The Big Three In Pay Per Click Search Engines

By Josh Prizer

It's time to ratchet up your pay per click advertising and you are looking for the most effective way to use your ad budget. Maybe you've just begun PPC advertising and need help. Let's take a look at the most effective ways to optimize your search marketing ad campaigns using Google, Yahoo, MSN and others.

Google, Yahoo and MSN

Google, Yahoo and MSN provide the best results these days. They've morphed into more or less the same sort of PPC services. You can geo-target ads, you can set ads to turn on and off during peak times, you can split test ad copy, you've got complicated quality scores to optimize, etc., etc. Google still holds the lion's share of the search traffic, but each has something to offer.

AdWords From Google

Quality traffic is important and Google AdWords remains on top in delivering high-volume clicks that count. However, don't sleep on Google's success -- you still need to monitor your results with frequency. With enough the time, knowledge and the right tools, you can do this yourself, or you can outsource all that to a professional PPC management company.

One of the main problems with Google is that it is not only becoming more and more competitive, it is also getting more and more difficult to master. With "Quality Scores" playing a more important role these days and more bids coming up "Inactive for Search," it introduces more variables into the equations. If you are willing to put in the time to continually test and monitor your keywords, you can maintain a healthy Google account. If you don't, you get penalized. You'll see bid minimums raised or forced to pay higher prices, or even be purposely priced out. The good news is that with consistent effort, you can actually fine tune and tweak your ad campaigns to the point where you are actually paying lower prices, but getting higher ranks than your competitors.

With any of the PPC engines, you need to make sure you separate out your content network advertising from your search advertising and track those separately. If you don't in Google, bad keywords are probably leaking your account right now.

Are you an advertiser with a big monthly budget? If so, you can't afford to put down your guard with Google -- it can be costly. We recommend either dedicating more time, allocating more staff and hours or using a professional management company.

Yahoo Search Marketing: Still Essential

In response to what Google had done in the PPC marketplace, Yahoo Search Marketing (which used to be called Overture, and before that, Goto.com) re-tooled their network early in 2007 with its Panama update. While Yahoo is no longer on top of the pay per click field as they had been in the past, it's still a worthy place to invest.

Like Google, Yahoo has its own quality algorithm called "Quality Index." Once again, it's important to monitor and tweak - scores must be dialed up with continual testing. Frequent split testing will help refine your ad quality. While you won't like get slapped as hard as Google does, Yahoo has been increasing their efforts here.

With ad copy testing, you want to focus on the three C's: Customer, Competition and your Company. What makes you special from your competition? What makes you more relevant to your customers? Test different ad concepts. Then, when you find a winner, use that as a control and refine your ad with small changes to variables. The key is to consistently test to crank up that Yahoo Quality Index.

High Quality With MSN AdCenter

Even though MSN was late to the party with pay per click advertising, they shouldn't be ignored. We've noticed some high quality traffic to go along with their very useful targeting capabilities. You'll be able to utilize the same geo-targeting type of local PPC campaigns as the others. Additionally, however, is the ability to target the demographics of users. For example, if you see high conversions on your website for a specific type of visitor, MSN will allow you to raise your bids when it finds those potential clients or consumers using the MSN search network.

An important new feature from MSN allows you to import your Google AdWords accounts with much more ease. Note: Make sure your Google campaigns are as optimized and finely tuned as possible, or you will be making the same errors twice by importing them. And unless you have time to monitor them both daily, it might better to smooth out your problems in Google first. If you have large Ad Groups with huge lists of keywords, you need to condense those down into smaller, more manageable ones. Doing this will allow you to pinpoint the keywords with more relevant ads. And, again, keep testing and re-testing your targeted ads over and over.

The Rest of the Pack

We've seen mixed results with Ask and Looksmart. You can find some traffic that will pay off one week, then next week you are flooded with bad results and your Earnings Per Click go south for the winter ... and sometimes the other three seasons, as well. Miva can also be hit or miss. If you are doing a poor job managing your other PPC accounts, we definitely suggest you don't push your luck into any of these others. There is some good traffic there, but you have to double your efforts on tracking and keep a tight eye on results since things can turn sour fast. Avoid all the other pay per click engines.

You'll find that the PPC programs of Google, Yahoo, and MSN are probably more than enough work to keep you occupied -- especially if you are playing the game correctly. If you are not doing daily ad split tests, if you aren't keeping track of sales results down to the keyword level, if you are not searching for the money-making keywords that your competition is using, then you are not using the Big Three to the fullest potential. Invest your time, effort and money there before pushing on to others...you will get a better return on your investment.

Protect Your Investment

If you have been ignoring the daily management needs of your PPC accounts, bad keywords are likely leaking your funds. Meanwhile, the good keywords are getting more and more expensive because your quality scores are slipping compared to your competitors. Protect your investment with close supervision or hire a professional pay per click management company to do the critical work for you.

About the Author:

Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and PPC Expert for Zero Company Performance Marketing, a pay per click management company. Check out his site today to discover more about how to improve your PPC advertising accounts and performance. You are welcome to reprint this article - but get your own unique content version here.

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3 Most Common Reasons People Fail At Article Marketing...

By Aaron Anderson

Some people say article marketing doesn't work anymore. Which that might be true if you just write crap and expect people to love you for it. If you do it correctly it still works and could be one of your most powerful promotion strategies. Here are three common article marketing mistakes.

1. Confusing the reason for writing articles with the reason for promoting your business with articles.

Even though there are many reasons to use articles to promote your business, writing the articles have only one reason.

Let's begin by discussing the purpose of promoting your business through article marketing. Articles can bring a lot of visitors to your site. No matter what topic your articles cover, you will be seen as an expert on that topic. While this is great, it can't be the sole reason for writing articles. So what should your focus be in writing articles?

The only reason you should write article is to provide value to your readers. If you have any hidden agendas it will be pretty obvious. And no one likes hidden agendas. If that's the case you might as well not waste your time.

Your readers will only trust you if you give them good value. You can advise them that you have more information on your site in the resource box.

2. Not maximizing the potential of every article.

Alright you wrote an article so what do you do next. Next you should make sure you have an attractive resource box. If you writing great articles but no one is visiting your website that's not going to do much for you. Give your readers a reason to visit your site.

The technique of making keywords into hyperlink text is a very effective way of using your resource box to increase the impact of your article. Getting help with you search engine rank is an indirect benefit you will see as well as increased traffic to your site when visitors click those links.

Once your article is ready, you submit it to article directories. Then you are finished? NO.

Many people go wrong at this point. Now you also submit the article to web publishers individually. People who want to submit articles of there own are the most frequent visitors to article directories. Web publishers will use your article on their own websites or send it to their email lists so your article is read by real people.

3. Writing articles that aren't helpful to the reader

Your articles have to be of help to people or two things can happen. Your business can be negatively impacted by either of them.

The first is that readers will not trust you if they find your article of no help to them after reading it. Of course, they may not even finish reading it. They will very likely just click away and find something that is of more value.

Second, anyone putting your article on their site is not even going to be considered. If they put your article on their site, they would be risking their own reputation. They will lose trust if they put an article up that is garbage. This means you won't get much in the way of links either. So it would be a waste of time.

Dead is not a good description of article marketing. It just takes a little more time and effort to do it right. But doing it right will mean great benefits for your business, so it is worth the effort.

About the Author:

Author Aaron Anderson runs his own online business. He gives you tips on how to do it. Be sure to check this out if you are starting an online business. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

Easy E-book Creation Program

By John Allison

Someone Finally Makes Sense Out Of Creating E-books!

I have made a decent amount of money selling other peoples info products and ebooks, but I have finally discovered where the real money is...my own info products and ebooks.

I realized that by the same effort, I could be selling my own info product or ebook and receiving 100% of the sale instead of a measly 40% - 50% of the sale. Now don't get me wrong, I have made good money with this approach and I have in most peoples eyes a pretty good life.

I'm not a techy type person by any means and so I had no idea whatsoever about how to create an ebook of my own. In fact, this was the most frustrating part about the whole thing. I spent a ton of money on products that promised me the world and did nothing but empty my wallet.

Now what do I create my ebook about or my info product?

However, not to be perturbed, I set about trying to find someone that could teach me how create my own information product and get it up on the internet. Well, I did find a few ebooks, so I bought the two that looked most likely to be of help.

Having waded my way through both of them over one weekend, I was left feeling very disappointed. They both left me no further forward, to be honest and both made the whole process sound complicated and difficult to achieve.

I nearly gave up on the idea, but decided to continue my search for some help in the matter. I came across one website where a course was being offered that seemed to be what I wanted....then I scrolled down the page and saw the price...$1,247.00!!!

How am I suppose to make money if I have to spend that kind of money just to get up and running. I continued looking for over 2 1/2 weeks when I came across a banner that read..."The 6 Week Course That Is Changing People's Lives!"

This was another course all about how to create your own information product and get it online and ready to start earning you a very decent income. But this time it was as if the site had been written specifically for me. It was exactly what I was looking for. A step-by-step course that would take me by the hand and show me exactly what I needed to know! The guy tells a very interesting story on the website that I could identify with.

I thought yea...this baby is going to cost a fortune. I was tempted not to even look at it and just move on, but the curiosity was killing me. I went to the bottom of the page and lo-and-behold, it was extremely affordable...I mean really affordable and it would allow me to create as many products as I wanted with no restrictions.

I bit the bullet, bought the affordable program and followed lesson one down to the very letter. I eagerly awaited lesson 2 in my email folder and could not wait to get going on this...all I could see was dollar figures. This was the most amazing simple step-by-step approach ever created.

I completed the course and I now have my information product in an area that I knew nothing about and it will be launched in just a few days to a tightly guarded niche.

I know full well that there must be an awful lot of people just like me who want to have their own ebook or information product, but just don't know where to start.

About the Author:

When you are ready about creating your own ebooks or info product then you need to check out the the 6 week course above. You receive a lesson every week and you will be creating your own ebooks and info product in six weeks or less. Click here to get your own unique version of this article.

Mistakes Of Pay Per Click Advertising: The Terrible 10

Mistakes in pay per click advertising are common and often very costly. Doing it right requires some vigilance and micromanaging. Here are 10 of the top mistakes people make in their PPC campaigns.

Too Few Ad Groups For Your Keywords

If you put all your keywords into just a few big and broad ad groups, it's time to restructure your account. You are missing out on important flexibility that pay per click advertising allows. Tighter ad groups allows you more focussed, relevant ads.

Ignoring Negative Keywords

Negative keywords reduce unwanted impressions, and more importantly, unwanted click throughs. However, with increasing priority given to "quality scores" and click through rates in the PPC engines, it's key to trim the fat from your keyword campaigns. If your company sells "widget management software" then be sure that you have keywords like "-serial" or "-free" assigned as negative keywords (unless, of course, you offer it for free in some manner). You can find good negative keywords in your log files or when you build your lists.

Not Enough Testing

Split-testing your ads is critical. Even the smallest of changes can boost results. In addition to testing your ad copy's "call to action" or value statements, every ad has multiple variables to test. The titles, the two lines of copy, and display url all can be optimized. If you don't have time for hands-on testing, a good professional pay per click management company can run daily split testing for you. You'd be surprised how well this can pay off.

Not Tracking Results

If you do get into testing ads and fine-tuning your keyword lists, it's only as effective as your tracking. Any PPC search engine will give you your ad spends and click through rates, but what about the bottom-line success? Knowing that you made $14,000 off of a $7,000 ad spend is fine, but if you dig deeper with your tracking you might be able to make that same $14,000 with only $6,000 a month in spend. That savings ads up.

Not Getting Keyword-Level Tracking

Setting up good analytics yourself or hiring a professional pay per click management company can do the job. Not only do you get more bang for your buck by getting rid of poor performers, but getting tracking to the keyword-level makes all of your testing and work even more precise. You need to know your earnings per click. If one keyword has a 56 cent Earnings Per Click (EPC) and another had a $1.22 EPC, this is important knowledge. Adjusting your bids to an appropriate level can keep you from over spending...or allow you to throttle up your overall traffic for even more success. Don't let poor keywords leak your accounts.

Too Generic of Keywords

Some broad and generic keywords can certainly push a ton of traffic to your site. They may even be very successful. Often, however, they can also do just the opposite -- drain your funds with poor results. A user searching on one of these generic phrases is often doing research in an early part of the buying process. Knowing your keyword-level results and filtering out bad variations with negative keywords can help you get a true read on these generic keywords.

Avoiding the Dirty Work of Building Long-Tail Keywords

This dovetails into the previous item. Building out lists and ads for long-tail keywords can be a time-consuming process, but worthwhile if done right. You are going to have different earnings per click for the keywords "dvd player," "sony dvd player" and "sony dvd player model DVP-NS57P/B." One consumer is doing research, while the other is likely pricing for the specific model they want and is ready to buy.

Not Pulling Apart Content and Search Campaigns

If you don't want to get burned by click fraud or poor traffic, you need to make sure your content network campaigns and your search network campaigns are separated. If you don't know what this means, chances are they aren't separated in your account and you are likely losing money. Ideally, you would have separate campaigns for each, along with precision analytics to know exactly what keyword from which source is converting for you in the content network.

Not Geo-Targeting a Local Business

Local businesses that attract clients from their region must take advantage of the geo-targeting that each of the major PPC engines offer. Bringing that local clientele to your front door on non-local keywords can increase profits greatly.

Not Frequently Monitoring Your Accounts

Alright, so maybe you do not frequently monitor your EPCs at the keyword level (you should). And, you don't conduct split tests every day your ads are up (you should). It is still surprising that there are a high number of pay per click advertisers who don't continually monitor their accounts. The big three PPC engines are cracking down on poor performing ads more than ever. Many advertisers are getting stung with the "Inactive for Search" label on their keywords. If you don't monitor your accounts, Google, Yahoo and MSN may have plucked some of your keywords off their networks. And, with that, some of your profits.

Making mistakes like the Terrible 10 of PPC Advertising are common, but correcting them can have a huge impact on your bottom line. If you can manage your pay per click ads at a high level or if you can hire them out to a professional pay per click management company...the results for your increased precision and effort will pay off.

Google Adwords Reviewed

By Robert Gantt

The Google Adwords program is unparalleled as a marketing vehicle. I'm a Google Qualified Professional. Each time I set up a new client it blows their mind when they start recieving the traffic that previously seemed so illusive.I think it's the most cost efficient method of driving a budgeted amount of targeted traffic to your site.

For those of you who don't know, Google Adwords is the pay per click service provided by Google. There is a search network and a content network. According to Google, when advertising in the search network, "Your ads may appear alongside or above search results, as part of a results page as a user navigates through a site's directory, or on other relevant search pages."

Google explains, when advertising in the search network, "Your ads may appear alongside or above search results, as part of a results page as a user navigates through a site's directory, or on other relevant search pages."

The search network contains: AOL, Netscape,Earthlink,Compuserve,Shopping.com AT&T, Ask.com. The Adwords search network is the quickest way to reach 86% of worldwide Internet users.

Both networks are powerhouse marketing tools.

With these tools you can see how Google Adwords has become a entrepreneur's dream. Google can serve up the exact ads that are most relevant to the desires of your potential prospects. Never before have advertisers had this kind of control. It's fascinating!

Our customers are so happy with their online marketing programs that they consistently rave and send us testimonials about how outsourcing this important function has made such a difference in their bottomline. By allowing us to take full advantage of the power that Google Adwords provides on their behalf their businesses have substantially grown and much faster then if they had to do the work themselves.

About the Author:

Robert Gantt has shown hundreds of companies how to promote their businesses and make more money online. Learn how to increase your sales, cashflow and your customer base with targeted effective search engine advertising PPC The Easy Way This and other unique content 'beating adwords' articles are available with free reprint rights.