adwords counterstrike

OPERATION: ADWORDS COUNTERSTRIKE HOW TO BEAT GOOGLE’S LANDING PAGE ADWORDS UPDATE AND OPTIMIZE CAMPAIGNS FOR LOWER CPC AND HIGHER CONVERSIONS An EXCLUSIVE SPECIAL REPORT BY James Pratt & Christopher Choi Disclaimer: This eBook is for educational and information purposes only. Your income results are based on variable factors and we are not personally responsible for how well you do. We do not guarantee or imply any earnings as an Internet business or any business at all have unknown risks involved. You are responsible for your own due diligence in your business decisions. By reading this you agree that the authors are not responsible for the success or failure of your business decisions relating to the information within this eBook. Copyright information: This book, Adwords Counterstrike, is copyrighted by Christopher Choi No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without proper permission. Violation of this copyright will be enforced to the fullest extent of the law. ***All information, graphics, links, titles, words and phrases in this e-book are protected by copyright. Dissemination of this e-book is strictly prohibited. This e-book is not free and is not to be distributed in any form or way possible.*** © Copyright 2006 James Pratt, Christopher Choi A Brief Summary About This Report Thank you for purchasing this report. I have made it a priority to cover everything step-by-step so you can get the most out of the Google Adwords changes and its brand new features as well. I’ve also included information that will increase your conversions, clickthru rates and ultimately profits. There will be 4 sections in this report. The first section is disassembles every bit of Google’s guidelines so you can understand what Google is really about and why they’ve made these changes to Adwords. You’ll also gain critical clues and insights to what they really want which will help you create a better, more profitable campaign from the get-go. I admit that this section might be a bit boring and you might even pass it off as “fluff” because a lot of Internet Marketers are trained to want the “super trick that will give me an instant 10% boost in CTR and 2% in conversions”. But understand that it’s the fundamentals that really make the difference in your business and this section, in my opinion, is more important than any other in this report. The second section covers many tricks and techniques to do exactly what I mentioned above. The little tweaks, secrets, tips and techniques that will deal with your numbers (CTR, conversions, profits, opt-ins, etc.). The third section goes into a step-by-step process of how to apply all the techniques and roll out your Adword campaigns from A-Z starting all the way from keyword and product research. This is a huge extensive chapter that will reveal huge secrets (read over it 2, 3, 5 times) that you’ll find yourself referring back to over and over. The fourth section shows a good example of a landing page and campaign so you can see for yourself how these campaigns look. This will really help you model the right landing page, ad, research and more. The last is just a checklist of things to do. SECTION 1: Disassembling Google’s Guidelines THE DAY OF GOOGLE’S ASSAULT 7/07/06 It hit everybody like a storm… In July of 2006, Google made changes to their Adwords program called the landing page quality score. Suddenly, people who were making several thousands monthly promoting affiliate programs were forced out of the affiliate marketing business in an instant. Marketers who’ve spent months building their adwords campaigns, finding the perfect affiliate program, and doing extensive keywords had their efforts flushed down the toilet in a mere snap of Google’s finger. Bid prices skyrocketed. Marketers who paid 5, 10, 15 cents per keyword were now paying 50 cents, 1 dollar, some even up to 5 dollars per keyword! Even as they lowered their bid positions, their costs remained too high for them to stay in the game. So what happened? Did Google no longer want our money, did they want to rid the playing field of affiliate marketers, were they pressured by their shareholders? People in marketing forums started screaming as their income dropped from thousands to literally nil, Google’s offices were ringing off the hook with angry advertisers, and worse – hundreds of people started throwing around theories of why click costs shot up and what Google wanted. The only thing that we knew was that Google wanted a “quality landing page”. And marketers kept changing around their landing pages without any effort or results. They kept calling Google’s offices only to their employees to reply back saying “don’t call us again”. In many cases, it seems like they did everything right yet they were still paying a dollar or more for keywords they’ve paid 10, 20 cents previously. What was even more bizarre was that some marketers were not affected at all. Sure, some of their campaigns may have shot up a few cents here and there. But in general their click costs stayed the same. So what was going on? After extensive testing with my marketing partner, we decided to experiment in many different ways and come up with an answer. We decided to write down all our findings and release a special report. After the dust settled, people were still not reporting how to cope with the Google changes despite the fact that the changes happened 4 months ago. The few marketers that did, however, still did not come up with anything definite or solid. It was all still mostly theory and most people were still scared to say anything in fear of misleading the public. So in this report, we’ve laid out all the factors that contribute to your bid position, cost per click and even went as far as to include various strategies to increase your conversions. Let’s start out first by stating what Google “wants” and the official meaning of what they dubbed their landing page quality score. The REAL Meaning of That Dreaded Landing Page Quality Score So what did Google have to say about the landing page update? On their blog located at adwords.blogspot.com, they posted” “As you may recall, we began incorporating advertiser landing page quality into the Quality Score back in December 2005. Following that change, advertisers who are not providing useful landing pages to our users will have lower Quality Scores that in turn result in higher minimum bid requirements for their keywords. We realize that some minimum bids may be too high to be cost-effective indeed, these high minimum bids are our way of motivating advertisers to either improve their landing pages or to simply stop using AdWords for those pages, while still giving some control over which keywords to advertise on. Although it is counter-intuitive to some who hear it, we'd rather show one less ad than to show an ad which leads to a poor user experience since long-term user trust in AdWords is of overarching importance. From time-to-time, we improve our algorithms for evaluating landing page quality (often based on feedback from our end-users), and next week we're launching another such improvement. Thus, over the coming days a small number of advertisers who are providing a low quality user experience on their landing pages will see increases in their minimum bids. It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of advertisers will not be affected at all by this change, as they link to quality landing pages. If you do see an increase in minimum bids and you feel that your landing page is providing a great user experience, please contact AdWords support and we'll take a look. Also, for useful guidelines which will help to define what users look for in a high quality site, we hope you'll take a look at the landing page and site quality guidelines, from the AdWords Help Center.” As you can see, I’ve bolded the main important key points of Google’s statement regarding the landing page update. Why did Google make changes to their Adwords algorithm? Although it seems like I’m leading you on by a carrot, I want you to understand this on a very deep level because the answer to this will lead to greater profits, less competition and more opportunity. If you know anything about Google’s success, then you know the main reason why Google became the 800 lb gorilla in the Search Engine game despite the fact that they were late in the game, was because they simply provided users quality results. While other search engines had poor algorithms and made showing ads their first priority, Google’s main priority was simply to deliver the results the searcher wanted. They had an algorithm that helped people find what they want faster and easier than the other Search Engines. Soon, people started bookmarking the Google site and used Google as a primary source of information while dumping their competitors. And this leads to the conclusion – Yes, in the short run they are losing money from advertisers no longer wanting to bid with them due to the changes. However, they’d rather have one less advertiser ruining the user experience so they can keep their user loyalty in the long run. Google knows the reason for their success (surprisingly many companies do not) and wants to main their main focus – to serve their users. That is why Google’s cracking down on one-page opt-in forms (called squeeze pages), affiliate landing pages that are very thin on content, Adsense arbitrage sites and several one page salesletter sites – which is mainly the way many Internet Marketers make their living online. What Google Really Wants In Plain English As we read above, Google wants a quality landing page that provides the users with what they’re looking for as opposed to one with a “poor user experience”. To see the specifics (or should I say broad), I’m going to point you to the Google Adwords Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines which is located at: https://adwords.google.com/select/siteguidelines.html While they are very broad and they state the best practices instead of the “golden rule”, it is still important to extract as much clues as we can from their guidelines. Let’s take a look at some of them right now and break down each individual component step-by-step. “Provide relevant and substantial content. If users don't quickly see what they clicked on your ad to find, they'll leave your site frustrated and may never return to your site or click on ads in the future. Here are some pointers for making sure that doesn't happen: - Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad. - Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text. - Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content. - Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering. - In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad. - You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site). For more information, see our affiliate guidelines. Starting with your ad, each interaction you have with your potential customers and customers should be geared towards building a trusting relationship. To avoid leading users astray: - Users should be able to easily find what your ad promises. - Openly share information about your business. Clearly define what your business is or does. - Honor the deals and offers you promote in your ad. - Deliver products, goods, and services as promised. Example: If you advertise an offer for a free product or service, users shouldn't have to pass through excessive obstacles or make a purchase in order to receive the offer.” Besides the obvious pointers, let’s look at some of the key factors that you have to address. “Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text.” While this is a best practice with Adwords, many marketers do not abide by this rule. For example: many marketers will go out and bid on a search term like “start a business” and on the landing page have nothing that reminds the visitor of the original search term. They’ll have something promoting real estate, Internet marketing, network marketing or something else related to making an income. However, the main keyword phrase “start a business” is nowhere to be seen on the landing page. Related keyword terms are also missing on the landing page and are replaced with what the marketer is trying to promote ie.) real estate, Internet marketing, make money online, etc. instead of keywords like “business plan, business start-up, business loans, capital, etc.” So the lesson to be learned is that when running a campaign in Google Adwords, you should think in the process of: keyword phrase Æad Æ landing page Æfollow-ups You should start out by researching the keywords, then including it in your Adwords display ad, then mention it with other related terms in your landing page as well as remind your visitors with follow-ups. This ensures the maximum conversion rates while also delivering the best results to Google and their users. It’s a true win-win situation yet many marketers are so consumed with what they “think” the user should see as opposed to delivering what the user really wants – which consequently results in more profits as a result. “Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.” This is not a big issue here but Google doesn’t want any sneaky tricks so that you force users to click on ads on your landing page unknowingly. An example of this would be using CSS to make your links look like regular text or trying to trick users into clicking on something they wouldn’t want to click on. “Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.” While this sounds like a huge blow to direct response marketers on the Internet using direct opt-in pages (also called Squeeze Pages), you can still make opt-in pages work (I’ll get to this later in the book). Google is sick and tired of one page websites that force the user to opt-in and nothing else. They want the user to at least walk away from the page acquiring knowledge of something they were something for, as opposed to a bunch of teasers that tell a fourth of the whole story and very little information. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t use opt-in landing pages. It just means you’ll have to provide more value AND have a solid offer or preview of what your user will get if they decide to pull the trigger and opt-in to your newsletter. I’ll describe what the bigger issue seems to be when it comes to these kinds of landing pages and how to use simple tricks to get around Google’s issue with opt-in pages later on. [...]... around keywords that are worth $20 a click while bidding 10 cents on Adwords to make a profit So let’s say you have a page with $20 keywords which earn you 50% ($10) and have a clickthru rate of 10% This means for every 100 visitors, you’ll earn $100 To make a profit, you’d have to bid less than $1 on Adwords to make a profit from that Adwords campaign 50% of $20 keyword = $10 10% clickthru rate = $100... with doubt and fear Google Is Not Your Enemy, But Your Business Partner I know that the title of this report is Adwords Counterstrike but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea I’m not about tricking Google, ripping them off or making them my enemy The title was referring to countering the Adwords quality score changes and that’s all I truly believe in treating Google as your business partner You’ll... pay on Adwords I’ll explain this in better detail but I want to tell you what the changes and future changes should mean to you first and foremost New Changes Brings Forth New Opportunities – Now Is Your Chance To Stomp Your Competitors One of the most important points I want to pass on to you is that with knowledge and hard work, you’ll have a huge advantage against all the other advertisers on Adwords. .. world but lately has been integrated to the PPC world of Adwords Google no longer wants people to bid on the same keyword with their landing pages filled up with the same duplicate content as other websites And here’s the kicker: This includes content from the search engines! This doesn’t mean duplicate content concerning other advertisers on Adwords but throughout the whole web! Now it’s essential... Centerpiece Of The Quality Score Update Throughout the update and from test results, it seems that there is one main truth that is affecting how much you are paying on Google Adwords SEO factors now make up the components of how much you pay on Adwords That may be a bold statement but let’s delve into what I mean… Back when the first changes occurred in July, some people were experimenting with putting their... standpoint rather than just Adwords as they have done before Google decided to determine credibility and quality for ‘websites’ which had a good number of pages of quality content and were also onpage optimized for the search engines With that in mind and a lot of experimentation, I have found several tricks, tactics and strategies that affect how much you ultimately pay for your bids on Adwords Let’s dive... a certain keyword or phrase which ranks you in the top positions Do incoming links affect your cost per click on Adwords? That’s still something I’m in the process of testing as far as cost per click is concerned Honestly, I don’t think it’s a factor that relates to how much you pay on Adwords (For example the more links you get the less you pay) It’s definitely something you want test but understand... flow of your copy natural while adding keywords whenever necessary and possible Trick 13: “They’re Judging You” – Google has human beings reviewing your adwords ads now Every now and then, you’ll see the “was this ad helpful to you” question next to an adwords ad while you’re searching Google What does this mean? This means that you should do your best to provide relevant results instead of trying to... match too well with a few keywords, rip them out of the ad group and start a new one and see if you can make it work SECTION 3: 4 Steps To Adwords Success Step 1: How To Increase Your Chances Of Picking a Profitable Affiliate Program If you’re advertising on Adwords as an affiliate you need to know how to pick the right affiliate programs That’s critical to your success if you’re doing any affiliate... profitable affiliate program from the getgo 1 EPC – Does it have a good EPC (earnings per click)? If an EPC is 40 cents per click you are bidding 15 cents per click on Adwords, you have a higher chance of profitably promoting the merchant on Adwords 2 Are there many holes on the landing page? Does the merchant offer a paypal payment option or a 1800 number which doesn’t track your affiliate code? Also does . OPERATION: ADWORDS COUNTERSTRIKE HOW TO BEAT GOOGLE’S LANDING PAGE ADWORDS UPDATE AND OPTIMIZE CAMPAIGNS FOR LOWER CPC AND HIGHER CONVERSIONS. is Adwords Counterstrike but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not about tricking Google, ripping them off or making them my enemy. The title was referring to countering the Adwords. from the AdWords Help Center.” As you can see, I’ve bolded the main important key points of Google’s statement regarding the landing page update. Why did Google make changes to their Adwords