You have been running your pay-per-click campaign on Google for months. You were getting good results, so you just left it on autopilot. But you have noticed that your sales are slowly going down with your monthly expense staying at your maximum daily spend.

You need to tune and optimize your campaign. Where do you begin? You have an advantage; you have history and past performance to guide you. To maximize your effectiveness you need to track Adwords conversions. Apply this code to a thank you page that comes up after the sale or sign-up.

1. Optimize Keywords: Keep the best keywords and remove the phrases with the lowest performance. If you have phrases receiving clicks and no conversions, then you may need to make changes to your landing page. You can change the form of keyword matching that exists.
   Broad match: Phrases contain the words in any order and can contain additional words
   Phrase match: The exact phrase and can include additional words before or after.
   Exact Match: Contains only the words you are looking for, in the exact order, with no additional words.
2. Optimize Ads: Use the search phrase in the ad title so your ad attracts the attention of the searcher. Use A/B testing to test out variations of your ads while changing one factor at a time. Delete the under performers and keep the winners. Try changing wording, capitalization, display URL and landing pages.
   
3. Optimize Networks: Track performance between search network and content networks. Separate into separate campaigns so you can manage and run tests separately. Usually the search network converts better than the content network. Always start with ads on the search network and then slowly add in the content network. In the search network you can remove websites that do not convert and keep ones that send you conversions.
4. Optimize Time and Rates: You can not only control the days and times your ads appear. You can adjust your bids by raising or lowering your rates for certain days or times. This is controlled under the advanced settings and then selecting bid adjustment inside the ad scheduling area.
5. Optimizing Landing Pages: Use A / B split testing to test and optimize your landing pages. Use the search phrase in the page headline. Clearly state your value proposition. Be sure to have a simple focused landing page with a clear call to action to get the best results.

You can have a very popular website that doesn’t sell anything and still generate a nice revenue because of your visitor traffic. You earn money by displaying various forms of advertising on your web pages. These can take many forms.

1. Display Advertising: You can sell your own advertising space on your website for a flat monthly fee. The more visitors your website receives, the easier it is to attract advertisers and the more you can charge.
2. Text Link ads: Sell text based ads that directly link to websites or a landing page. These used to be popular as a way to promote search rankings, but Google has campaigned hard to discourage this use. They are still effective for advertising with or without “No-Follow” tags. You can sell these ads directly or through sites like textlinkbrokers.com
3. PPC Ad Networks: With these are ads you are paid each time someone clicks on an ad and are taken off your site. These include ad networks like Google Adsense. Relevant ads in either text or graphical banners are served up on your site.
4. CPM Ad Networks: These are similar to PPC ads except you are paid based on the number of times and ad is displayed (impressions). CPM stands for Cost per Mille or cost per thousand impressions. Examples include Advertising.com and Tribal Fusion.
5. Affiliate Sales: You can get paid for connecting your visitors with other websites that sell products. You can keep a percentage of the sale for supplying the customer. Amazon.com is a popular affiliate where you can offer books and products that your readers would be interested in. You can also line up affiliates through services like Click Bank.
6. CPM Video: Voxant Newsroom allows you to find and embed videos on your website. When video news content with an advertisement is played by your viewers, you’ll earn a flat-rate CPM (cost per thousand plays).
7. Sell Products: If you have a good following you may want to sell products with your logo or slogan. Café Press offers an affiliate program where your visitors can order all sorts of products that they will apply your branding to. You will earn a commission on everything sold.

Landing pages are typically simplified pages that are focused on getting your prospect to take a specific action. They are frequently used in a pay-per-click campaign or some other advertising campaign that drives visitors to a specific conversion page. Your goal is to catch your visitor’s attention in a fraction of a second and interest them enough to take some action.

1. Purpose: Your landing page should have one single purpose. You want it to be laser focused on getting a single result. Many landing pages lack this clarity or have multiple possible action paths. This confuses the visitor which can cause them to leave.
2. Audience: Design your landing page for a specific audience. This could be prospects, clients, investors, job seekers, current employees or the press. Each group will have their own specific needs and requirements. Don’t try and use one landing page for everyone.
3. Conversion Path: Define your conversion path before designing your landing page. Some products have an almost instant buying decision where the purchase is immediate. Others require a long education and interaction strategy before someone is ready to commit. Frequently the conversion path will begin with a form being filled out so education by email can begin.
4. Multiple Actions: It becomes more complicated when there are multiple actions a visitor can take. Suppose you are offering 3 options where someone can buy now, take a free trial or sign-up for a free newsletter. You would want to prioritize your offers where your number one priority is presented first and with the largest call to action button.
5. Measure: Use Google Analytics or other website statistics package to track conversion rates. Decide what it is you need to measure such as form-fills, registrations or purchases. Start with creating a baseline or starting point. If you have multiple actions, place a dollar value on each action so you can measure improvements. Then systematically test changes you make to your landing page as you optimize your landing page.

Google has two payment models for your Adwords advertising on Google’s content network. The more popular method of CPC is where you pay each time your ad is clicked on. With CPM advertising you pay for each 1000 impressions your ad receives. You are not charged extra for click-through.

CPC: The Adwords cost-per click or pay-per-click model is where you pay when your ad receives a click. These ads appear on both the search engine results pages (SERPs) and on independent web pages (content network).

CPM: The Adwords cost-per-thousand-impressions model only appears on web pages that allow Google Adsense advertising (Content Network). A CPM ad is larger. It is an expanded text ad or image ad and it occupies the entire ad space.

CPM advertising is effective as a branding ad where you are trying to create awareness for your company, brand or products. Google allows advertisers to target which websites they want to be included in (or excluded from). CPM ads use competitive bidding with minimums starting at $.25 per M impressions. Focusing on ad design is critical with CPM to encourage a higher click through rate.

CPC advertising is pure performance based advertising where you only pay when someone clicks through to your website or landing page. Results are very trackable with analytics. CPC ads are the only option available if you want your ad to appear along with Google’s search results. CPC ads require a bid of at least US$0.01 per click.

Advertisers should test out both methods and see which gives the lowest cost per conversion. Many CPM advertisers are able to lower advertising costs and increase their sales revenue with well optimized ads.

A landing page is the web page a visitor reaches after clicking on an online ad or link. This is your customized sales pitch. It provides detailed information on your offer and should be designed to get your visitor to trust you and to take action.

A well crafted landing page will convert a higher percentage of your visitors into leads or into buyers. What makes a great landing page? It should clearly answer the following.

1. What problem are you solving?
2. What solution are you offering?
3. Who is this for?
4. What is your offer?
5. How do I get started?

Landing Page Best Practices

1. Relevance: Make you online ad and your landing page highly relevant to each other. Repeat your ad text in the headline of your page. What you offer should match your online ad. Avoid any perception of “bait and switch” by your visitor.
2. Simplify what actions a visitor can take. Don’t provide multiple options and offers on a landing page. This will confuse the visitor and they will leave without taking any action at all. Eliminate all page navigation except toward the action you want them to take. Organize your content into a simple visual format that is quick to scan and understand.
3. Action: Make the call to action clear, visible and above the fold. Provide a short easy path for visitors to buy or request information. Make sure your call to action button stands out from the rest of your content.
4. Minimum information: For forms and purchases, request only the minimum amount of information that you require. If you require too much “non-essential” customer information, many people will abandon your form and leave your page. Do you really need their phone number or physical address?
5. Trust: Answer the question “Why should I trust you?” Offer a 100% unconditional money back guarantee. Have a simple returns policy. Include real testimonials from real customers. Include trust logos from organizations you belong to such as BBB and Truste. Reassure visitors that their information will remain private. Have a phone number and physical address on the page.

The most important thing in any offer is that it be clear and concise. There is an old marketing maxim is that “a confused mind always says no.” Too many choices or a weak call to action and your website visitor will say that’s interesting and simply move on.

Remember that most people on the Internet don’t read everything on the page, they scan. Attention spans are short. You need to capture the attention of your visitor, get them interested and then follow through with a clear and compelling offer.

Most of your competition may have an interesting ad, present good information, some benefits but they don’t ask for a direct and instant response. They may get the reader interested, but they don’t follow through with the 1-2 punch to close the deal.

People are not looking to buy your products or services. They buy the solution to their problem. They are after results. They are thinking “what’s in it for me?”

The 3-step sales process for a web page:

1. Headline: Grab their attention a with compelling and benefits driven statement. Don’t be afraid to make it entertaining. Give them the promise of something good to come. Hook your readers with the promise and then close the deal with your content.
2. Content: Readers are there to solve a specific need or problem that they have. Give them the information they want and avoid unsubstantiated marketing hype. Format it for scanning with bold, italicized or bulleted text. Use strong action verbs and a confident tone. They need reassurance that your solution will work for them.
3. Call-to-action: This is the most important aspect of your page. Tell your visitor what you want them to do: buy, register, call or sign-up. Don’t make them hunt for your call to action! Make it clearly visible, preferably above the fold. Never give more than 3 choices or options or they will not make a decision.

Remember, “A confused mind always says no.”

Pay-per-click marketing is a way to quickly get your offer in front of millions of people. PPC can get great results fast or cause you to burn through a lot of money and get no results. The difference is in the planning and execution of your campaign. Here are some tips to maximize your PPC marketing efforts.

1. Keywords: Choose your keywords carefully. They should be highly relevant to your product or service. Don’t just select popular phrases. Longer phrases are better for getting PPC results. Research shows that people just starting to learn about a subject will search using 1-2 word phrases. People ready to purchase or take action will search using specific 3-5 word phrases.
2. Ad copy: Your ad is your initial entry to your landing page. It should include the specific keyword phrase the searcher used to find your ad. This means having a different ad for each keyword phrase (or group of keyword phrases) will increase your conversion rate.
3. Use landing pages: Never send PPC traffic to the home page of your website. A landing page is a simplified web page with limited or no navigation links and is focused on getting your visitor to take a specific action. To maximize conversion, the keyword phrase used in the original search, should be used in the ad, in the landing page name and headline of the landing page.
4. Landing page headlines: The landing page headline should be located in the top left portion of the page just below a small company logo. It should include your keyword phrase and clearly state a compelling benefit or how you solve your visitor’s problem.
5. Call to action: Make it easy for your visitor to take action on your landing page. Locate your embedded form or action link where it is clearly visible and above the fold.

PPC or Pay per Click is an important method of search engine marketing (SEM). This paid advertising method is its own science to first attract a visitor to click on an ad and then designing a landing page that will convert this visitor into a lead or a sale.

Myth #1: You will see instant results when you launch PPC. You can’t just start PPC and then forget about it. You can get very poor results or burn through a lot of cash. PPC takes careful planning, keyword selection and development of landing pages to get proper results.

Myth #2: PPC will help your organic search engine rankings. PPC has no direct impact on your SEO rankings. You can spend as much as you want on PPC and it won’t change a thing in your organic results. Google does not apply bonus points to your organic rankings if you spend money on PPC. PPC ads use JavaScript and these ads do not count as anchor text links back to your website.

Myth #3: I don’t need paid listings if I have a top 10 result on organic listings. Having your listings in both the paid listings and natural search results will give you more credibility and website traffic. The two listings seem to reinforce your brand and the traffic volume multiplies.

Myth #4 PPC is the least expensive form of search marketing. No, PPC can easily be the most expensive form of search engine marketing. It is important to optimize a PPC campaign with keyword selection, the wording of ads and landing page design to maximize conversion rates and to lower the cost per conversion.

Myth #5 In PPC, the most expensive keywords are costly because they provide better returns. No, the pricing is based on the popularity and competition for a given phrase. PPC is a pure auction environment where higher demand creates higher pricing and has no relationship to your potential return on investment.

Myth #6: Google is the only search engine that matters in PPC. No, Google does have the highest traffic volume, but other search engines such as Bing/MSN can often yield better ROI. It is a good idea to diversify your advertising onto multiple search engines.

Myth #7 You need to be #1 to get good results. No, #2 and #3 will often cost much less per click and give a better ROI. Number one will get more traffic, but the cost per click is frequently much more expensive. Frequently a lower position will be your “best” most cost efficient solution.

Myth #8 PPC Geo targeting does not work. Local or regional businesses require local visitors for their PPC. Geo targeting in PPC is based on the user IP address. Some Internet providers have IP’s that inaccurately show the users location. It is much better to use location modified keyword phrases such as “denver dry cleaner” or “portland auto repair”.

With a new report out now, there may not be a better time to start a PPC campaign.

How has our slow economic environment impacted pay-per-click (PPC) advertising? There are more impressions with more ads being showed to searchers. There is an increase in click thru rates. Advertisers have reduced their spending per click and have improved their conversion rates. This is all detailed in a report by eFrontier that compares their client data and compares Q1 2008 with Q1 2009.

Search engines have responded to our sluggish economy by reducing or removing minimum bids. Impression volume has surged across all search engines. This shows consumers are using search engines to buy products and to research products or companies.

Advertisers have increased their ROI by 10% Between Q4 2008 and Q1 2009 while spending 3.3% less. This shows a trend toward efficiency which comes from spending less per click and focusing on improving conversion rates. This has been done thru by improving ad / landing page relevance and landing page design.

How are the search engines faring? When comparing 4Q 2008 with 1Q 2009, Google saw a 1.2% increase in market share while Yahoo Search and Microsoft Live Search showed a Q/Q decrease of 0.7% and 0.5% respectively.
Cost Per Click refers to the amount of money an advertiser pays the search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement to brings a visitor to its Web site. CPCs are down across the board by 19% for Q1 2009 compared to the prior year.

Buying has shifted to lower ticket items. The average order value has declined 5% from one year ago according to the Rimm-Kaufman Group.

There are many creative ways to increase traffic to your website. Some will cost you money, and some won’t. You really have two choices. You can select paid advertising such as Google Adwords or you can optimize your website to be found in the “organic” search engine results. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Paid Advertising: Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) can supply almost instant traffic to your website. All three major search engines offer PPC Advertising. Google Adwords is by far the dominant choice because of they have a dominant share (by far) of the search market.

PPC advertising makes sense for websites that can’t be optimized. This includes all Flash websites, hosted templates such many ecommerce carts and industries that are highly regulated. Regulated industries are ones that sell securities and must follow SEC rules that control content.

When setting up PPC advertising, always direct visitors to a landing page that is carefully designed to maximize conversions, never to a website home page.  Why? Because you can quickly waste a lot of money sending traffic to a general purpose home page. Conversions and therefore sales are much higher when directed to a well designed landing page.

Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO): You can get hung up on the technical details, but it really comes down to doing two things. Having lots of keyword rich content and getting other websites to link to your content. How do you do this?

Write informative and original blogs or articles and post them regularly on your website. If you are a good writer and the ideas that you present are original and insightful, then these much sought after links will come almost automatically.

Others will read what you wrote and then continue on the conversation by writing their own blogs or articles, many times with links to what you wrote. This turns into a very natural link building method and your website will move to the top of the search results for many different phrases. Organic SEO is best done during the business website design process.

Organic SEO methods take much more time to develop any substantial traffic, but they are far less expensive than PPC advertising. Many companies will use both and focus on PPC advertising while they wait for organic SEO results to “kick in.”