Internet Marketing 2.0 | Blog Marketing |
Posts tagged search engine advertising
Does Google Adsense Still Make Money?
Nov 7th
For the last couple of months, Google Adsense has dominated forums, discussions and newsletters all over the Internet. Already, there are tales of fabulous riches to be made and millions made by those who are just working from home. It seems that Google Adsense have already dominated the internet marketing business and is now considered the easiest way to making money online.
The key to success with Adsense is the placing of ads on pages that are receiving high traffic for high demand keywords. The higher the cost-per-click to the advertiser, the more you will receive per click from your site. Obviously, it does not pay to target low cost-per-click keywords and place them on pages that do not receive hits.
With all the people getting online and clicking away everyday, it is no wonder why Google Adsense has become an instant hit.
For some who are just new to this market, it would be a blow to their pride knowing that their homepage is buried somewhere in the little ads promoting other people’s services. But then, when they get the idea that they are actually earning more money that way, all doubts and skepticism is laid to rest.
There are two major, and clever, factors that some successful webmaster and publishers are learning to blend together in order to make money easier using Adsense.
1. Targeting high traffic pages on your website. If you check on your logs, you will discover that many of your visitors are taking advantage of the free affiliate marketing resources and ebooks that you are offering on your site. In simple words, your ads are working effectively and are generating more clicks. It also means more money for you.
2. Placing Adsense links on pages that are producing little, or better yet, no profit. By placing Adsense on a free resources page, you will reduce the amount of potential customers being lost to other sites. Tricky, but effective nonetheless.
When learned to work effectively, these two factors are actually a good source of producing a minimal amount of revenue from a high traffic page. Many people are using this strategy to pick up some extra and cash with Adsense. This is also especially rewarding to informational sites that focus their efforts on delivering powerful affiliate link free content to their visitors. Now they can gain a monetary return on their services.
With the many techniques that people are now learning on how to make the easiest money by their Adsense, it is not surprising that Google is trying everything to update and polish their Adsense in order to maintain their good image.
The possibility of adding is 2nd tier in Adsense is not impossible. With all the people spending more time in their Adsense now and still more getting into this line of marketing, there is no doubt about the many new improvements yet to be made. Imagine the smiles on the faces of the webmasters and publishers all around the world if ever they sign up for sub-affiliates and double or even triple the amount that they are already earning. The one particularly handy money-making feature that is available with Adsense now is the ability to filter out up to 200 urls. These gives webmasters the option to block out low value offers from their pages as well as competitors to their websites. Talk about taking only those that are advantageous and discarding the ones that seem “useless”.
With Google Adsense, the possibilities are limitless. Yet there is also the possibility of someone taking advantage of the easy money process that this internet marketing is doing. If you think more about it, these negative factors may force Google to break down and thrash Adsense in the process. If that happens, people would have to go back to the old ways of internet marketing that does not make money online as easy as Adsense.
For now, however, Google Adsense is here to stay. As long as there are people wanting to earn some easy cash online just using their talents, the future ahead is looking good. Besides with all the strict guidelines that Google is enforcing over Adsense, it will take awhile for the Adsense privileges to be spammed and even terminated.
2. Right-Click then Copy
3. Paste the HTML code into your webpage
Extremely Effective PPC Avertising
Nov 3rd
Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both extremely effective and extremely competitive. There are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.
Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.
As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.
Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier – and more effective – the process will be.
The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position – which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.
In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.
The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.
Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.
The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add additional cost. This translates into a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your site to index a particular set of keywords.
Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine. They also offer suggestions for keywords after you enter a description of your site.
In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You must understand that the object of your description is not to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to your site. You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.
Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.
If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war.
Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.
Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.
2. Right-Click then Copy
3. Paste the HTML code into your webpage
Overview of Google Adwords
Oct 28th
I’ve repeated this many times on this site. One of the fastest ways to get your website in front of your target customer is to use Google Adwords.
Google Adwords is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Using PPC wisely, you can transform a no-traffic website into a high-traffic profit machine literally overnight. However, you can also waste a whole lot of money if you don’t plan your PPC campaign carefully.
Let me fist explain what PPC advertising is. Basically, it’s a form of advertising in which you create a small 2-3 line text-based advertisement. The ad will have a headline, which is clickable and links to your website.
Here’s an example:
Top Cruise Deals Great deals on all types of cruises 30% discounts for online purchases www.your-url.com
You can see examples of these ads in action by going to Google.com and running a search on any search term. After you run your search, you’ll find the PPC ads on the right-hand side of the screen. The owners of each of the ads pay Google a fee each time someone clicks on their ad. This fee can be anywhere from .10 cents to several dollars depending on the popularity and demand of the keyword.
The goal of the ad owner is to maximize the number of quality clicks. A quality click is a click from someone that has an interest in what you’re trying to sell. A low-quality click is a click from someone that really doesn’t have any interest in what you’re trying to sell.
Since the space in the Google Sponsored Links area is limited (about 10 slots per page), and the number of people using PPC to advertise their products is fairly large, there has to be a way of controlling who gets what placement (also called Adrank) in the Sponsored Links hierarchy.
Google controls this placement by 3 mechanisms:
1) Keywords/keyphrases
2) Bid price
3) Quality Score
The goal is to get your ad in the Sponsored Links section of the first page (or at most the second page) of the returned Google search results. That means your ad can be anywhere in the Sponsored Links position from 1-10, or 1-20 if you take into account the second page. People don’t normally search beyond the first couple of pages of returned search results, so having your ad appear on the third page (or beyond) diminishes your chances of the ad being seen.
To get your ad in the first or second page of Google’s Sponsored Links, and to maximize the number of quality clicks, you need 3 things:
1) Good Keywords/keyphrases
2) Bid in an active bid range
3) Good Quality Score
Using Good Keywords/Keyphrases:
Keywords (or keyphrases) are the words that people type into Google when they run a search. You need to select the keywords that relate to your product so Google will know when to display your ad. From your perspective (the online Marketer), good keywords are the words that relate to your product. For example, if you run a Google PPC ad campaign and you’re selling a course on how to train dogs, then a good keyword list might consist of:
dog “Dog training” “Train my dog” “Training for dogs” “dog obedience” “dog growling”
Note: using quotes instructs Google to show your ad only when the searched keywords appear in that particular order.
The above keyword list is then applied to your Google PPC campaign. Now, every time a user runs a search for any of these keywords on Google, your ad COULD be returned in the ‘Sponsored Links’ section of the returned search results in Google.
As we mentioned previously, the keywords are not the only determining factor governing which ads appear in Google. Keep in mind, there are likely many other people running their own PPC campaigns that have the same keywords as you. And since there are only about 10 slots to place the sponsored ads in Google’s first page, the ads that get a position in one of those 10 slots are the ads that are willing to pay the most for each click and the ads that have the higher Quality Score.
A good way to find keywords for your product is to use the Google Adwords Keyword Finder at: https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
Bidding in an Active Bid Range:
All popular (and many not so popular) keywords have an active bid range. The active bid range is the cost per click (CPC) range that results in your ad appearing in a preferred position within Google’s Sponsored Links area (usually position 1-20). Obviously, the higher your ad is in the position, the more active (more clicks) will likely result.
So how much should you pay for each click to make sure you’re ad is in the actice bid range? You should first find out what the going rate is for that particular keyword. You can get a good idea of what people are willing to pay for a given keyword by using Overture’s Bid Tool at: http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/
Note: your goal is to get a position anywhere on the first page of the Google search result, or second page at most, so you really don’t have to make sure you have the highest bid. In fact, you can even make more money by bidding much lower than the highest bid. For example, say you’re bidding on the “dog training” keyphrase and you find that the 1st position for that keyphrase is going for $1.50 per click. You may very well find that the 4th or 5th position is going for $0.30 – $0.40 per click. In this case, I would opt for the 4th or 5th position. The cost savings is quite significant.
Getting High Quality Score:
What is a Quality Score? Well, it’s a few things… The Quality Score is derived from the keywords Click Through Rate (CTR), relevance of the text in the ad to the keyword, how well the keywords has performed in the past, and other things that Google has kindly decided not to share. Since there are some unknown factors here, it’s best to focus on what you can do to increase your Quality Score.
One thing you can do is aim for a high Click Through Rate (CTR). A CTR is a percentage that is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of times your ad appeared. For example, say your ad appeared 100 times, and out of those 100 times, 1 person clicked on your ad. Your CTR for that ad would then be 1/100=1%.
Another thing you can do is make sure your ad’s text is relevant to the keyword. For example, if you were advertising a dog training course and your keyword was “cars”, then the relevancy of the keyword to the ad is low.
All right, that’s the basics of Google Adwords. Give it a try! There’s no better way to learn than through doing!
2. Right-Click then Copy
3. Paste the HTML code into your webpage
Some IN’s & Outs of Pay Per Click Advertising
Oct 24th
Today you will learn all about pay per click advertising and what it can do for you and your company. Pay Per click advertising is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get traffic to your website with out emptying your pockets. I am going to go over a few things today like which company you should choose to start an advertising campaign with and not waste your time or money. I will try to answer some popular questions like how do you know when to trust a ppc search engine, Should I choose a big or small pay per click search engine and many more. By the end of this article you should have a good understanding of pay per click advertising and it will give you an idea on which one to choose.
How do you choose a pay per click company?
When it comes to picking a pay per click Company the first thing I look for is other people that have tried it and like it. The easiest way to do that is by posting on forums or searching in search engine. I then visit the website to look at the prices of min. deposit required and go from there. I compile a list to compare some prices between the companies I found and I liked. By doing this it allows you to find out each min. bid and which one to choose with out breaking the bank. You’ll have to do the research yourself.
How do you know when to trust a pay per click search engine?
Again I start with the forums and search engine to see if they have ever ripped someone off by using click fraud to steal their customer’s money. Its rear but it dose happen and if you see no complaints It usually means they are a trust worth company. I usually deposit a small amount of money (like $5.00) to test out the company. There are some pay per click search engine that allow you to test drive their services for free before you deposit, so the risk is on them and you can advertise cheaply and stress free. (Ex: Paid Results)
Do I choose A Big Or Small Pay Per Click Search engine?
I guess that would be totally up to you, depending on what you are looking for. Do you want to deal with a huge number of competitors? Pay as much as $10 Per click just to stay on top of the search engine? Then I would suggest a bigger pay per click search engine. If you want less keyword bidding competition and work I would suggest a smaller pay per click search engine.
I found that using multiple smaller pay per click search engine was way more cost effective and gather just about the same amount of traffic a the major pay per click search engines. There for I would recommend you choose about ten smaller pay per click search engines and they usually offer you a sign up bonus so it’s free to try. A good place to look for smaller pay per click search engines is: http://www.search-network.com/ppc.php
Thanks for taking the time to read my article and good luck with your pay per click ventures.
2. Right-Click then Copy
3. Paste the HTML code into your webpage
2 Surefire Ways You Still Can Use To Maximize Your Adsense Earnings Almost Instantly!
Oct 20th
Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the lists that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet, after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages, the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in.
What is it that they are doing wrong?
Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.
The thing is, to get visitors to your high paying keyword pages, you need to optimize your site navigation.
Stop for a moment and think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page, they have the tendency to click on another page that sounds interesting. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. This is site navigation. It is all about enabling visitors to move about your site. And one way of maximizing your Adsense earnings.
A typical website have menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what grabs a visitor’s attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have “free’ or “download” are oftentimes good attention-grabbers.
This navigation logic can also be applied to driving traffic to your high paying pages. There are some websites that are getting a lot of traffic from search engines, but have low earnings. The trick is to try and use come cleverly labeled links to get the visitors off that pages and navigate them to the higher earning ones. This is one great way of turning real cheap clicks to real dollars.
Before you begin testing if this same style will work for you and you website, you need to have two things. Something to track and compare and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is ensuring fast result to come by.
Now, the next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. Come up with a catchy description for that link. Come up with a catchy and unique description for the link. Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about.
You can also use graphics to grab your readers’ attention. There is no limitation to what you can do to make your link noticeable. If you are after the success of your site, you will do everything it takes just to achieve that goal. Just be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned, there are no written and unwritten laws to follow regarding what they write. Just as long as you do not overstep the guidelines of the search engines, then go for it.
Also remember that it is all about location, location and location. Once the perfect attention grabbing description has been achieved, you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page.
There is nothing wrong with visiting other websites to see how they are going about maximizing their site navigation. “Hot pages” or “Most read” lists are very common and overly used already. Get to know the ones that many websites are using and do not try to imitate them.
Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to mix things around also. Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom too. This is how you go about testing which ones get more clicks and which ones are being ignored.
Let the testing begin. Testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for you site.
2. Right-Click then Copy
3. Paste the HTML code into your webpage