistics. Most statistics programs show you the keywords that were used to find you in the search engine. Start looking at some of the longer phrases that were used to find your site, and then write an article about that topic specifically. Also take a look at where you stand in the search engines already for those phrases. That will give you an idea if you really need to target that phrase with a few pages about that topic, or if one page will do. Make sure that you link to this new page from a couple of your other pages and external pages, using that long tail keyword as your anchor text for the link.
Another way is to use a free online tool from Google. (You can find it at: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) You can search for the generic term that you want to use and it will often give a nice long list of popular searches, with a rough estimate of how many searches a month. (To see a more accurate monthly search volume, change the “Match Type” from “Broad” to “Exact”. Try searching the term “debt management” to get an ideas of long tail keywords.
The thing to remember when targeting long tail keywords is the value of small things when multiplied. Sure, it’d be awesome to rank first for a keyword that gets 300 searches a day. But, that will be a little bit harder. If, instead, you focus on 10 long tail keywords with 30 searches a day each, you’ll still get about 300 visitors to your site, but it’ll be a lot easier since you’ll probably rank higher for those keywords since they are long tail, and therefore less competitive.
Top 5 SEO Plugins for WordPress
When it comes to the top SEO plugins for WordPress, there are many posts out there that give the author’s list of SEO plugins. Most of those lists are outdated, either not featuring the newest plugins available, or featuring ones that simply don’t help out for SEO. Wordpress on it’s own does a pretty good job at helping you with SEO, but there are a few things that could be changed or better optimized for SEO purposes.
I am going to give you the top 5 SEO plugins for WordPress, and tell you why they are great to use, and even why some are better than the ones in other lists. All of these SEO plugins are free to download!
1. Platinum SEO Pack – Platinum SEO is a great plugin. Many of you have heard of the All-in-One SEO plugin based on recommendations from other lists. I used to use All-in-One, until I found Platinum SEO. Platinum SEO has all of the features of All-in-One SEO and takes it a step further, allowing you to set many different options for noindex of pages that may cause duplicate content (such as date-based archives, etc). It can also do permanent 301 redirection of any changes to your permalink structure.
One of my favorite features of Platinum SEO allows you to change the Title Tag, META Description, and META Keywords for each individual page and post. This way, each post can have an optimized description for Google to display when that page is searched. It also allows you to have a separate title in the title tag, to help to make your post title catchy for on-site readers, and keyword-optimized for search engine crawling. (Yes, there is another plugin such as Headspace that does this, but why upload and install multiple plugins if you don’t need to, especially if creating many, many niche sites.)
2. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – This is a great plugin for getting your site fully indexed, and for building internal links to your site. This creates a nice sitemap that can assist your users in finding information fast on your blog. But, it also allows Google to see all of your pages, and to crawl them. Having links to your own internal pages is very important, and this plugin automatically creates them on a niche Sitemap page (see the one on Niche Titans).
3. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin creates a different kind of sitemap than #2. While #2′s type of sitemap is more for internal link building and user assistance, XML sitemaps are strictly for Google knowing your pages that you want indexed, and how often they are updated so Google can crawl them. This will automatically generate/update a sitemap whenever you write a nice post. If you’ve submitted your xml sitemap to Google through Webmaster Tools, then this plugin will keep it nice and updated whenever you generate new content for your WordPress blog.
4. No Self Pings – This plugin is great for those who build internal links (linking to one post from another post). Internal linking is great for keeping your visitors on the site, and passing authority to certain pages of your site. But, when you post to another article, WordPress automatically pings that article, and creates useless pings. This SEO wordpress plugin simply eliminates that behavior.
5. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – If you don’t know by now, I LOVE internal linking. This is another plugin that helps you to build links to other, relevant internal pages. (To see it in action, scroll to the bottom of this post.) It calculates a “score” for everything other post you’ve written, based on the current post (based on an algorithm you specify) and lists a certain number of posts (that you specify) at the bottom of the article. This is great for keeping your users on your site by helping them to find other posts they may be interested. It also helps to spread your authority to other pages on your site.
Are there other plugins out there? Probably. Some of the other Top SEO Plugins for WordPress lists include some funky plugins, including ones that HURT your SEO. I tried to give you just the top 5 plugins to help your WordPress SEO, and break each one of them down to show you EXACTLY WHY it helps your SEO.
Enjoy these, and don’t forget to subscribe in case I find anymore that I want to share with you.
