“AdWords 1-2-3”

Written by:
Chris D. Cobb
 AdWords 1-2-3

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Contents

Introduction

Part One

Starting And Succeeding With AdWords

Part Two

Creating AdWords That Work

Part Three

More Powerful AdWords Techniques

Glossary Of Terms

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Introduction

Hello there, and welcome to AdWords 1-2-3.

Firstly, let me congratulate you for making a fantastic investment – I just wish that there had been a book
like this when I first started! It would have saved me hours, thousands of pounds .… and I’d probably
have made a lot more money than I’ve already made through AdWords!

I’ve written this book based on my own experience using Google AdWords day-in and day-out and I’ve
hopefully made all of the mistakes so that you don’t have to!

This is the real purpose of the book – to prevent you from making costly (both time and money) mistakes
with AdWords.

I’ve started my business from nothing and made thousands using AdWords and I’m
also now a Qualified AdWords Professional – just to prove that I know what I’m
talking about!

But anyway .… this isn’t about me .… this is ALL ABOUT YOU… and how you
can make AdWords work FOR YOU!

So, what I suggest is that you not only read this book, but you also re-read it and TAKE ACTION based
on what you read as you go through the book. Follow the instructions and guidance and you’ll either
enhance what you’re doing already with AdWords or be able to set-up a winning campaign from the very
start.

What I’ve done is to remove as much of the trial and error as possible for you and by this you should
read:

NO MORE WASTED TIME

NO MORE WASTED MONEY

And that’s just fantastic in anyone’s book – which is why IT IS MY BOOK!

So, let’s get started shall we .…

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Part One

Starting And Succeeding With AdWords

What’s The Best Way Of Getting Rich On The Internet?

Although the Internet hasn’t been around for that long, there must have been tens of thousands of books
(and e-books of course) published all claiming to tell you how to get rich using the Internet. Now I’ve
always been sceptical – very sceptical – about books that claim to teach you the secret of making ‘easy
money’ in any business. But if there is such a thing as making easy money this is probably the closest
thing there is to it. I promise you!

Over the years I’ve studied every possible way of making money on the Internet. And basically there are
two main ways you could do it:

One. The most obvious way of getting rich on the Internet is to choose a product and sell it online
yourself. It can be very lucrative. But of course it is not that easy as you will need to create a product
yourself or buy a stock of it.

Two. If you don’t want to be a product owner yourself then you can become what is known as an affiliate
– and promote other people’s products. The product might be a physical one, an e-book, software or
possibly a subscription to a newsletter or club etc. In return for selling the product owner’s goods you get
a cut of the profit margin.

Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative for both the product owner (or merchant or vendor as they are
sometimes known) and the affiliate. The affiliate can earn a good income without stocking a product or
dealing with the customer – and the merchant only has to pay anything when a sale is made. Generally,
the most profitable affiliate products are information products – like e-books, which can easily pay up to
50% commission. Maybe the affiliate doesn’t get to keep all the profits of course, but it is certainly very
easy.

Whichever method you choose you will need to promote whatever product you are selling. To market
your product, you have many options open to you – from good old fashioned classified ads, press
releases, joint ventures and now ‘pay per click’ methods.

Now let me say something about pay per click or PPC. Because it is critical to the Google AdWords
phenomenon. PPC has become very popular with both product owners and affiliates. It is probably the
fastest way for an affiliate or vendor to send visitors to a site and get sales. If a user clicks on an ad the
advertiser is charged a small amount. But they are only charged if someone actually clicks on the ad and
goes to their site. In short, it is the ultimate form of results-based, risk-free marketing!

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Pay per click works in a number of different ways. However, Google’s AdWords system is by far the most
lucrative and most exciting. Because in my experience there is no better way to make a fortune on the
Internet than with Google AdWords. That is why I am writing about it in this book!

Google AdWords .... What’s All The Fuss About?

Some people, even experienced Internet marketers, run away screaming at the very mention of Google
AdWords. They don’t really know what it involves. Or if they do, they’re not really sure how it works.
But there’s no reason to feel apprehensive or intimidated. AdWords is simply Google’s name for their
pay per click system. It’s that simple!

And, anyone that has anything to do with a website, either as a product owner or an affiliate, must know
how to use AdWords effectively. If you don’t, you are missing out on a small fortune. (And probably a
very large fortune too!)

A few years ago, if you thought about big brands, names like Ford or Heinz would come to mind. Today,
Google is one of the most famous big brands in the world. In terms of brand recognition and numbers of
users it eclipses almost every other big name. Every week millions and millions of people search for
information and solutions to their problems using Google. And by using AdWords you can put your
product or affiliate deal in front of as many of them as you like!

Is that exciting or what?

Let’s Get Started Right Away!

Signing up with Google AdWords is very easy. You probably won’t need much help here. The sign up
process is very intuitive, so I’ll just run you through the basics.

Start the signup process by going to http://adwords.google.com. You’ll see something like this:

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On the opening screen click ‘Sign Up Now’.

One point: You will find that Google tries to force you to create your first campaign from day one. But
you don’t want to start AdWording until you’re familiar with the whole process. So the best thing is just
to create a ‘made up’ campaign, just to help you learn the ropes. You can easily change it into a real
campaign or delete it later.

On the next page, select the ‘Standard Edition’ (not the ‘Starter Edition’) and click ‘Continue’.

Google now asks you to choose your target customers by both language and location – specifying
regions, countries and even cities. For now just select ‘English’ and whichever country you are located in.
You can easily change or edit this later if you need to. With most campaigns you will be targeting the
more developed English speaking nations like the UK, USA, Australia and Canada and so on.

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Now Google starts the process of creating a Google AdWords ad First of all you are asked to ‘Create an
Ad’ by typing in the advertising copy you want to display. You can see from the screenshot below what
information you need to provide and the character limits you need to keep within. So, just input the all-
important keywords related to what you are promoting.

For now, you don’t have a campaign of course – so just put in anything that comes into your head. I will
show you how to create great ads and choose the very best keywords later in this book. Then click
‘Continue’.

Next, Google starts talking money! First it will ask you what currency you want to pay Google in. This
doesn’t have to be in the same currency as the price of your product. Next – very importantly – it will ask
you what you want your Daily Budget to be. Just enter a nominal amount (eg. $1.00) and for the
‘maximum CPC (Cost Per Click)’ box enter a nominal amount of $0.01. Later, I will tell you how to
decide what’s best for you. Again, click ‘Continue’.

Google will now ask you to confirm your campaign details. (The fact that you are using a made-up
campaign doesn’t commit you to anything.) Review the details on the page, answer a couple of
marketing-related questions, and then sign in. If you don’t already have a Google account you won’t need
to create one.

Lastly, Google will want your billing details before they will start running your ads. But, basically, that’s
all there is to it! You’re now signed up to start making money with Google AdWords!
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Getting Inside AdWords: How Does It All Work ?

I know there seems to be a lot of mystery surrounding Google AdWords, but essentially it is very simple:
AdWords sells you advertising space which shows up on Google’s search results. So, when someone
searches for a specific term, they will see the ad you have placed. Or, to look at it from the other
direction, you pay Google to put your ad in front of people whom they know are looking for what you are
selling.

Let’s look at it by using an example: Say we are selling books or courses on how to speak a foreign
language – an interesting niche market.

We might want to advertise on search terms such as ‘learn a foreign language’, ‘speak a foreign language’
and so on. Then, when a user searches for one of these terms on Google, our ads will appear alongside the
search results for those keywords. For example, if we do a quick Google search for ‘learn a foreign
language’ you will see the following screen: If you look at the top of the search results and the right hand
side you will see that both are marked sponsored links. These are essentially PPC adverts that will be
displayed when a Google user searches for this subject.

With AdWords you only have to pay for your advertising when someone actually clicks on the ads that
you have created – hence pay per click. But the important thing to note is that you don’t just pay a fixed
fee. The amount you are charged varies depending on several factors – and it can vary quite significantly
too.

The first factor that determines the amount you are charged is the amount that you are prepared to pay for
each click. This is known as your maximum bid. You can change it at any time for any of the keywords
you are bidding on. You will not always be charged your maximum bid but the higher you set it the
further up the sponsored results box you will rise. And the higher up the sponsored results box you are
then, generally, the more clicks and traffic you will get. The AdWords system ranks you from top to
bottom. It is generally better to be higher up the results – although not necessarily at the top. The top spot
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will get you a lot of clicks and you really want the quality of the ad to produce the clicks and not just the
fact that you are in the top spot.

The second factor that decides how much you are charged is the number of people who click on your ads.
The number of times that our ad is clicked on per hundred views is known as our click-through rate or
CTR. So, if 100 people search for ‘embroidery’ and six of those people click on our ad then we have a
6% CTR. (Incidentally, this is a very, very good CTR for such a generalised search term. You can be
very successful with much lower CTR’s than this.)

Your click-through rate is the most important factor in determining how much you pay for clicks and you
should never forget that!

A key principle is that it is always better to aim for a higher CTR because CTRs are used in Google’s
quality score system. This controls both the amount that you are charged for an ad and your position on
the page. This is because Google wants the ads to be highly relevant to the search term used. (It’s done in
order to protect Google’s very truthful claim that they are the number one place to search for anything on
the Internet.) And relevance is a very important concept to understand if you want to succeed with
AdWords, as I will explain shortly.

If an ad is not relevant users won’t click on it and with a low CTR the advertiser will get charged higher
and higher amounts to maintain the same position. So, any advertiser who ignores their CTR can soon
find that they are priced out of AdWords. While advertisers with a healthy CTR find that they are not
only getting more clicks but spending less on advertising as a proportion of their turnover too!

Ideally we want to be one of the higher ranked Google displays but paying as little as possible per click.
This can only be achieved by having a very high CTR. And you only get a high CTR by having very
relevant and very attractive ads. If you get everything else wrong with AdWords but you have relevant
and attractive ads you can still make a lot of money!

A couple of other things that it is important to know about your CTR: Firstly, CTR is measured on a
keyword by keyword basis. So, it is perfectly possible to have a very high CTR for one keyword and a
very poor CTR for another. Google also remembers your CTR even if you amend your ads or pause your
campaign. It is also quite possible for you to have a low CTR on Google’s partner sites such as AOL (and
also on their content search ie. AdSense) and yet have a fantastic CTR on Google itself.

However, the tricky thing is that Google does not factor in your CTR from these other ads when
determining your relevancy – but it will display the total CTR (including your performance on their full
network) in your campaign! Google will also give you an average figure for your CTR so when you add a
new keyword you don’t start from the bottom and work your way up.

We will look at writing your ad copy in detail later. But for now know that your click-through rate needs
to be as high as possible. The way you achieve a high CTR is by writing the kind of ad copy that makes
your readers eager to click on your ad the second they see it!

Google will also look at other factors to work out how much you should pay for an ad by scanning your
content – factors such as the relevance of your site to the term. These factors are grouped together to form
your quality score. I will cover quality score in a little more depth later on, but now you know what it is
and what it means for your ads. A higher quality score means that Google will reward you by charging
you less per click and also by giving you a higher standing on the sponsored links page.

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If you look at the screenshot for ‘learning a foreign language’ again you will see that the ads at the top of
the page are most prominent. They will in all likelihood attract the most traffic. If the ads have been
properly created and they have a high quality score then the advertisers of these top ads may be paying
much less for their traffic than the others lower down.

However – and this is very important – nobody actually knows how Google creates the quality score
exactly as it is a closely guarded secret. I can make educated guesses based on my experience though! I
know pretty much that CTR is certainly the most important factor, and will probably be for the
foreseeable future.

All About Campaigns And Ad Groups

Bearing in mind that, hopefully, you’re going to have lots of campaigns with AdWords you need to be
organised from the start. Here I’ll talk about how to do that.

With AdWords a campaign refers to a particular promotion that you are running. You can have as many
campaigns as you like. Each should be given a name that tells you what it is all about. If you have several
campaigns with a similar product then give them each a unique reference number so they don’t get
confused – for example ‘Exercise Plan 1’.

Inside each campaign you will have multiple ad groups. An ad group is a list of related keywords for
which you will be displaying the same ads. It is a good idea to have a lot of ad groups (sometimes as
many as 50) within each campaign and, for a full-sized campaign at least, as many as 500 or so keywords
within each ad group.

How campaigns and ad groups work together might seem a bit difficult to understand. So I will explain it
using a very simple example. First of all we will create the campaign:

Imagine you are running an affiliate promotion for a betting system called ‘ABC Betting System’. Sign
into your AdWords account and click the Campaign Management button. You will see a box marked
‘Create New Campaign’:

All Campaigns
+ Create a new campaign: keyword-targeted | site-targeted [?]

Click on ‘keyword-targeted’ and enter a name for your campaign – for example ‘ABC Betting System’.
You will also be asked to enter a name for your first ad group.

Say you decide to call this ‘Betting Services’. Enter that and click ‘Continue’. On the next screen you
might decide to enter United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia as your selected countries.
Then create your ad by adding your advertisement copy and keywords. (Again, more about this later.)

Now go to ‘Edit Campaign Settings’ where you can choose your campaign settings. Here’s a screenshot
of what it should look like:

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First, go to ‘Budget Options’ and set your daily budget. You should always start with a small daily budget
just in case it doesn’t work out – for example a daily budget of $10.00 per day. In a full roll out you might
increase the budget to $150 or more. But to begin with guard against any losses by keeping it small.

Under ‘Advanced Options’ it is also a good idea to deselect the option marked ‘Ad serving – Optimise:
Display better-performing ads more often’. Deselecting this function is useful for split run testing ads,
which I will explain later. If you leave this option selected and try split run testing the results will be
biased, sometimes unfairly, in one direction. So, make sure you select the ‘Rotate’ option.

Next you need to make what I think is the most important change to your campaign settings. Under
‘Networks’ remove the ‘Content network’ search option. Here’s why this is important: Google’s content
network is more commonly known as AdSense. Independent website owners can get paid to place
Google’s (or rather our) ads on their own site if they want to. We can decide to bid for these kinds of ads
too if we like. The difficulty with traffic on the content network is that it is often very untargeted.
Strangely enough, Google isn’t that good at matching ads with the relevant independent website content.
Also, click-through fraud can be a problem here. So, the content network offers a few ‘cons’ without
many ‘pros’. That’s why I usually don’t use this feature.

The next step is to create your first ad group:

This involves a bit of thought and some research – more about doing this later – to find the best ideas and
keywords for your ad In our ‘Betting Services’ product example these are as follows:

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betting service
“betting service”
[betting service]
betting services
“betting services”
[betting services]

Note : I will explain what the brackets and inverted commas are there for later.

So, you enter your keywords into the keyword box and then save the group.

More Inside Information About Ad Groups

It is essential to understand the importance of ad groups – so let’s delve into them a little more. You need
to have as many carefully focused ad groups as possible. Each of these should have its own keywords and
some (at least two) relevant, targeted ads. For best results your keywords should have at least one word in
common.

You need well focused ad groups because your ads will display all the keywords in the ad group. It is
essential that your ad copy is relevant to the search terms. You want all the keywords in an ad group to be
very similar so that you can have one ad for each group that is relevant for all the keywords. The more
relevant your ad to the keywords the higher your CTR click-through rate and the less you pay per click.
Simple!

For example, let’s say we are promoting an e-book called ‘How To Stop Smoking In 7 Days’. Our first ad
group might be ‘how to stop smoking’ – a very good choice – and our keywords might look like this:

[how to stop smoking]

“how to stop smoking”
how to stop smoking

(I am not saying you should use these exact keywords. You should do some research to get the best ones
you can. But this illustrates the point.)

Next you might create a second ad group called ‘want to stop smoking’, and give it the following
keywords:

want to stop smoking

I want to stop smoking
[want to stop smoking]
[I want to stop smoking]
“I want to stop smoking”

Keep going with this procedure until you have between 10 and 40 ad groups all with their own ads built
around the keyword list. Don’t worry if you think this is going to be very hard to do. I will tell you about
some research tools that make it easier later on.

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Even though the two sets of phrases – “want to stop smoking” and “how to stop smoking” – sound very
similar it can be a very good idea to create separate ad groups for each. This is especially true if Google’s
Traffic Estimator (which you can take a look at when you create your ad) tells us that each phrase will
generate a fair amount of traffic.

I cannot overemphasise how important having multiple, focused ad groups is for making a solid income
from AdWords.

Campaigns And Ad Groups Compared

Many people wonder exactly how campaigns and ad groups relate to each other. The simplest explanation
is this: A campaign is a new promotion for a specific site or product. But an ad group is a collection of
similar and related keywords. You can create ads for each ad, group and they need to be closely matched.
If the keywords are not closely matched you will have far too many things to say in the ads. Since these
ad groups need to be targeted, each campaign that you operate will need a largish number of ad groups to
be successful.

The difference between campaigns and ad groups is fundamental, so let’s examine those differences a
little more closely – and also look at how they relate to each other. Ad groups are the smallest individual
units that contain your ads and your keywords together. Multiple ad groups can then be contained
together within a campaign. A campaign is just a handy ‘umbrella’ for ad groups all falling within a broad
topic. And of course within any AdWords account you can (and probably will) have lots of different
campaigns that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

How you divide up your campaigns is really irrelevant as they do not necessarily have to be linked.
However, how you organise ad groups is a very relevant issue. Within each individual ad group your
keywords need to match the ad closely, otherwise your CTR will be very disappointing.

The secret here is to be well organised and methodical from the beginning.

Here is an example of how campaigns and ad groups might be organised when promoting a fitness and
exercise type DVD:

Campaign 1 Campaign 2 Campaign 3 Campaign 4 Campaign 5

Weight Loss Fitness Exercise Toning & Leisure
Bodybuilding
Ad Group 1 Women’s Fitness Dancing Toning Fun
Weight Loss
Ad Group 2 Weight Loss Sport Working Out Body Building Relaxation
Class Techniques
Ad Group 3 Weight Loss Exercise Aerobics Muscle De-stress
DVD Building
Ad Group 4 Weight Loss Health Gymnastics Physical Exercise
Secrets Culture

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All You Need To Know About Bidding

Next I am going to tell you all about bidding. With AdWords you are permitted to choose the amount that
you want to pay for each click for each keyword. This is called your maximum bid or ‘max bid’ for short.
You will not always be charged your maximum bid. It is simply a limit on how much you are prepared to
pay.

A very important thing to know is that when you start a new campaign with new keywords Google
decides your position largely on the basis of your maximum bid or cost per click (CPC). However, certain
keywords are more expensive than others. For example, ‘homeowner loans’ might cost an average of
$1.00 per click while ‘aquarium’ might cost only $0.05 for the same position.

The easy way to determine how much a certain position will cost you is to use Google’s Traffic
Estimator. You can find this by going into an ad group within a campaign, clicking ‘edit keywords’ and a
box like the one below should appear. Play around with your maximum bid, and click ‘Get New
Estimates’. This will give you a rough estimate of the kind of position and traffic you can expect at that
maximum bid. This screenshot just shows you what to expect. It is based on a very vague, non-
functioning example:

Just one word here – Traffic Estimator is just an estimator. It will only give you a very approximate
guide.

How To Decide Your Maximum Bid

So what do you set as your maximum bid amount? That is the sixty billion dollar question! But here is a
useful formula which you can use to work that out.

1. The first point to consider is the amount you can expect to make per visitor. At this stage this can only
be a rough estimate though, so do not rely on it completely. Say, for example, you are promoting a
product as an affiliate and each sale earns you $30. Assume that 1 in 100 visitors converts to a sale and
therefore you can afford to pay $0.30 per visitor ($30 divided by 100) to break even.

Note that a 1% conversion rate is a conservative average. There can be a huge difference in conversion
rates for different products. Some products convert at an average of 0.5% and some convert at an average
of 5% or even more.

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2. Secondly, how well the product converts from enquiry to sale depends upon the nature of the keyword.
People who search for ‘buy designer fashions now’ are obviously much more likely to convert into buyers
for this product than someone simply searching for ‘designer fashions’. And someone searching for
‘fashion’ would be even less likely to convert into a purchase of a designer garment. In other words, the
more specific your keywords the more specific your visitors and the more likely a conversion is.

3. The next factor that determines maximum bid should be what everyone else is paying. The more other
users are paying, the more you need to pay. In general terms, if everyone else is paying a lot they are
making a lot. If you find yourself paying a lot but making a loss then check out your competitors’ sites
and look at how they are doing it. And another way to look at it is this: If paying $2.00 doesn’t even get
you on the first page, then there are some clever marketers making pots of money from that niche .... and
it might be best to stay clear at least until you gain some expertise.

At the end of the day I advise that your starting bid should always be low – lower than you expect. Lots of
factors can make or break a campaign, not just how good or bad your ad is. So it is best to err on the side
of caution – especially if in doubt or when entering uncharted territory. You can always increase your
maximum bid later. At least with a low bid, if it all goes wrong, you don’t lose much. If (in the unlikely
event) you lose $100 on a campaign that’s more or less telling you that you should never have risked
$100 in the first place! Unless you are almost certain that a certain campaign will be profitable – and the
only way to know is to have run it before – then set your bid low.

Perhaps the most important thing about low bids is this: If you do fail, at least you live to fight (and
profit) another day. If you clean yourself out too soon then you don’t get another chance. Don’t let that
happen!

Deciding On The Best Daily Budget

Your daily budget is the amount that you can afford to pay in total per day. When starting out the rule
here is simple: Set it very low when you start any new campaign (for example $5.00). You can easily
increase it later on, once the campaign has proven profitable.

But a trickier issue is setting your daily budget if you have a proven profitable campaign. In these cases
you should approach the situation differently and set it as high as possible. Many AdWorders don’t even
realise that if you set your campaign budget too low Google will not display your ads for every search.
This can be difficult to understand as you normally see your ads go up in gradual stages throughout the
day. This does not mean you are getting as many visitors as you could though. Google is just staggering
your limited budget throughout the day. In fact you could be throwing away the chance to make some
serious money.

One final very important point here: If you set your bid too low your ads for that keyword will be
suspended and will become what are known as inactive keywords. However, if you have an account that
has always had a high CTR and you launch a new campaign with a moderately low bid price you will
generally avoid this happening. But, if your account has been poorly managed so far (ie. your CTR has
been very low) then you may find that certain keywords are made inactive even if you bid what seem
reasonable bids. This can be a tricky situation. The best way to get round it is to review your ad copy and
improve it.

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Another alternative if your keywords go inactive is to create a new account and start from scratch,
looking at what other people are doing and starting afresh – what we might call the ‘look and learn’
technique. Although new accounts generally have a poor quality score it might be better than your old
account. The ‘look and learn’ technique will virtually assure you a viable CTR. Then, when you have re-
established some history you can start lowering your bids again.

Marketing Budget Myths Debunked

Lots of companies, both online and offline, are obsessed with the idea of having a fixed marketing
budget. It might seem a sensible idea but I think this is fatally flawed, and inappropriate when it comes to
using AdWords.

Think about it this way: If you know you are getting back $1.50 for every $1 you spend on advertising
why on earth would you want to have a budget to limit what you spend on it?

Once you’ve found out how to make it profitable, money spent on marketing is like money in the bank.
The only limit on it is that each single place you advertise in only has so much profit to be taken from it
.... and you don’t want to spend more money on advertising in that one place than it can possibly give you
back in profits. Eventually the profits will start to fall – what we call diminishing returns.

That’s a problem which affects conventional advertising but it really doesn’t affect AdWords. As it is a
single marketing medium you can just test to find out your cost per click rate, compare it to your bottom
line profit margin, and leave it at that. Which ultimately means that you should set your ‘budget’ or cost
per click on your conversion rate and what’s ultimately profitable rather than anything else.

Of course, you still need to set a spending limit – just in case. If you are starting out with limited capital
to invest then you don’t want to risk everything in one go. But the way to do this is to set a lower CPC at
first, while leaving your daily budget at the highest possible safe amount so that your ads show for you
around the clock. Once things are up and running and you know what your return will be a daily budget
becomes superfluous, since for every click you know you’ll get your money back – and more.

The way to look at this is in terms of visitor value. If you know that your visitor value is $1.50 per click
and you’re aiming for a margin that is 30% above your Google costs, then set your CPC to no more than
$1.15 and leave it to run. And if it’s fundamentally profitable, and you know for a fact that every single
visitor spends an average of $1.50 with you, then you could realistically set your daily budget at whatever
high amount you fancy and know you’ll still make money.

Do be sensible about this of course, especially in the early days. There are also situations like anomalous
spending, sudden changes in a market, click fraud or errors in Google’s system that can distort the
picture.

Some More Important Rules

• To be on page one you normally need to be one of the eight to eleven best bidders (not necessarily
the highest).

• You can always get the bottom position by bidding the minimum bid. So if there are less than
eight bidders you could get the bottom slot on the first page of search results for just a penny!

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• The more bidders there are the more research and testing you should do.

• The more bidders there are, the more competitive it is going to be. Experience shows that with 16
or less bidders you will have a relatively easy ride. But if there are 50 or more it could be a very
tricky area to work in and you’ll need to use every possible method you can.

• There is nothing wrong with moving into a very competitive area (more competitors usually mean
more customers and more money to be made). However, in these areas you will need to develop
excellent copywriting skills, use split run testing and traffic conversion techniques – plus every
technique I have taught you here – to succeed!

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Part Two

Creating AdWords That Work

Now I’m going to talk a little – well a lot actually – about writing ads. Don’t be scared off if you don’t
like writing things, or don’t think you’re very good at it. There isn’t a lot of writing to do as such, and
there are lots of tools and shortcuts that can help you.

But – I cannot underestimate the importance of putting maximum effort into writing your ads. Because it
is the quality of your ad that makes you money. At the end of the day this is what will not only get your
maximum traffic – but get it at the lowest cost too.

When you write your ads you need to create both a headline and some content (known as body copy) for
description lines 1 and 2 on AdWords.

Writing AdWords is a lot easier than you might think because the format is set down for you. Also, there
is a certain way of writing that will work every time. In other words you do not have to be especially
clever or creative – you just have to follow the rules.

Everyone has their own ideas about writing ads, and here’s mine: Keep it simple. Don’t be too clever.
Yes, long term it is great to be able to knock out a wonderfully penned ad that you hope will produce a
dream 60% click-through. But, you don’t need to do that in the beginning. Initially, all you need is
something that is basically sound and will do the job. You can then go back and fine tune it to up your
click-through rate later.

Relevance... And Why It’s Crucial To Be Relevant

One of the most important principles of AdWords writing is that your ad must be relevant to what the
user is searching for. By that I mean it must try to answer the exact question that the customer will be
searching for the answer to. Relevance is the key to achieving high click-through rates.

Imagine a customer is searching Google for the best deals on car rental. They see two ads in the
sponsored results section:

Car Rental Deals

Need to rent a car?
Find best cars, lowest prices here
URL

And:

Car Rental
Find prices for car rentals
Cheap car rental reviewed
URL

Which do you think the searcher is going to click on?

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Most probably, the customer will click on the first ad every single time. Both are actually related to what
they want, but the first one is much more relevant to their specific need. (Actually, both ads are saying
more or less the same thing but one is very relevant and the other a bit, well, peripheral.)

You will also notice that Google highlights the search term when it appears in adverts. This increases the
chances of the user clicking on the ad even more. It is a very simple way of pushing up the CTR and
lowering your costs.

So what’s the best way of achieving relevance? Well, it’s done by having multiple ad groups each with
their own relevant ads. More about this later… For example, we would be happy running the first ad in an
ad group with keywords such as ‘Car Rental’ and ‘Car Rentals’ but we would not want to run that ad for a
keyword such as ‘holidays, flights, car rentals’. It just isn’t relevant enough and we would be throwing
away clicks.

Let’s create an ad that appears very relevant to the ‘best deal on car rental’ search: We would create a
separate ad group for this with a list of, say, 20 keywords all based around the ‘best deals on car rental’
phrase. For example – ‘best deal on car rental’, ‘best deals on car rentals’, ‘cars to rent best prices’, ‘find
a car to rent’ and so on. For a keyword such as this we would want to display an ad that is highly relevant
to that term, for example:

Best Car Rental Deals

Looking for deals on car rental?
Unbeatable car rental deals here
URL

I’m pretty certain that this would achieve a good click-through score if you launched it. It might not break
any records. But I reckon it would be better than the vast majority of the other ads whose advertisers just
don’t know about the importance of relevance.

Headlines That Will Never, Ever Fail

Like anything else in marketing, first impressions do count. So how attractive the headline itself is will
make a difference to your CTR.

Now don’t for a minute think that clever wording, puns, rhymes and gimmicks (like using ‘Look’ or
whatever) will make your headline attractive. At the end of the day they won’t, or won’t that much.
(There are occasionally situations when gimmicks do work, but you don’t want to take the risk that they
will flop, at least in the early days.) What is really important is our old friend relevance again! In other
words, giving customers what they are looking for.

A very easy way to create a headline is to take the predominant keyword in our ad group (the one we
want to push the hardest because it attracts the highest quality traffic) and use that in our headline.
For example, if our dominant keyword in a particular ad group is ‘lose weight’ then the best way to start
the headline is with ‘lose weight’. You can of course get a little more creative but, basically, this is the
way to go.

Of course, you might be wondering, how can we find what is most relevant – especially if we have no
idea because we aren’t really familiar with this subject area ourselves. Or even if we have some idea but
aren’t really sure? There is a simple technique which will never fail! Here it is:

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If we use Google to search for the top sponsored links for ‘lose weight’ the chances are we will get results
like this. (Try it if you like. They will vary from time to time, but this is pretty typical.)

Sponsored Links

Want to Lose Weight &

Feel Better? Get 100 Tips for
a Healthy Lifestyle & Start Today!
www.SmallStep.gov

Weight Loss Pills Exposed

Top 20 Weight Loss Pills Reviewed
Which Product Works the Fastest?
PricesExposed.net/Quick-Weight-Loss

Lose Weight
At Tesco Diets The Average Customer
Loses 1 Stone - Get Started Now
www.TescoDiets.com

Weightwatchers® New Offer

Save $20 on 3 month online plan or
get free meeting registration now!
www.weightwatchers.co.uk/jointoday

Weight Loss That Works

Lose 12 Pounds in 72 Hours!
Free Shipping & Handling Today Only
DietPillDiscounts.com/FreeShipping

Slim Bombs $39.95 for 160

Free P&P. Average 14 to 42lbs
weight loss. Fast results. Easy.
www.SlimmingSolutions.co.uk

Herbal Weight loss System

Easy Slim and Trim & Go products
The new and safe way to lose weight
www.wowproducts.co.uk

Weight management
Enjoy a healthy body and lifestyle
for less than $0.80 per serving
www.nutsaboutaloe.co.uk

More Sponsored Links »

What can we learn from this? Well, the top sponsored results are all saying the same thing more or less.
Why? Because experience will have taught these website owners that this is exactly what people looking
to ‘lose weight’ look for. And, over time, they will have written and rewritten their headlines to give them
what they want. In other words – relevance.

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So by doing a search like this, and studying the results, the other companies have already done the
difficult work for you. I wouldn’t mind betting that they have laboured over their ads, tried to come up
with something witty or clever and experimented. But at the end of the day they have found that saying
more or less the same thing is the best. And with a little research you can benefit from all their hard work!

Of course, you wouldn’t want to copy any one of these links directly. But by using a few elements from
all of them, and doing a bit of experimenting of your own, you can come up with a great headline very
easily. (And one which, I’m sure, will bring you a very lucrative click-through rate first time.)

So can you see that there is really no need to be ‘too smart’ when you can learn failsafe techniques from
what has gone before? This method will at least put you on a level with the competition. And, if you keep
your maximum bid lower than them, you are going to get slightly less traffic but higher margins. This is
in itself an excellent competitive edge.

Again, this simple ‘look and learn’ technique will solve about 50% of your AdWords headaches. If you
bought my book wanting to know how to transform your CTR then this single tip alone will probably pay
you back thousands of times over! And, if you use this technique and a particular campaign flops, you can
be pretty sure that it isn’t the headline that’s the problem. Because it’s the headline that almost everyone
else is using .... successfully!

If you are entering a new niche, or launching a new product, then I always advise that you start off from a
‘look and learn’ point of view, finding an overall best headline from the top AdWords ads. I know that
doesn’t sound particularly exciting but – guess what? – it works! You can get creative later on, but the
start of a new campaign isn’t the time to start having fun. Once you have started your campaign with the
‘look and learn’ technique, and you have a good idea of what your best performing headline is (I
normally set up three ads using this technique) it’s time to experiment.

Of course, our eventual goal is to try and beat that headline with something more eyecatching. We have a
pretty good idea what the competition is getting in terms of CTR, as we have our own results for the same
ad So if we can beat our own ad, we have just beaten the competition’s CTR. Only once we have
achieved that can we start to push on, beat the competition and leave them for dead!

There are, in fact, four basic techniques for creating attractive headlines. These are intended to take
advantage of some basic human behaviour patterns and I will talk about them next.

Four Techniques For Creating Powerful, Magical Headlines

1. Push The Benefits

This is the oldest, most proven marketing technique in the world – and it translates perfectly to AdWords.
Here’s why it is very, very successful: People buy benefits. They want to know what a product will do for
them.

This strategy works particularly effectively when you know your market well and you stress a particular
benefit in the headline – even if the search term doesn’t suggest that the user is searching specifically for
that particular benefit.

For example: A quick search for ‘mobile phone’ might bring up the following searches that stress the
price in the ad:

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Cheap mobile phones

Mobile phones from $price

Cheap clearance phones

Mobile phone sale

Here we can bet that search users want cheap mobiles specifically, and we would be well advised to stress
that point in our headline in order to achieve a high CTR.

When using this technique you can learn a lot from your competitor’s ads too – so take a look and see
what benefits they push.

One more thing: Often, users are not entirely sure how to phrase their search, and you can drift away
slightly from the relevance rule and rephrase it for them by stressing a benefit that they almost always
want. If you can tell them what they are looking for better than they can themselves chances are they will
click on your ad!

2. Use A Jaw Dropping Headline

This is a very simple strategy to deploy. It works especially well when selling to newbies. It works by
saying something shocking, amusing or even slightly insulting – that will make them stop and think
immediately. For example:

Lose weight? No chance!

This will grab the user’s attention, but the body of the ad should follow up with some relevant text, for
example:

Lose Weight? No chance!

You can ONLY do it with this plan
Find Secrets of Fast Weight Loss

The user will feel compelled to click on your ad!

I know you’re thinking that they will have been tricked into reading the ad! Yes, perhaps, but they won’t
be too bothered if they get what they want. Also, it’s very important that you add in some relevant body
copy or it probably won’t work. (A small detail like this can also double your CTR and in the process
halve your costs.)

Other variations of this method include headlines such as:

Stop. Is this a mistake?

Avoid [keyword term]

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Is [keyword] too good to be true?

Of course be sure to experiment. One variation might do badly but another might be the winning
AdWords ad that you need!

The great thing about this technique is that once you have an ad that works you can literally roll it out
across all of your other campaigns. For example, ‘Lose Weight? No chance!’ can easily become ‘Learn
Russian? No chance!’ – or almost anything else you like.

In fact, it can even be worth writing and testing some ‘jaw dropping’ headlines just to see which work
best. Then, when you start with a new product just drop the keyword into the relevant place. (And don’t
forget to add some relevant body copy.)

3. Use Headlines That Give Orders

The idea behind this technique is that if you tell people to do one thing they’ll do the other. As you’ll
know if you have small children this is what they tend to do. Experience shows that Internet users often
do the same thing too!

All we need to do is tell the searcher not to do something, and we will grab their attention immediately.
Of course, we must follow up our ‘don’t do this’ headline with relevant ad copy. Quirky headlines will
get their attention, but if the body of the ad isn’t relevant they will ignore it anyway. For example:

Looking for a house? Don’t

Don’t move house. You’ll regret it!
Stop searching for a new house now

As always, you will find that some ads will do incredibly well, and others will do very poorly. That’s why
you wouldn’t want to use this technique alone by itself – use some of the other techniques with the same
product at the same time.

4. Use A Social Acceptability Headline

This headline technique involves using a little clever marketing psychology! Social acceptability refers to
the fact that most people have a kind of ‘sheep’ mentality and flock together. That is, if lots of other
people are doing something then it must be good (even if it isn’t!).

Here are some examples of social acceptability driven headlines:

How to Lose Weight, Becomes:

Millions Lose Weight This Way

The Secrets Of Slimming, Becomes:

Millions Use This Slimming Secret

Lose Weight & Eat Lots, Becomes:

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Millions Eat Lots & Lose Weight

This strategy is particularly powerful when marketing to newbies who are looking for products but don’t
know much about them. In such an uncertain situation, they are highly susceptible to being sold by a
social acceptability type headline.

However, although this works great for general searches like ‘lose weight’ it won’t work as well for a
more specific search such as ‘how can I lose 14lbs in a month’ – where the user is very detailed about
what they want.

So, if you are targeting a very general search term that is liable to attract a lot of beginners in the niche try
using this approach. It also helps to support the buying decision too!

By using these strategies, and with some experimentation, you will very quickly have a competition-
busting ad in the making. Maybe in the long term, once you have developed your experience, you will be
able to think of some fantastic (and much better) techniques of your own. But for now these techniques
will serve you incredibly well... I promise you!

Headlines That Work When Everything Else Has Failed

Sometimes you’ll try everything and nothing seems to work. If so, here’s a technique that really will
work. It might not bring you the absolute best results in the world. But it will produce you a profitable
response. And once you are up and running you can then get to work on making it better.

This technique is so simple you’d probably never think of it otherwise!

What is it? Well, you simply put ‘Looking for [keyword]?’ as the headline. That’s it! Again, it is so
simple but it generates high CTR in the majority of cases.

If we go back to the earlier mobile phone example, just create a headline that says ‘looking for cheap
mobile phones?’. Going back to the ‘lose weight’ example, we could create a headline such as ‘Looking
to Lose Weight?’ or ‘Want to Lose Weight?’. Remember to phrase it as a question. This makes it seem
more personal and, as not many people actually use a question as a headline, it will stand out better.

I know this sounds too good to be true. But it works on a very, very basis psychological level. People are
looking for something and you give them the answer. In fact, by doing this you make it so easy for them
because you actually ask the question for them... as well as provide them with the answer.

For example, with one of my products, I use this method and I average a 10% CTR. Each week I see a
new ad appear with some clever headline and then it disappears just as quickly. I’ll bet there are
competitors out there spending hours and hours trying to better these question headlines and they never
come up with anything better!

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The Rhythm Method .... A Quick, Simple But Powerful Technique

Take a look at these two ads:

Selling Secrets Explained

For Small Business People
500 Ways To Get To ‘Yes’
URL

Secrets Of Successful Selling

For Small Business People
500 Ways To Get To ‘Yes’
URL

The second is likely to perform a lot better than the first.

Why is that? After all, they both basically say the same thing.

Well the reason, I think, is that the second rolls off the tongue much better than the first. It has much
better rhythm. It seems crazy but it tends to be true: AdWords ads that have good rhythm seem to out pull
those that don’t.

So when you draft an ad read it out loud to yourself to check its rhythm. Does it zip along with a nice tune
all of its own, or does it sound clumsy? If you can work on it to make it flow a little better you’ll almost
certainly improve your click-through rate. If that’s only just by a few tenths of a percent it could mean a
lot more cash at the end of the year.

You’ll often find that AdWords response is extremely sensitive even to small changes in your ads just
like this. So try and test different variations, different word orders, and even the use of capitals – you
could find that it makes a significant difference to your results.

Split Testing

Split testing is a tried-and-proven technique that’s been used in marketing for decades. It works just as
well .... if not better .... with AdWords. It simply means putting two of your ads head to head in the same
ad group. You let the ads run for a while then look at the results. I would suggest waiting until you have
around two thousand impressions before making a decision. Then you take the winner and pitch it up
against another ad and repeat the process again.

Split testing should really be a continuous process. I regularly return to my old campaigns and spend
some time split testing new ads. Very often I find I can double an already excellent CTR with very little
effort.

Here are two great split testing techniques to use:

1. Start with very basic, very simple copy. As I’ve suggested before, base it on the best of the copy
that your competitors are using. Once you get that working then split test it against ever more
creative copy.

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2. Split test with headlines first. Only when you have got that working should you split test the rest
of the copy.

How To Write Powerful Body Copy

The ‘body’ of an ad refers to the copy in it other than the headline, ie. the two ‘description’ lines.
Although not quite as important as the headline you should always spend some time experimenting with
the body copy. If you have a great headline but the body copy is poor your results are likely to be
disappointing.

With this technique a good idea is to stress benefits as much as possible in your ad body and only hint
briefly at what the product is. Some experts say your ad should be partly descriptive and partly benefits-
driven, but I think just writing about the benefits is by far the best. For example, a good body for a ‘lose
weight’ ad might be:

Lose Weight Fast, Eat Lots

Watch The Weight Drop Off In Weeks

That sounds like a perfect body doesn’t it? All benefits, and good ones at that.

You might be wondering, just how do you find the best benefits to incorporate? The answer is simple.
Just look on Google for the current top five sponsored listings and take your lead from those! A quick
look at the body of the top five ads for the ‘lose weight’ supports this theory – most of them stress
benefits like this. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the advertiser who doesn’t stress any benefits
won’t even appear in the top five. And if they do they will almost certainly be at the bottom.

The next important ad writing technique I want to explain to you is the call to action. In other words, tell
people what to do. How and why does the call to action work? Well, most of the time if you give
someone a direct order they will blindly follow it – just out of habit.

In this example, we want them to click on our ad So let us amend the body of our ‘lose weight’ ad to do
just that. And it becomes:

Learn To Lose Weight Fast, Eat Lots

Watch The Weight Drop Off In Weeks

In most cases, just adding ‘Learn to’, ‘Find out how to’, or ‘Explore’ etc. will add to your CTR. This
could make quite a difference to your overall CTR and how much you pay for clicks.

My personal favourite call to action is ‘Discover how to…’. It’s an exciting-sounding call to action but at
the same time it doesn’t lecture people.

If you are feeling really bold you can try one of these headline techniques in the body copy too. But
remember they normally work best in the headline. Be warned here: Attractive body text might either be
a complete hit or a complete flop. So I would try doing it only when you have a reasonable CTR rate to
build on.

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For example:

Losing Weight Is Impossible

Don’t Try Without Checking Here

Although that ad body might do very well it could also do very poorly. So, if in doubt, stick with my
other tried and tested methods – and get clever only when your campaign is ticking along nicely.

Some Advice About Price

Different AdWorders have different opinions on whether it is a good idea to state your price in your
AdWords ad or not. Not stating the price will probably get you many more clicks. But the snag is that you
could be wasting money on clicks that will never lead to a conversion.

One way round this is to qualify buyers by putting the price in your ad in order to filter out those who
either can’t afford or don’t want to pay your price. For example:

Villa Rental In Spain

Luxury Villas, Sea View And Pool
Cheap Flights. Car Hire. From $99

You have to be very careful about doing this though. It can create a few problems of its own. Firstly, the
number of people clicking on your ad will fall, lowering your CTR and pushing up your CPC. This means
that you are getting more targeted traffic but you are paying slightly more for it too. In some cases this
will reverse the advantages of getting rid of those who aren’t serious buyers. You might still find a lot of
non-serious buyers click anyway as, after all, it costs them nothing. Secondly, you could be discouraging
some good-quality buyers.

The problem here is that many buyers make impulse purchases when they read a sales letter. In other
words, they do not intend to buy anything when they enter their search into Google. It is only when your
sales letter does a great sales job that they decide to buy. And these types of customers are often the
highest-spending. Putting a price in the ad gives impulse buyers a reason for not buying, rather than one
for buying.

Having said all this there are lots of examples of great, top selling AdWords ads that do include the price.
So, although I would advise caution, you can try it – just be sure that you look at what you are doing very
carefully indeed.

Using the techniques you have read about so far will help you write ads that attract thousands more
clicks than your competition – even ones who are well established and relatively successful!

Cracking Google’s Quality Score

Every Google AdWorder wants to know how to crack Google’s quality score. Unfortunately I can’t tell
you exactly how to do it .... but I can let you in on some little-known inside information!

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It is Google’s most important principle that the ads they display should be as relevant as possible. The
quality score is the tool they use to rank relevance. It decides where you appear on the sponsored results
page and, ultimately, how much you pay for clicks. The higher your quality score the less you pay for
each click and the higher you appear in the sponsored results page.

This system is one of the main unique features of Google. Other pay per click search engines like
Yahoo’s Overture don’t use any kind of quality score. They simply charge a flat cost per click and
because of this you can position your ads that much easier.

Google use a complicated behind-the-scenes calculation known as an algorithm to decide exactly what
your quality score is. No one knows for sure how to crack this, but there are several key factors that
influence quality score the most!

One of the big factors used in setting your quality score is, of course, your CTR or click-through rate.
You should try and push your CTR as high as possible using the ad copy techniques already discussed in
this book. Another factor that determines your quality score is overall relevance, which falls into two
categories – ad grouping and relevance. If you have a tightly focused assortment of ad groups then your
ads will be seen as more relevant to the particular search terms. This will in turn push your quality score
up. Relevant ad content means that your ads include the term that is being searched for. This shows the
importance of having lots of tightly focused ad groups.

The final factor in deciding quality score is the past history of your account – most particularly the past
history of the same or similar keywords. Basically, if you have been in the niche for 12 months, using the
same keywords and achieving a 15% CTR, then your ads should have an automatic high score.

So what do you do if you are struggling with AdWords .... and your campaigns all show an extremely low
CTR? Is there anything you can do? One idea worth thinking about here is to set up a new AdWords
account and start again with a clean sheet. This will mean starting from scratch so make sure you don’t do
it too often. Of course, if you use the advice in this book this shouldn’t happen much – if at all.

One little-known fact is that Google’s algorithm appears to operate on an all-or-nothing basis. So
sometimes you can find that you are either moving up the rankings fast or dropping down them equally
quickly with no ‘happy medium’. Many marketers start their new campaigns paying very high maximum
bids so they enter high and then often get pulled higher. I prefer to start small and let my superior ad copy
handle the rise up. It’s up to you of course. Just keep your spending within what you know you can
afford.

One little known point to mention is that Google uses the relevance of your landing page – the page that
your ad first brings visitors to – in its quality score. So make sure this is especially relevant to the
keywords that you’re using and, of course, the market. It should be, but it is worth checking and adding
relevant keywords wherever possible.

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Checklist

How To Create And Run An Effective Campaign

Get inside your customer’s head. Decide what problems they are looking to solve and what
problem-solving words they will search for.

Know your competitors and know your odds. Search for the terms your customers will search for.
Find out who else is advertising and your chances of capturing the market.

Count your keyword costs. Use Overture to find out what your keywords are costing.

Break down your keywords. Create clusters of 5-25 closely-related terms. Have a different ad for
each of them.

Think in terms of short, snappy copy. Remember, you only get 25 characters on the first line, 35
on lines 2 and 3 and, lastly, a space for your URL.

Matching means profits. Make sure that the text in your ad matches what customers are searching
for.

Don’t waste space. Take full advantage of the space that Google gives you on each line. Try not to
leave any character spaces unused.

Choose the best webpage to send visitors to. It probably won’t be your home page – you can have
different, tailored landing pages for different ads.

Have a good URL or website address. Use one that looks neat and which the customer can see is
relevant to what they are looking for.

Use a conversion tracking system. Try Google’s own system and some of the independent ones
too.

Split test multiple ads – to get a higher click-through rate. Test two ads head to head. After a
certain number of clicks delete the loser and create a new ad to test. Every time you improve your ad you
get more traffic at less cost. Keep testing continuously.

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Don’t be impatient. Give every ad a fair crack of the whip. But the time you need to wait depends
on the ad If you’re getting hundreds of daily clicks come back every couple of hours and if traffic is slow
you may need to wait a few days or even weeks.

Use a ‘cut and paste’ approach. Pick out keywords that are performing differently from the rest.
Re-use them in new ad groups with ads of their own and test those.

Keep looking. For more and better keywords!

Keep improving your conversion rate. Success is a matter of maximising your conversion rate at
each step – higher click-through rates and lower bid prices, stronger opt-in rates, more sales and more
repeat visits.

Keep a close eye on the competition. Always keep monitoring what other AdWorders are doing.

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Part Three

More Powerful AdWords Techniques

In this part of the book I will talk about some more advanced techniques. You don’t necessary have to use
all of these when you start. But, once you are up and running you can use them to get even better and
more profitable AdWords returns.

Direct Linking: How You Can Still Profit From Direct Linking Today

If you already have some experience with AdWords you might have heard of a technique known as direct
linking. If you haven’t don’t worry – I am going to explain it to you here. Direct linking is also known as
Google Cash by some people. Google Cash isn’t an official Google system. It was devised by American
Internet entrepreneur Chris Carpenter.

Direct linking or Google Cash involves you sending a visitor directly from a pay per click search engine
through your affiliate link to a website you are promoting. While this method might sound obvious today,
at the time direct linking was created it was one of the most exciting developments ever in Internet
marketing. Since then, tens of thousands of affiliates have got in on the act and made a lot of money from
it.

Now, this method isn’t quite as straightforward as it was. Once it got so popular that everyone seemed to
be doing it, Google started to restrict its use as they felt it was damaging the all-important relevance. They
did this by deciding that only one ad per URL can be displayed for each keyword search. In other words,
only one affiliate (or product owner) can promote a website or product this way, making it much less
widespread than it originally was. Google decides which ad should run by multiplying the quality score
by the maximum bid. This figure is then compared for each ad, and whoever has the highest total score
gets to display their ad And, nowadays, there can be a lot of competition for this coveted spot.

So, in the light of these changes, how can we benefit from direct linking? Well, firstly you need to accept
that this method isn’t a free-for-all anymore. You need to have a strategy if you want to make it work.
Instead of looking for one super-profitable product it is better to look for lots and lots of small niches.
Individually, the income from these might seem not worth bothering about but, together, they can all add
up to a very lucrative income.

In this (and any aspect of Google come to think about it) the problem with trying to find one big super-
profitable campaign is that, sooner or later, everybody will discover what you are doing and jump on the
bandwagon – perhaps just by duplicating what you’re doing. As soon as this happens you may end up in a
bidding war and this will cut your profits overnight.

So, firstly, if you really do want to profit from this method move your focus away from the big campaigns
and focus on selling many products at low CTRs. Cream off small amounts across a whole range of
products that all add up to a tidy sum. (It’s also a great way of diversifying, so if someone else does
muscle into one niche you still have plenty of others in operation – and you can keep adding new ones
too.)

The second way of looking at direct linking is the one that I suggest you focus on. I have moved away
from the Google Cash method as a profit generating tool as such. Instead I use it as a highly effective

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research tool for finding good ideas. You see, the great thing about direct linking is the incredible speed
with which you can create campaigns. Although these campaigns might not be profitable in themselves in
the long term they will help you find new and undiscovered niches very quickly. Spend just a few hours
using the method and you can find dozens of product possibilities which you never knew existed before!
Within a few days you will soon know whether those products are worth taking further.

Promoting Products Better - Using Reviews

Promoting products using a review page is a more roundabout way to profits and takes a little more effort
to set up. But the great thing about it is that it helps you gain a big advantage over other AdWorders who
don’t know about it, or who just can’t be bothered.

As soon as Google limited the scope of the direct linking or Google Cash method many affiliate
marketers decided to set up what are known as one page review sites. If you type in an Internet marketing
term such as AdWords you will very often see an ad that has the word ‘review’ in the URL. Click on the
ad and you will be taken to a page where the advertiser or affiliate provides several reviews of the top
selling products in that niche. This is very often much more profitable than simple direct linking because
you are adding value to the content and to the product by providing useful information to the reader, not
just a sales pitch.

When you use a review a visitor is much more likely to buy – as they have received a real life testimonial
from a real person. Yes, it may be someone who gets paid for referrals but that doesn’t seem to matter too
much!

Here’s how to go about creating a product review:

• Promote a few products in the niche before you write the review – so you can get a good feel for
them. It will also help you discover whether the niche really is worth the trouble of creating and
using reviews. Make sure it is profitable.

• Your review page should always be just one page with no other links to pages on your site. All the
links should be affiliate links to products we are promoting. Standalone pages like this are often
used as landing pages.

• Decide how many products you want to review. The best number is usually at least two and no
more than five. Three is an optimum number.

• Keep your review relatively short. Anything from a single paragraph to a couple of hundred words
as a maximum.

• Keep your feet on the ground! Don’t rave about a product in a way that is totally unrealistic and
which obviously looks false.

DO say something like: ‘I have read a lot of books on life coaching and, honestly, this is one of
the best. Just three months later I have made some really worthwhile improvements to my
lifestyle, directly as a result of reading it. I would certainly recommend you to invest in a copy.’

DON’T say ‘This book is mind blowing! It changed my life overnight. It is literally fantastic. Buy
it now. Don’t do anything else – buy it now!’.
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Remember that your job is just to ‘warm up’ the customer. Leave it to the actual seller to hype it
up and push it hard. Read what you have written back to yourself. If you have gone so far
overboard that you don’t believe a word of it chances that that your reader won’t believe it either.

• A very effective technique is to include a comparison table in your reviews. In this you compare
products on the basis of features, benefits, included options, service etc. This can work very well
because it will make the user feel that you are providing them with impartial information rather
than giving them the hard sell. It will help them make up their own mind, with just a little push in
the right direction from you!

If you do all this well then there is a very good chance that you will get the user to click on your affiliate
link and then the sales letter proper will take over and make the sale.

One very important point is that your review page should also be relevant to the key word and to
whatever the user is looking for. This relevance should be reflected in the headline, the body of the text
and the nature of the products you are reviewing. Always remember that the user is looking for
something, and if you help them in their search by finding it for them they will reward you by buying
what you recommend. Don’t ever forget the importance of relevance!

It is also very productive to use pictures of the products you are selling in your review. Users are much
more likely to click-through and buy if they get an actual picture of what you are reviewing. Remember, a
picture paints a thousand words!

You can often cut-and-paste pictures from the product supplier’s website. Or, if they don’t have any good
ones a great, quick technique is to use ‘Print Screen’ function to make a copy of their website and then
paste that into your review page. It is easy to do but still looks very smart.

Finally, remember to include several links out to the product site. The more out-links you include, the
higher the chance of the visitor heading to the supplier’s site, and the higher the chance of a sale.

More Inside Information On Keywords

Lots of people will tell you that building great keywords are the ‘key’ (pardon the pun) to AdWords
success. That’s true – to a certain extent. But what you must never, ever forget is that a large keyword list
spread out across many ad groups is important. And, just as importantly, remember that having a great
keywords list will not automatically make a flawed campaign successful.

What I like to do is look for a potentially profitable niche, pick a product to promote, and then create a
moderate keyword list of around 50-100 keywords spread across 5-10 ad groups. Then, if I get a good
response, build a larger keyword list with around 150-200 keywords. I also spread them across 10-20
different ad groups. Then, if my return on investment increases to a level I am happy with, I will increase
my keyword list even further.

Shortly I will tell you about some tools I use for keyword research. However, the real truth is that they are
not as important as the general strategy outlined above. I normally try around 20-30 or so niches per week
while also maintaining existing campaigns. So, you can see that it is very important to use your time
wisely and not spend too much time on one niche unless you know it is a ‘goer’.

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A good idea is to always look on the negative side! Initially assume the campaign won’t be that big and
use a moderately sized keyword list. Wait and see what happens. If you turn a profit with that niche and
product then you can spend a little more time researching keywords and apportioning them to the ad
groups. In my experience, the difference between 50 keywords and 200 keywords is fairly moderate, and
not enough to turn a bad niche into a good one.

For this reason, start with a moderately sized keyword list then build it up as you start seeing returns. This
will allow you time to experiment and set up campaigns in as many different niches as possible.

It is very important not to focus on one dominant term and overlook the rest. For example, if I was
promoting some online marketing software using AdWords I would definitely build a keyword list based
around the ‘online marketing’ keyword. But, I might also build one around the ‘website design’ theme
and the ‘pay per click’ type theme (depending on the exact nature of the package) too. If I missed these
out it would severely cut my traffic and my returns. It is also very useful to examine your keyword
building from a problem-solving standpoint. Remember your would-be customers are searching because
they are looking for information which is the solution to a specific problem.

Again, to use this example: People who buy such a software package want to make money from the
Internet – finding out how to do it is the problem they want an answer to. Looking at it this way creates a
range of options to try, such as ‘make money from my website’, ‘sell more products’, ‘improve online
profits’ and many more.

What you also need to know is that some of these approaches will turn out to be flops, producing low or
untargeted traffic. But some of them will turn out to be real moneymakers. The snag is that there is no
real way of knowing for sure until you try them. So try to cast your net wide and think in terms of solving
the problem for the customer and build everything up from that.

Often it is good to focus on the number of key themes/phrases/ideas you have managed to include in your
campaigns – each with its own ad group or possibly several – rather than the number of keywords you
have. Not many advertisers do this, but it can be very successful.

There are also some classic mistakes to avoid! One is to just have one huge keyword list in one ad group
and the other is to have too few, very broad keywords. Even worse than that is to go overboard and enter
every single niche you can think of with a 10,000 (or more) list of keywords hoping to saturate the
market. Yes, that might work but it can be a terrible waste of time and money if you don’t know that the
niche is worth it.

So, I recommend that you spend some time setting up your keyword list for a new niche but keep it all in
perspective. Remember, your time is valuable. If the campaign proves to be a success, then you can
expand the keyword list and become even more focused with your ad groups.

In my opinion keyword research isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of AdWords. Yes, good research produces a
successful campaign but it is also very time consuming. And it is far better spending time testing niches
and products rather than adding an extra 500 keywords to your list. Essentially it all comes down to the
unique combination of product (or rather sales letter) and niche. If you get that combination right, and
don’t pay too much for clicks, you will turn a profit. Test that model with enough products and, sooner or
later, you will be making good profits.

Don’t forget that the price you pay for different keywords can vary enormously. If you are promoting a
slimming book you may find you have to pay twice as much for the exact keyword ‘lose weight fast’ as
you do for the broad term ‘slimming’.

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I think that it is also a good idea to try bidding lower rather than higher so that you slot somewhere in the
2nd to 6th position (ideally positions 3-4). You will still get enough clicks (even from the competitive
terms if you follow my guidelines) and this will produce good results for most of your keywords.

If you find yourself dropping below position 6 you may need to rethink some aspect of your campaign:
Why can’t you get any higher? It is probably either your CTR or relevance (for example, too few ad
groups, poor ad body, and irrelevant product) or you are paying too little per click. Selling the wrong
product, with the wrong search term and/or bad ad copy is normally the problem. You will have to look at
all of these before you look at the size of your keyword list. Try and work on the first one if you find
yourself regularly below the sixth position, and look at the competition to see if you can spot something
they are doing that you aren’t.

More often than not it costs much more to be in the top positions (1st, 2nd and sometimes 3rd) than just a
bit lower. When this happens don’t try to compete at all costs. Accept that you can still make excellent
profits a little lower because, although you may be earning a little less, you are paying much less. There
are only a few cases when this is an exception: When your return on investment will easily absorb the
higher click prices. And even then you would be better advised to work on your CTR rather than
aimlessly increasing your bid.

In a few of my very small niches – ones where I get 10% or more click-through but under 50 clicks daily
– I can afford to pay for the top spot simply because my return on investment is so high. However, this is
the rare exception. With most products I promote I tend to look to reach and retain between the 2nd and
the 6th position.

You can do this by adjusting your bid prices on a weekly basis using the ‘last 7 days’ view. By doing this
you will only be looking at the stats for the last 7 days and therefore any changes that you made the
previous week will be reflected in the Adwords position stats.

If you discover any particularly unusual keywords – for example very cheap or expensive ones, or those
with an incredibly high CTR – then you should examine them further. Set up a separate ad group for
those keywords. Experiment with them and try and to understand why they stand out and how you can
benefit from them further.

This may identify a new ad group that you need to create or even a set of keywords that you should avoid
completely!

Invaluable Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools can help you come up with new, different and unusual keyword ideas. You will
find that there are quite a lot of research tools available. But you would be surprised at how few people
actually use them to build their keyword base. The best approach I can recommend is to try all of them!
Some tend to be more thorough than others. What I tend to do is start with the more basic keyword tools,
and then use the more advanced ones.

In this section I am not going to discuss any of that clever researching software you see advertised on the
Internet. Apart from the fact some of it is very expensive it is really only for the most advanced user.
And, in some ways, it can make the whole job a lot harder than it need be.

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Here are the keyword research tools I suggest:

Google : You can access Google’s own Keyword Tool through your AdWords account. It is very simple
to use. If you go into your Ad Group you will see a link to the ‘Keyword Tool’. Keywords can then be
added very easily and quickly.

Overture’s Suggestion Tool : I think this is even simpler than the Google tool. You can find it at:
http://www.pixelfast.com/overture

Using these two tools you can build up a list of enough keywords to launch your campaign. As I have
said 50-100 keywords spread across 5-10 ad groups is normally sufficient for me to see if a particular
campaign is going to make it or not.

Mostly, you need to be looking at a return on investment of between 50% and 300% for it to be
worthwhile pursuing a campaign. If the return is slightly less (say 30%) it can be worth trying to improve
things if you get the gut feeling that the campaign is promising.

WordTracker : Another tool to try is WordTracker. Find it at http://www.wordtracker.com.

WordTracker provides data on all searches carried out in the last 90 days across all of the major search
engines. This amalgamated data is great for spotting trends, and finding overlooked keywords.

Generally I only use WordTracker to ‘tweak’ an already profitable campaign. I use it to take my
campaign to the next level in terms of multiple, focused ad groups. When using it I normally assemble a
master keyword list of 100-300 keywords, spread across 10-30 ad groups. For most niches I think this is
more than enough, although some people prefer more.

There is another research tool you can use for your most profitable niche. This isn’t a research site as
such. It is simply to use websites within whatever niche you are marketing. For example, assuming I
don’t already have knowledge of the niche, I will simply spend half an hour browsing through websites,
articles and sales letters, and generally build up a list of 50 further specialised keywords. I pay particular
attention to any consumer-led sites (particularly review sites) as they tend to appeal to consumers looking
for solutions to their problems. You see, for advanced keyword building, it is especially important that
you look at it from the consumer’s point of view. This can easily boost your clicks by 10% or more – and
they will be very well targeted clicks too.

One snag is that Google’s Keyword Tool and Overture’s suggestion tool are both based on the idea of
vertically stacked terms. And many of your competitors will also be thinking vertically within a single
theme. For example, if you were selling this book then, thinking vertically, you might come up with the
following themes: AdWords ... AdWords Book .... Buy AdWords Book. A good way round this is to
think horizontally instead, eg. AdWords .... Paid Internet Marketing .... Pay Per Click You can then do
some more research to find new keywords within each of these separate keyword phrases. A good way to
do this is to browse similar websites, note relevant terms and then develop them.

Don’t forget that keyword building is an ongoing activity. So don’t spend weeks and weeks trying to
come up with a massive keyword list and leave it at that. It is much better to spend a little time on a small

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list. Try it to see if it works. If so, then you can spend more time on it – and at the same time have money
rolling in to justify it.

And finally, though keywording is important, don’t get too preoccupied with it. It is normally far better to
try and double your CTR for your most searched keywords than to try and squeeze out a little more traffic
by going overboard with the keyword list. My focus is on giving the customer the solution to their
problem while working my CTR up to a good level. Some aficionados might spend weeks adding a tiny
fraction of one percent to their CTR with a massive keyword list. But I think I do much better with a
small basic list which I can then duplicate across lots of different niches. (This doesn’t mean you can get
away with an unreasonably small keyword list, ie. 10 or so, by the way!)

How To Supercharge The Power Of Your Keywords

One technique you can use to increase the power of your keyword is to turn it into a ready to buy type
keyword. It is well worth spending time hunting for this type of keyword, as it can virtually guarantee a
sale.

Here is an example of an ‘ordinary’ keyword:

Nokia Mobile Phone

Here’s an example of a ready to buy keyword:

Buy Nokia Mobile Phone Now

You probably won’t be able to do it with this example as everyone else wants to as well. But if you can
find a great ‘ready to buy’ keyword like this at a low CPC you will make an absolute killing!

I will quite happily spend lots of time looking for any keywords that either include a product name in the
title, or have the word ‘buy’ in the title (in either case, great for sending visitors to a review landing
page). It’s quite conceivable that you could generate half your income from these kinds of keywords.

I’m certainly not saying that this is a guaranteed moneymaking technique, nor that you should devote all
your attention to it. But it is certainly worth trying to see what happens.

Getting Better Results Using Match Types

One feature of Google which is worth looking at more closely is the different ways in which you can use
matching. Google match types fall into different categories – exact, broad, phrase and negative match.
Here’s how they all work:

Exact Match

For example : [HP computer]

The [brackets] around this keyword signify that only an exact match on this keyword will display our ad.
If someone was to search for ‘HP computer’ then our ad would be displayed. However if someone was to

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search ‘cheap HP computer’ then our ad would not be displayed. It works on exact matches only and any
new word will stop our ad from being displayed.

Exact matches are often very targeted and as such can be very high earning clicks. However, they may
also be very expensive to maintain as the more targeted a keyword the more your competition makes
from it. And, assuming they track their conversions, the more they will pay (not always but generally).

Broad Match

For example : HP computer

We type broad matches with no inverted commas and no [brackets] as shown above. If someone searches
for ‘HP computer’ (without the inverted commas) our ad will be displayed and also if they search
‘computer HP’ our ad will be displayed. If they even search ‘find me a HP computer’, our ad will be
displayed. Broad matches are a catch-all and are also the default option with AdWords.

If you are in a very competitive niche it is probably going to be a bad idea to bid on any single word
broad terms eg. gambling. These tend to pull the CTR down for your entire campaign (although it can be
profitable, I advise you to keep away from it for now). Your best bet is to go back to the keyword
building process and try and get traffic from working a little harder (if you find yourself in such a niche
that is).

Phrase Match

For example : “HP computer”

Note the double inverted commas around the phrase. Phrase matches only show our ads when searches
for those keywords occur in the order that we type them. For example, if someone typed ‘computer HP’
our ad would not be displayed just because the order is reversed.

Negative Match

If you want to stop your ad displaying when someone searches for a specific keyword then you can add a
negative keyword. For example, if our keyword was simply ‘computer’ we can add a negative keyword of
‘cheap’ by typing ‘–cheap’… note the minus sign. This means that when people search for cheap HP
computers they will not find our ad This is great for filtering out the type of buyers you do not want or
freebie hunters – in this example you would use it if the site was in the business of selling computers but
was not selling them on low price.

Important point: You should always use all the first three match types when entering a new keyword. This
will naturally triple the size of your keyword list instantly and your CTR will automatically rise
substantially as a result. You can always go back and refine it later on.

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AdWords Techniques Specially For E-Publishers & Product Merchants

Although this book is mainly aimed at affiliates, it may well be that you are (or hope to become) a
product merchant or vendor, perhaps selling your own physical products, or your own e-books. If so, you
can benefit from all the techniques I have explained just as much as any affiliate. However, there are
some special issues that need to be covered if you are a product merchant or vendor – factors that don’t
apply quite the same as for an affiliate.

The main difference is simple, but it is worth clarifying: Since you have unlimited control over your site
you should take advantage of that fact and make sure that your landing page is very relevant to the
particular search term in question. This means you will need to direct the user to the category (or
preferably the item) that best fits their search.

In practice it sounds simple, but you have to put a little more thought into it if you want to get the very
best results. The other week I was looking to buy an Apple iPod – in fact I literally took my credit card
out before going onto the Internet – so to say I was a hot buyer is an understatement! However, I must
have clicked through a dozen ads before running through the organic search terms and buying from a site
listed there. Why didn’t I buy from the merchants on AdWords? The answer is that not one of them sent
me to the right page! Not a single one!

Some sent me to an ‘Apple’ page, which is like sending someone who wants to order an iPod to a
cookery site. But most didn’t even bother to do that. What amazes me most is that the product in question
is one of the most popular on the market. So the sellers really should have guessed what the answer to my
particular buying problem was and provided me with it. On this basis they must be letting down
thousands of similar buyers too - it is a very expensive mistake on their part.

The point is, give the user what he or she is searching for and they will visit your site. The longer the user
stays on your site, the more likely they will be to purchase. It amazes me the trouble people go to to
increase lengths of stay and conversion rate without even making sure that people get what they are
looking for!

E-publishers should really have an easy time making their pages relevant. I guarantee the following
process will take you less than an hour, and in some cases it has been known to add 30% to your
conversation rates – in some cases higher. It’s a very straightforward process too, although at the moment
not used by many marketers at all.

At the end of the day the impact of this technique all depends on relevance. Yes, that old chestnut again!
There are a couple for making your offer more relevant:

First of all take your chosen keyword group and divide it up into the dominant terms we talked about
earlier. The first step is to amend your headline and your lead paragraph so that they relate to those
dominant terms. For example, let’s say we are selling an e-book on online poker. We have a dominant
term which is ‘Bet365’, which is one of the online poker sites. Therefore our headline may start off
something like this :
How an 18 year old poker player with no previous knowledge learned how to crack the online poker
code.

But if we make it more relevant to the dominant key term it becomes:

How an 18 year old poker newbie cracked the Bet365 poker code – finding a secret that even the site
owners don’t know about – and making $987 in just four hours!

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Or:

The three secrets Bet365 won’t tell you about their site – find out what they are, and how YOU can use
them to your advantage against other Bet365 players.

If the customer is a Bet365 poker player, do you think that you will have their attention at this point?
In the first instance, the searcher will probably just click the ‘back’ button before they have even begun to
read the sales letter. It’s interesting, but nothing like as relevant as it can be.

In the last case they will almost certainly continue to read on, and if they read your sales letter, and spend
some time on your site, there is a vastly increased chance of them making a purchase.

Secondly, you should change your opening paragraph to reflect the dominant key terms, and create a
separate landing page for each key term.

It is not unlikely that this simple step will increase conversions and return on investment by 30-50%. In
some cases much more. And you can achieve this simply, while other e-publishers spend weeks split
testing their sales letters for small conversion changes (which you should be doing too, by the way). It
works especially well when a search term itself tells you a lot about the customer. (Someone searching for
Bet365 might be a relative novice, while someone searching for a niche upmarket site is likely to have
some prior knowledge.) In this case you might want to emphasise the benefits that beginners are likely to
need. For example:

This is a comprehensive beginners guide. I will show you how to succeed at online poker even if you have
never picked up a deck of cards before!

Another dominant term might require a different spin on your sales letter. But the point is that dividing
content on your landing pages across dominant terms is always a good idea. Of course, you will need a
good sales letter before you attempt to divide your sales letter like this. However, once you are happy
with your overall conversion rate, segmentation by keyword is the next step towards vastly improving
your conversion rate with AdWords.

A Great Strategy For Finding New Niches

A lot of people find the idea of discovering new AdWords niches extremely difficult. They don’t want to
do the research. And they hate the idea of spending investment time and money without knowing if they
are going to get any return. I have to tell you that, while this is understandable, you need to look at things
in a different light if you want to succeed. Here’s my strategy for getting started and succeeding in new
niches:

Firstly, you need to be very open minded. When you find a new niche look at who the competition are.
Are they selling an e-book? At what price? Are there any software vendors? Where are the affiliate
reviews – what are they selling? Why? Examine them all in detail.

Once you have answered these questions you can devise your own plan of attack and base it on the ‘best
of the rest’. Look at the sellers who are at the top of Google’s search terms for the keywords – and also
those on Overture. Remember, the top five sponsored results are of most importance to us.

Check out the competing ads and try and judge why they are at the top. Then add in your own touches –
but remember there is no need to be too creative!

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What is particularly powerful about this approach is this: Because it takes you so little time to set up a
new campaign (you look at what the best marketers are doing and learn from them) you don’t waste time
starting from ground zero. You can, therefore, enter a vast range of niches very quickly indeed.

Other techniques I have used are to start off selling a product using a hoplink or affiliate link (essentially
the direct linking method). Or, selling products via review pages. You can quickly see which of the
products is making you the most, then build your strategy around this product and theme.

To give you an example, just in the last few days I have discovered three exciting new niches. One is as
an e-book merchant, one using the direct linking method and one using the review method. Already I
have a clear idea where to go in each case and I can spend my time productively. Because I know that it
will be very efficient – hopefully each will take me a step closer towards reaching my targets.

This is another important pillar of any strategy: You should think of experimentation as a necessity,
particularly when it comes to choosing products and niches. In fact, you should be more than happy when
you try a new niche that doesn’t work .... because you will know you are one step closer to finding one
that does!

All it takes is to find one success. Then you can spend a few weeks clustering around that one
product/theme/niche – and a new profit centre is born! And they soon add up if you are prepared to put in
the time! If, for example, you launch three campaigns and two flop but one is a success, you can then
devote the next few days focussing on that area, upping your spending, promoting similar products,
possibly even creating your own product. Then the process begins again with three more new niches. In a
matter of weeks you could have discarded hundreds of flops – but at the same time you would have a very
large number of successful niches.

And not only that: Build around your winners by trying out very similar products and themes, all the
while copying from the best. (The same might be said about avoiding niches too similar to the flops!)

It is this sort of outlook that separates the Internet losers from the Internet billionaires!

You must be determined too. It will often feel like the world is against you. That everybody else is
succeeding while you are always failing. (That won’t actually be the case!) And then, you find one
success and you will find that loads more mushroom from the same niche!

With every new niche that you enter, look at the competition and work out why the top seller is at the top.
This is the most visible indication of what people want, and if you get this right everything else will be
relatively straightforward.

Remember, one of the most exciting things about AdWords is that the results are almost instant. So, if
you want to go slowly you should focus on link building and organic search engine referrals. You also
need to adopt a hit-and-run mentality .... moving into and eventually out of new areas as they rise and fall.
(Actually this is what AdWords was originally designed to do, but few people realise it.)

One more point to consider is what kind of return on your investment should you expect for you to
investigate further into a niche or product?

Normally I look for at least a 100% return on my investment before taking a niche further. However, this
is because, over time, I have built up something of a gut feeling for what will succeed and what will not.
When you start and are fairly inexperienced you may find that even if you start at just 40% or 50% it will

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still be worth investigating the niche further and building up from there. It may take you a little longer –
but you will get there eventually.

Also, don’t be afraid to revisit things and continuously improve them. I have several campaigns running
that I couldn’t make profitable at first. But now I can revisit them with new tricks and techniques,
compete with my competitors and make them a big success.

Visitor Value: What Is It And Why Is It Important ?

There is one very important number that is, conceivably, far more important than any other. It is not your
percentage of opt-ins or your percentage of sales to clicks. It is not even your monthly net profit. Perhaps
your most critical number is, in fact, your visitor value.

Visitor value is the amount of money the average website visitor spends with you. It is your sales value
divided by your number of clicks. If you are selling a $1,000 product and make 50% profit on it – and one
in every 100 visitors buys your product – then your visitor value is $10 and you could spend $5 to buy the
traffic and still break even. Then again, if only one in every 1,000 visitors buys then your visitor value is
$1. You could spend 50¢ to buy the traffic and still do OK. These are very simplistic calculations of profit
margin of course, but they give you an idea of how it works.

Visitor value does not in itself tell you your bottom line profits – especially when you are split testing
landing pages, opt ins and sales etc. But visitor value will tell you about combining percentages and
actual cash amounts to establish how much you can bid. Once that’s decided you can move on to an even
bigger figure – your net profit!

Buying web traffic using AdWords reduces something that marketers have been fussing over for decades
into a simple process: How much can you afford to pay for a customer and still make a profit. At first you
may not have a clue, but AdWords offers a simple solution – just buy some traffic and test it!

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Ways To Boost Your Visitor Value:

Use a proven formula for an effective sales letter. Have an attractive, benefit-driven headline. An
unbeatable offer. A clear call to action. And an easy way to respond.

Continually test new headlines. Headlines have the greatest influence on whether customers will
read on or not.

Be clear and specific on your landing page. Tell visitors what you’re offering, where to go and
what to do to get it.

Keep changing your offer, to try and get a better response. Try small detail changes like
changing the price, payment terms or P&P charges. Even small changes can significantly improve sales.

Add an opportunity for the visitor to opt in. Offer a free report, free e-mail newsletter or course or
occasional discount vouchers/special offers to visitors who sign up to receive them.

Tracking Your Conversions And Sales

Imagine this scenario: You’re doing very well with your new AdWords campaign. You’re getting plenty
of traffic. Some of your CTR’s are averaging 2%,4% – even up to 10%. And you’re getting plenty of
sales too. But – when you go through the figures at the end of the month and deduct costs from sales you
find that you have hardly made any money at all!

Now this is fairly unlikely. AdWords is probably the most controllable way of advertising ever. As long
as you test your campaigns and monitor them very carefully it’s extremely unlikely you’ll lose money.
But it can happen. Or, you could end up making much less than you were expecting. And that’s not really
what we want is it?

So how do you avoid this situation from ever occurring? In this section, I’ll outline a few techniques that
can help you track your conversions and sales.

Tie the search term, content of your ad and content of your landing page together. The fact is,
people respond better – and you get a better conversion rate – when the terms the customer searches for
are not only in your ad but in the landing page too. So try to make sure this happens with every campaign.
It’s the simplest way of smoothing the customer’s path through from having a problem they need to solve
to finding a solution.

Know what kind of customer you are aiming at. When you write an ad and page content create it with
the eventual buyer in mind. For example, are they a businessperson, housewife, young male or middle-
aged female. Aim your copy at the people you want to buy (or opt in), not the population in general.

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Know how much you need to spend to get the traffic you need. I’ve already talked about visitor value,
ie. your sales pounds averaged out per click. And this is the simplest guide there is as to whether you’re
converting profitably or not. Of course, it’s not always that simple, especially if you’re also promoting
back-end products that bring in extra profits. But, normally, you need to ensure that your average visitor
value is significantly more than your average cost per click.

If that’s not the case, what can you do? Short term the answer is just to reduce your bid prices across the
board so that you’re spending less than your average visitor value. In the long term the solution is to
spend much more time on testing and tracking.

Balance visitors and customers. This is actually quite a crucial little detail. You see, when your position
on Google goes up you’ll not only attract more customers but more visitors too. And some of those
visitors will not be serious buyers, but just browsers or worse still freebie hunters. The top few positions
on Google are the favourite haunts for these people, together with those who aimlessly click on
everything just because it is on top.

There are a few different strategies for deciding what the best positions on Google should be. However, a
quick and simple strategy is to avoid the top two or three positions on a page.

Know what you’re aiming for. From the outset know whether you are trying to sell a single product up
front, sell a product with the aim of generating lucrative back-end sales, get opt-ins or just generate
traffic. Make this the whole focus of your campaign. Don’t – whatever you do – set out to sell a product
but have an ad and a landing page that is focused on signing visitors up for a newsletter. That’s a common
mistake and one which can ruin both your conversion rates and your tracking.

Get your landing page right. To get a good conversion rate your landing page has to be a silky
continuation of the message the visitor saw in your AdWords ad.

Firstly, your landing page must be written in the same style as your ad – and directed at the same person.
Also, it needs to deliver what you promised there: If you mentioned a specific product that must be
clearly featured on the landing page. Same if you mentioned a specific price. If you offered some specific
information, or a free report, that must be easy to find.

Your landing page must also have the power to close the deal. Be clear, straightforward, compelling and
relevant – moving people along gradually to click, sign up and buy.

Use purpose-made tools for tracking conversions. There are quite a few tools for tracking conversions
and producing information you can use to improve them. So have a play around with some and find
which suit you. Google’s own conversion tracker is a good starting point. There are also offerings from
1Shopping Cart, AdTrackz, Hitslink, LinkCounter, ROIBot and Synergyx. One to try is Hypertracker at
www.hypertracker.net.

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How To Win When The Competition Gets Tough: A Handy Action Plan

OK. So it’s been a long time since AdWords was a secret! Today, everybody wants to get into it. I’ve
given you my inside tips and secrets to help you succeed. But you’re still going to face competition in
some of the most lucrative sectors. What should you do when that happens!

In this section I’m going to outline a handy action plan that you can use to outdo your competition – and
beat them hands down – when the going gets tough!

Check Your Keywords

• In competitive situations it’s not enough to bid on 10 or 20 keywords. If you do, you’ll only be
bidding on the most obvious ones. Instead, aim for 200 or more. Use keyword generating tools to
help you find the less obvious ones.

• Make sure most of your keywords are phrase matched and/or exact matched. You’ll get more
traffic at lower bid prices than your competitors.

• Use low-priced, generic keywords hand-in-hand with an opt-in. It can be difficult or impossible to
turn a profit using the most common generic words. However, you can turn them into profit if you
use an opt-in to develop a relationship with your customers.

Check Your Ad Copy

• Examining every single word in your ad copy can make a measurable difference to the results.
Split test every word to see which pulls the best response.

Adjust Your Bidding Strategy

• Don’t go for the top position at all (or any) costs. Slightly lower positions often turn out to be
more profitable at the end of the day.

Streamline Your Sales Process

• Does your sales process deliver the customer with the answer to their problem – starting with the
original ad to the landing page and on to the order form? Look at ways of streamlining the process
to make it an even more powerful solution to the visitor’s problem – make it even easier.

• Use an opt-in to build a long-term relationship with your customer in the hope that if you don’t
sell to them now you’ll sell to them later. Offer them a newsletter, mini-course or vouchers etc.
But make these really good quality freebies and offers. Too many marketers use an opt-in but then
deliver really poor benefits – which actually reflect badly on the products they are selling.

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Glossary Of Terms

Ad Group An ad group has one or more ads and targets one set of keywords.

Average Position The average position on a page that your ad will normally be shown at.

Average CPC Average cost per click. The overall average amount you pay when someone
clicks on your ad

Broad Match A keyword or phrase inserted without any quotation marks so that
everybody who includes those words in a search may see your ad

Campaign Includes one or more ad groups. Allows you to set different details for
each.

Click-through Rate (CTR) The number of clicks your ad gets divided by the number of impressions.

Conversion Rate The number of eventual sales divided by the number of clicks made.

Cost Per Click (CPC) The price you pay every time someone clicks on your ad.

Cost Per Conversion The amount you spend on obtaining clicks divided by the number of
(also CPC) conversions.

Daily Budget The maximum amount you are willing to pay for AdWords per day.

Destination URL The actual website address visitors will arrive at when they click your ad.

Disapproved An ad whose content does not meet Google’s editorial guidelines.

Display URL The URL people will see in your ad – it must be the same domain as your
landing page.

Exact Match A keyword or phrase inserted in brackets [ ] so only those who search for
only those exacts words will see your ad

Impressions The number of times your ad is displayed by Google.

Keyword A word or phrase that people might use to find your product.

Keyword Status Describes whether your keywords are active (your ads are showing
normally) or inactive (you need to bid Google’s minimum bid or higher for
your keywords to become active).

Landing Page The page visitors reach when they click on your ad It is not necessarily
your home page.

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Max CPC Maximum cost per click. You can set the amount you are willing to pay.

Negative Keyword A keyword prefixed by a minus symbol (-), so that your ad will not be
displayed to those who use this term.

Optimised Ad Serving If you choose this option Google will display your better-performing ads
more often than poorer-performing ones.

Phrase Match A keyword or phrase inserted within quotation marks (“”), so that only
those who search for things including that phrase in that order will see your
ad.

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