If done right PPC can deliver excellent results. I know many entrepreneurs who are running very successful campaigns through PPC.

So how do they get these results?

Simply by tracking their ads and keywords and testing their landing pages again and again.

You just can’t simply signup with YSM (Yahoo Search Marketing) or Google AdWords or MSN AdCenter and stuff keywords out there and hope the magic will begin – it won’t. In fact this strategy will only burn your wallet and you will lose a lot of money.

Its important that you track your PPC campaigns. Ad tracking tools deliver the clear analytical data required for a successful campaign.

Tracking is important whether you are marketing online or offline.

So how do you track?

One of the simplest ways is to add the tracking code given by most PPC search engines. They will help you to know which keywords actually got you the sale. The next step is to increase the bids on those keywords to get the maximum possible hits and generate more revenue.

Of course there are many free and paid ad-tracking tools available.

Explore these software. See which one fits your needs. Install the one which you think will best serve your needs. I have seen people using two or even more ad-tracking software to be doubly sure.

Remember an ad-tracking software can make or break your PPC campaigns. You are paying for each click, so ensure that you pay for the clicks that bring you business.

One of the best software is Google Analytics. It not only tracks the paid campaigns but also visitors coming through the SEO efforts (organic rankings).

Google Analytics best feature is the setup of Goals of your site. For example if your site has two Goals – signup for newsletters and sale of a product – you can set up two Goals in Google Analytics for your site.

This way you will know which keywords are mostly accounted for sign-ups and which ones are helping in sales.

You can bid accordingly.

Needles to say you will stay far ahead of those advertisers who do not track their campaigns.

Recommended Reading:

How to Test Ads in Google AdWords PPC

Google has improved its Adwords quality score algorithms. Now there won’t be any inactive keywords. However Google will show a message telling advertisers what bid is required to reach the first page of the results.

This may not necessarily be good news. Though the keywords will now be active, the low quality keywords will still not get enough impressions as assumed by many advertisers.

Google will still calculate quality score. According to Google’s official post, these three major improvements will take place:

1. Quality Score will be calculated at the time of each search query,

2. Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’. All keywords will be active and will be evaluated for every relevant query, and

3. “First page bid estimates” will replace “minimum bids”.

It means the problem for small advertisers still remains. How do you get more impressions for the keywords that were previously inactive, but are now active?

Here are some steps that you can take to get the best out of your Google Adwords advertising campaigns:

1. The suggested bid is for the first page. You may not afford this, but see if you can afford to be in the second page. To do this you may need to increase the bids to a point where you feel it should show up at least in the second page.

2. Since all keywords will be active, why not increase the keywords for the campaigns. Research some long tail keywords. Add these long tail keywords in your campaigns.

3. Try to increase the CTR (click through rate) of the ads. This way you will pay less per click and will be able to afford to raise the bids for the most important keywords to be in the first page.

4. Open your ads to target content network of Google. Since all keywords are active, this will help your ads get more exposure on millions of websites that have partnered with Google to display ads. This is popularly known as Adsense. Don’t worry, the click through rate in content network will not effect the quality score of the search network ads.

5. Though landing page quality is evaluated less frequently, it is advisable to improve the landing page quality. Better landing page quality will increase the quality score resulting in more impression for the ads.

It can be achieved through the following:

a) Add relevant and original content

b) Add your business address and contact number

c) Have a good and honest privacy policy in place

d) Provide an easy path for a user to purchase or receive the product or offer in your ad

For more information read – Google Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines.

I hope these ideas will help you benefit form the latest improvements of Google Adwords Quality Score and get more traffic for your site for less.

Your views are important for growth of this blog. Please leave a comment and let me know what you would like to read in this blog.

Related Topics:
 
1. Free Tips for Writing Good PPC Ads
2. Why Google AdWords is a Must for Online Advertising
3. Keyword Bidding and Management – How much to bid?

Many advertisers I know and have read in forums do not use the Google AdWords content network to advertise their site. The reason they say is poor quality of traffic. Well no more.

Google has recently improved its content network. Read more about this in their blog.

I will not dwell into what improvements were made by Google as you can read in the blog, what I will write here is how to get the best out of Google AdWords content network targeting.

1. Distribution of Keywords is important: The Keywords are very important as all the keywords in an AdGroup will form a theme and all those websites that “fit” into that theme will be eligible to display your Ad.

How to tackle this?

Paste your keywords in a spreadsheet. Let’s name it Sheet1. In another sheet (Sheet2) let the first row of every column represent the name of the product. Go back to Sheet1. Copy the first keyword, go to Sheet2 and paste it in the appropriate column representing the product. Do the same for the second keyword. Repeat this until you have pasted all the keywords from Sheet1 to Sheet2.

I can understand this is a cumbersome work, but it will surly pay dividends in the long run.

By doing this what you have done is distributed the keywords to represent different products. This will help Google to show your ad in only those websites that sell similar product and no other website.

Needless to say, these different columns should represent different AdGroups in your Adwords Campaign.

Why this is important? Lets suppose you sell blue and black widgets. Since you have separated your adgroups representing blue and black, the blue widget ad will not show in a site selling black widget and vice versa.

This way you will get highly targeted visitors.

2. Let content targeting be content targeting: Let the content network targeting campaign target the Google content network only. Its advisable that you opt out of the search network when you are targeting content network.

Why? Because a different mindset of people will be looking at your ads. These are the people who are not searching for your product but looking for more information on your or similar product.

3. Try a different landing page: See point 2 above. Since visitors coming from the content network are looking for more information, its better to first provide them the information of your product. Its common sense that this page has to be optimized differently than the page where visitors are coming from the search network.

4. Track everything: It’s important to track traffic coming from the content network. (Infact it’s important to track all visitors coming from whatever sources.)

Tracking will help you to study the behavior of your content ad visitors and implement changes accordingly.

5. No dynamic insertion of keywords in ads: Since ad shown is not keyword specific but theme specific, it is of no use if you create an ad with dynamic insertion of keywords.

Google will show default text of the ad in the content network if dynamic insertion has been used.

6. Test your ads: Don’t just sleep over your ads. Though the CTR of the Google content network does not effect quality score of the search network ads, its important that you keep testing your ads to get the best possible CTR for your content network ads as well.

7. Negative keywords: Just like the search network its important that you use negative keywords smartly. You don’t want people looking for free stuff see your ads. Do you?

Remember that content targeting also helps in brand building. So sometimes it makes sense to keep advertising in the content network especially if you want to build a brand. It will help in the long run.

Help me improve this blog. Please leave a comment.

Related topics:

1. Landing Page Optimization
2. Free Tips for Writing Good PPC Ads
3. Why Google AdWords

Whenever someone starts an online business they think of getting free PPC ads to get visitors to their site or affiliate links. If you are one of them don’t worry, we all at some point of time wanted free clicks for our website.

Nothing comes for free in this world. However there are ways to get free ppc ad clicks. And these tricks won’t cost you anything.

One of the best ways to get free ppc ads with Google, Yahoo and MSN and many other pay per click search engines like Ask, Miva etc is to look for the Free Coupon they offer through their affiliates.

At the time of writing this article, Google offers $50 coupon for free to advertise in Google AdWords. Yahoo Search Marketing too offers $50 coupon for free to advertise in their ppc program. Yahoo calls it a $50 credit. MSN adCenter also offers a $50 free coupon to advertisers.

Most pay per click search engines do come up with such offers from time to time to attract advertisers. Its best to grab these offers and advertise your site using the free credit you get. This way you don’t spend a dime in PPC advertising and you get free clicks too.

Once you start advertising it won’t take rocket science to understand should you continue advertising even after the initial free credit is over.

Here is some simple mathematics. Let’s suppose the average cost per click comes to $0.20. (You may get them for much lower. Google AdWords minimum cost per click for a keyword is 1 cent.)

You get 50*5 = 250 unique visitors per search engine. There are 3 search engines. Total unique visitor = 250*3 = 750.

750 visitors will give you a rough idea of what may happen if you continue advertising. Please understand that this may not be a significant result to know if you are actually making a profit or a loss, but will certainly help you to take a decision.

Here is some word of advice from business point of view. Let’s assume that you invested this money and it did not come for free. You’ll have to access the situation once the free credit is over. If you are making a profit, you can invest more and keep your ppc ads active to keep receiving traffic. If you are breaking even, even then I would suggest that you keep investing to get some more traffic to take a decision.

The problem is if you are making a loss. Ask yourself if this is acceptable. (My suggestion is a 10% loss is acceptable.) If you feel this is ok and you can take a little risk, invest more. However make sure you pause the keywords that are not sending you qualified visitors. For this you must ensure that good analytics software is in place.

I recommend Google Analytics. It’s free and records enough information to help you take an informed decision.

One more advice. Don’t just jump into signing up. Read carefully about pay per click search engines. You can read this site itself for some good information on ppc search engines. Read as much as possible before you signup with pay per click search engines to get free ppc ads.

You comments will help me to improve this blog. Please suggest what you would like to read in this site. I am happy to help.