Google AdWords wasn’t the first search engine to come out with the PPC model, but they certainly are the biggest and most well known today. Does that mean you should ignore other engines like Bing?

No! In fact, there are many marketers who are making a full-time living on search engines like Bing without spending any money on Google at all.

What are the differences between AdWords and Bing and why might you choose one over the other? Here are the differences.

Conversion Rates

Out of AdWords, Yahoo and Bing, Bing traffic tends to convert the best. That means that out of 1,000 visitors, you’ll tend to get more sales from Bing than AdWords or Yahoo traffic.

There are many theories about why that is. One common theory is that people using Google tend to be more computer savvy users and more discerning about where they spend their money.

Bing users on the other hand tend to be people who just left their browsers on their default search engines. They’re less discerning with their money and their internet habits.

Volume

This is where Google AdWords wins hands down. For any given keyword, you can expect to get 10% or less with Bing than what you’d get if you bid on the same keyword in AdWords.

Does that mean you can’t make significant money on Bing? No, it just means your strategy needs to be different.

Bidding Strategy

Generally, with AdWords you don’t want to go for high-profile, high-competition keywords with high volume. The bid prices are just too high.

With Bing however, it’s different. Bing’s PPC bids tend to be a little bit cheaper than AdWords. There also tends to be less competition.

That means that on AdWords a keyword like “Lose lower belly fat” may be far too competitive and expensive. On the other hand, on Bing there will be competition but you may have a good shot at making money with the keyword.

Basically, on Bing you’ll need to take advantage of the lower competition to bid on broader keywords. This will help you offset the lower search volume: You increase your total traffic by bidding on higher traffic keywords.

AdWords versus Bing

There are many similarities in strategies between AdWords and Bing. The principles of writing great ads and split testing carefully apply to both systems equally. Choosing the right keywords is as important in one as it is the other.

On the flip side, these two systems require very different strategies to master. AdWords often requires drilling down to very precise keywords in order to create profitable campaigns.

On Bing, your main challenge is often getting enough volume rather than getting your traffic to convert.

Each search engine is different and need different approaches. There’s a lot of money to be made in both.

The Starting Point

The easiest place to start is to simply emulate your competitor’s advertising style.

If you’re in a market with a fair amount of competition, chances are your competitors have already spent thousands of dollars testing what converts and what doesn’t. Why start over?

In general, copying the general principles behind your competitors’ ads is a good starting point. The downside to doing this is that your ad looks like everyone else’s ad and don’t stand out.

The idea is to use this as a starting point and then test out ads that stand out from there.

Taking Advantage of Keyword Bolding

Whenever an ad has the exact keyword in the ad text, that ad is bolded. For example, if you type in “campaign blast,” ads with the exact text “campaign blast” will be bolded. So, having the exact ad text in as much of your ad as possible is a good idea.

The best way to do this is to do one keyword per ad group. This will allow you to write a different ad for every keyword, which means every time someone types in their search term, they’ll see their full keyword bolded in your ad.

One keyword per ad group is easy to do if and only if you use AdWords Editor and Excel to create your ads. If you use the online interface, it will take far too long to be practical.

Things That Stand Out

One simple way to stand out is to use either symbols or specific numbers.

For example, which stands out more?

New York movies
Movies @ New York

The latter, naturally.

Another thing that stands out is specific numbers. Which of the below stands out more?

Increase Opt In 20%!
Avg. Opt In Up by 19.7%!

The latter – because it seems more real and precise, rather than a generic claim.

Use symbols and specific numbers wherever possible. Little things like these can drastically increase conversions.

Split Test Meticulously

Nobody is asking you to write a superstar ad right from the get go. Even the best players in PPC can’t do that. The idea is to throw wildly different ideas against the wall until you have a clear winner. None of your ads should look remotely similar in the beginning.

Once you have a clear winner on the specific style of ad, then start refining the ad by split testing different words, punctuations, call to actions, capitalizations, etc.

A mediocre copywriter who is meticulous about split testing will do better in the long run than a great copywriter who’s sloppy about split testing.

Here’s the bottom line: Start out by copying the general principles behind what others are doing. Split test wildly different ideas, with an emphasis on things that make your ad stand out. Sooner or later, you’ll have an ad that’s a clear winner. When you do, refine it to get the highest CTRs and conversions possible.

If you want to skip all the mistakes and bad decisions most people do when they start PPC, check out Matt Levenhagen’s Campaign Blasts Report. He is taking it off the market at the end of the month, so don’t postpone it, or you’ll lose.

You want to use AdWords to make money, right?  Then before you even get started you need to consider the following:

• Is your website up to the job? Don’t just presume it’s okay because you, your OH and your best friend thinks it’s great!  Try a web usability tool such as www.userfly.com, record a few user sessions and check that people know how to navigate your website correctly!
• Have you considered landing pages? If you are selling services, landing pages are a must!  If your website is an ecommerce site, you will be sending people to category pages or to the product pages.  On your landing or product pages, consider including testimonials and make sure you tell people why they should buy from you.  Consider using Google website optimizer to split test landing pages or parts of your landing pages to increase conversions
• Install web tracking – not just Google Analytics but consider tools to let you watch live traffic such as www.getclicky.com.  This way you will spot problems with the website quickly, as well as identifying new negative keywords quickly
• How will you track conversions?  Consider tracking call back requests, newsletter subscriptions, sales, leads and catalogue requests.  Look at competitors’ websites to come with ideas!  Do consider offering special offer codes or free whitepapers to entice people to signup for newsletters, as even if they do not buy today, they may in the future!

Okay, so now we need to consider AdWords itself.  Ensure you:

• Use targeted buying keywords – such as “Nikon 1410 camera prices” – these keywords indicate that people are ready to buy.  Do not bid on general keywords such as “digital cameras” unless your budget for AdWords is big, and your aims include brand building!
• Use calls to action – figures work well, especially prices if your website is competitive.  Ask them to Visit Now, Buy Today etc
• Use phrase and exact match keywords rather than broad match keywords if budgets are tight
• Make sure you include the keyword in the advert heading
• Edit your destination URL to include the keywords if possible
• Make sure you have installed conversion tracking code for each of the conversion types you are tracking

Good luck tracking your website, and turning AdWords visitors into paying customers!

Claire Jarrett runs a Google AdWords management company in Bristol, UK

Pay-Per-Click advertising is a very effective and efficient method of placed advertising that will place your business directly in front of potential sales leads that have used their Google search engine to look up one or more of your key words and key phrases. With a bit of work and careful consideration, you will be able to plan your way to Pay-Per-Click campaign success.

See It Working
One of the best methods of understanding how a Pay-Per-Click campaign can work effectively is to see it in action yourself. In the search word entry box on your Google homepage type in a key phrase, for example “dog bath” and click on the “Google Search” button. On the page of retrieved search results you will see a section at the top of the page and on the right hand side of the page that will include “Sponsored Links.”

These are the advertisements placed there by PPC campaign users. Their ads have been targeted to your location and your specific search needs; while these advertisers are likely to pay a small monthly fee for their advertising campaigns, they will not pay for the advertisement that you see until you click on the link and “click thru” to their landing pages.

Set Your Plan In Action
With an understanding of how PPC Campaigns work, you can now work towards setting your plan in action to help you gain the most from your PPC advertising efforts.

Know Your Market – By understanding your targeted customers you will be able to focus your key words and key phrases specifically to the types of searches that they will be doing.

Know Your Competition – Unless your specific product lineup is for a specialized and small niche market, the odds are high that you will have a good few competitors. Research what methods they are incorporating and find out what you can do to be one step above and ahead of them.

Optimize Your Website – As a key part of knowing your market, you should be certain to optimize your website and your web content so that you can provide guests to your site with quick and easy access to the information, services, and products that they are looking for.

Set Your Budget – It can be all too easy to get carried away with your PPC spending, especially once you get into a bidding war with one of your competitors. By setting a budget for your campaign you will be able to better control your PPC spending; and, don?t forget, you can always adjust your budget at any point during the campaign!

Select Your Key Words And Phrases – When carefully conducting your research into the best key words and phrases that will work best to garner you the best results, you should keep an eye on misspelled words that are often frequently searched for. These misspellings can oftentimes be purchased for a much lower rate, and are more likely to provide you with the web searchers who will purchase a product or service from you.

Monitor Your Campaigns – Pay close attention to your PPC campaigns to constantly seek out new methods of improving your click-through rates as well as new methods of converting those click-throughs into positive new sales.

Devising and following through such a plan is a key part of every successful PPC campaign.

————
Lena Morrish and Dima Nikolayenko are successful professionals who operate their home-based business website InternetBusinessBTS.com. They can help you develop your favorite online income opportunities into a successful PPC campaign! On their website, you can find a variety of Google AdWords tips and easy-to-follow guides to help you in your business.

There are two ways to double your PPC results:

1. Double the amount you spend daily by performing the following calculation and entering it into the daily spend box. (s = to your current daily budget;  b represents your future daily budget):

2. Double the effectiveness of your Adwords campaign. Here is your formula (c = conversion rate, p = future conversion rate):

Doubling your conversion rate gives the exact same effect as doubling your PPC spend. It also gives you the upper hand…

Pushing your competition out of the PPC market

Imagine getting double the results your competitor gets for every dollar you spend. It would allow you to drive prices up and allow you to still make a good profit. However, your competition may not be so fortunate. If they can only spend $2000 per month, and they have to double their bids to compete with you, they will have to have downtime where there ads are not running. Eventually it will become too costly to compete and they will be forced to find business in other venues.

Your competition will have no idea what hit them, especially since only 11% of companies use conversion rate optimization. More than likely, they have never even heard the term.

Google Website Optimizer

All though there are many software solutions out there for conducting conversion rate optimization, I have found Google’s Website Optimizer to be everything that I need. Plus, it’s free.

Google offers two types of testing:

Google divides up your visitors across the different pages or page combos (multi-variate testing) and monitors how many conversions each produces. At the end of the test, the page with the most conversions wins and you can roll that out onto your site.

Combining Google Website Optimizer with Google Adwords

Inside of your Google Adword account click on Reporting -> Website Optimization and you can get started with Google website optimizer. The experiment will be a part of your Adwords reporting and give you more details on what is working and what doesn’t.

When most people start optimizing their website, they get tunnel vision on their site’s content and graphics. However, to really get the best results you should run several tests from different ad groups.

Page x may not perform well with the ads in ad group 1, but perform super well with ad group 2. Typically the reason for this is that the page meets the expectations the ad gave the visitor.

Finally, you will need to run the tests again with the best ad group and best pages, but with different keywords to see which keywords perform the best for each ad and page.

Sounds complicated, but it really is not that bad.  Here is a mind map to explain the process. We will use multivariate testing for this mind map, but the principle is still the same for a/b split testing.

Once I have completed the above process, I like to go back and micro-target the ads for specific keywords with different combos to see if we can get even more of a conversion rate increase.

Jason Capshaw is founder of MyWebTronics, an Atlanta internet marketing firm. He resides in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

This is a Guest Post by Justin Freid

Certain keywords get searched more times than others; knowing which keywords these are can help you use your valuable time and focus on keywords that will provide you the best return on your investment. What is known as the 80-20 can be easily applied to paid search, 80% of your traffic is going to come from 20% of your keywords. So wouldn’t t it make sense to spend 80% of your time on that 20% of your keywords?

These keywords often represent a significant amount of your traffic along with most of your conversions and generate the most revenue. It makes sense that your eyes and time should be focused on these keywords more than your long tailed keywords.

While growing a list of quality long tailed keywords through query mining can be beneficial and provide very targeted visitors to your site, the low volume of searches and revenue related to these keywords does not justify a significant time investment.

With that in mind, keeping focused and fine tuning the ad groups that contain your highest grossing keywords is extremely important. It presents you with the best ROI for your time investment. In another post I addressed the practice of keeping branded keywords separated in their own campaign. This would allow for your other campaigns with head and tail keywords to not have their data skewed by your high CTR and converting branded keywords.

Following this methodology, keeping a common structure throughout your other campaigns can be extremely helpful as well. If possible and relevant to the ad copy, try to keep like head terms together within ad groups. If you are consistent with your set up if segmented and relevant ad groups, reporting will be more clear and you will be able to make more justifiable decisions regarding your head and tail terms. This practice should lead to optimizing your account for clicks and cost reduction.

Justin Freid is the founder of Justin Freid Media, a paid search and search engine optimization agency. Justin also runs an internet marketing forum to help others learn and implement SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing.

It’s now been 4 weeks since the beginning of the PPC challenge, and the end is in sight. While the month is almost over, the challenge will go on for another week.

Let’s see: blasting new campaigns is not hard, but finding the time to sit down and do it, is another matter.

Last week I said I was going for 15 new blasts, and I ended up doing 7. My total count as of now is

- 2 to  landing pages

- 12 direct to a merchant on CJ

- 9 direct to merchants on SAS

And here are my stats:

Impressions: 72,301
Clicks: 631
CTR: 0.87% (it  went up a little more again. BTW, some of my ad groups are getting as high as 4.85$, but some are not getting any clicks))
Cost: $129.90
Commission: $115.82
Profit: - $14.08 I am still in deficit, but I am confident that once the blasting phase is over, and I go into the account and remove those keywords and phrases taht are getting lots of clicks and no sales, I will be in profit.

I made a total of 6 sales from 4 campaigns, and that is pretty good.

This week I went back and got reacquainted with the AdWords Editor, which I’ve used a lot in the past, but forgot how to use it, since I haven’t done much PPC in the past year or so.

My FaceBook campaign is also getting some action, after I increased my bid amount. No sales yet, but I am seeing clicks from there.

Nest week I’ll wrap up this challenge, and will probably give a follow up update in a month or two.

Do you need help stating new campaigns? Do you have questions? Post below and I’ll be happy to help you. Here is to PPC success!

It’s time for another update on my PPC challenge. Last week I was on vacation in Jamaica, so no I made no progress in adding more campaigns, but my existing campaigns continued to run.

So, let’s see how I am doing.

So far, I started 15 campaigns

- 1 to  a landing page

- 8 direct to a merchant on CJ

- 6 direct to merchants on SAS

Here are my starts as of now:

Impressions: 56,342
Clicks: 435
CTR: 0.77% (this went up a little bit since my first week, but it’s still to low)
Cost: $99.68
Commission: $72.34
Profit: - $27.37 Yep! I am in the red, but that’s normal during the blasting. As I learn more about what my market is looking for, I’ll add more negative keywords, remove key phrases that are not performing, etc.

What is important is that out of 15 campaigns, I had 4 sales: 2 from the same campaigns, and one each from two other campaigns. this means I have 3 winning campaigns, which I can tweak and improve once my blasting is done.

My 3 FaceBook ads are yet to get a click, but I received an email from them, with suggestions for improvement. I didn’t have time to apply their suggestions yet, but it’s on my list for this week.

Also for this week: I need to step up my blasting, or I won’t be able to do 50 campaigns. I am going to try 15 campaigns this week, and I’ll be back next Monday with another update.

If you’d like to learn how to successfully learn PPC marketing, check out Matt’s Campaigns blast report.

A pay per click campaign is a great way to get some quick quality traffic for your website. Just create an account with Google or any other advertising network, put some money in your account, bid on keywords, write ad copy and you are set. But is it that simple? Unfortunately, no! A successful PPC campaign with a good conversion rate and positive ROI demands lot more than that. Here we’ll highlight five important things which you should do to make your PPC campaign more successful.

Highly Relevant Landing Pages – The success and failure of your online campaign depends completely on the success and failure of landing pages. The more relevant landing page is, the higher the conversion rate & quality score and  less you have to pay for the same amount of traffic. The traffic you get from PPC campaigns is always looking for some specific things, so make sure to make your landing page relevant to the ads you are using to attract traffic. Try to use the same keywords in title and body of your landing page which you’ve used in your ad copy so that your visitors can get the feeling that they are in the right place.

Highly Targeted Ad Groups - Google allows you to have 2000 ad groups per campaign. Split your keywords in to more targeted ad groups according to their theme and create separate ads for each ad group targeting that specific group.

Broad Match is Not Always Bad – If you are already using Adwords or studying about it then you must be aware about all three keywords matching options – broad, phrase and exact. Google uses broad match as the default option, which means if you are targeting keywords “blue widgets” your ad will be shown for search queries like “ How to create blue widgets” , “ I hate blue widgets” etc. On the other hand, in exact match you ad will be shown only when somebody search for “blue widgets” specifically which means that it will not be shown for queries like “ cheap blue widgets” “buy blue widgets” etc.

Although, most of the traffic you get from broad match is not as relevant as you get from exact match it sometimes helps you to identify some hidden gems keywords which you had ignored earlier.  Just make sure that when you use broad match you use lots of negative words.

Negative Keywords Are Very Important - Time and again, we see the companies putting lot of effort in doing keyword research but completely ignore the negative keywords. Negative keywords are the words that will stop your PPC ads from being shown if they are present in the search query. Let’s day you sell blue widgets and are using broad match option in your campaign. Now your ad would be displayed for queries like “I hate blue widgets” or “How to sell blue widgets” or “Free blue widgets” etc which will affect your CTR (click through rate) and eventually will reduce your quality score. So the best solution to this is to put such keywords like hate, sell, free in your negative keywords list.

Geo-targeting is Important – Geo-targeting can save you a lot of money if your offer is localized. Geo-targeting your campaigns will help you to show your ads only to the users from specific locations based on their IP information.

Okay. These are the five things I feel should be done to make PPC campaigns successful. Do you think there are other must-do actions you must take to achieve PPC success? Feel free to share your opinions in the comments below.

Gagandeep Singh is writes for Invesp about affiliate marketing, landing pages and conversion rate optimization.

Let’s look at some ads and their corresponding pages, and see if they have the right landing page. Let’s say I was searching for “mickey mouse toaster” (would you believe 6,600 people search for these monthly?), and here is the first PPC ad:

The ad looks good, though if it was me, I’d make it more specific. Once you click on that it takes you to this page (BTW, don’t worry, I copied the link, I didn’t click through from the ad):

WOW! Do you see a Mickey toaster there? I don’t! And I think the conversion rate on this ad is minimal. BTW, I don’t know if you can see this, but the ad was linked to a page that has the search results for “Mickey essentials”: nothing to do with toasters.

The second PPC ad is this:

And the corresponding landing page is this:

While I see a Mickey toaster, I also see a lot of other stuff going on that page. Of course, if you are the merchant, you are probably benefiting in other ways from your PPC campaigns (branding for example), even if you are not making a sale on that specific page. But if you are an affiliate marketer, you want every penny to count, to give you back a sale.

Here is how my landing page would look like, if I was trying to sell Mickey Mouse Toasters ( I did this quickly in less than 10 minutes in my Front Page program). My landing page is simple and to the point.

Are your landing pages cluttered and hard to navigate? Is your advertised product lost in that clutter, wasting you money? Take a few minutes and check your landing pages: make sure they deliver what you promised ion your ad, and that the potential buyer doesn’t have a hard time knowing how to buy the product.