Archive for January, 2009:
This is the third post of the series “how to increase your search ad CTR”. The technique I’m going talk about in this post applies BOTH for search and content ads. I’m going start by showing these two ads first.
Men Luxury Fashion Trend
Save 50-75% on High End Men Sweaters
100% Authentic Stylish Luxury Wear
VS.
Men Sweaters
Classic Sweaters and Accessories.
Shop Our Wide Selection Now!
I ran a search on Google with the key phrase “men sweaters sale” and saw the two ads you see above with bunch of other ads. The two ads you see above are totally different from each other. How?
Simple. The 2nd ad only tells me they got a bunch of sweaters whereas the first ad tells me they have a heavy sale on men’s sweaters (more interesting) . Now, if you were looking to buy men’s sweaters online, which one of the ad would you have clicked on? Exactly! The first one is more appealing because a buyer’s interest is to save money, so the numbers in the first ad not only attracted our attention but also told us we can save between 50-75% there, which is exactly what anyone with the buying mode would be interested in.
Furthermore, the first ad is using numbers and % sign to gain advantage by not only attracting our attention but also giving us incentive (sale) to click on the ad.
Using digits, symbols and signs in search ads
We now know that, anything other than normal text is going make the ad more stand out. We’re only allowed to use certain symbols, signs and characters in our ads. One of them is the $ sign and the % sign. Using these wisely will definitely increase your CTR.
How do I effectively use numbers and signs in my ads?
You should definitely not clutter your ads with bunch of digits and dollar signs. Use them once or twice (I only recommend once) and use them wisely. Check out the example below to get an idea of a good ad.
Buy Men Dress Shoes
We Have 45,700+ Men’s Shoes.
Men Dress Shoes on Sale!
The 2nd one is even better. (This was an Amazon ad but I tweaked it a bit to make it look for appealing).
Buy Men Dress Shoes
4000+ Brands at up to 40% off.
Free Shipping on Men’s Shoes!
In my first post Improving Click Through Rate on Your Search Ads, I showed a technique I use to improve my ad CTR. In this post, I will explain a feature in the ad system, which is used to improve ad relevance, thus attracting more clicks and improving ad CTR. The feature is called “keyword insertion”.
What is keyword insertion?
In short, keyword insertion is a technique used in pay per click advertising to have the ad contain the same key phrases typed by the user in the search box.
Example:
Say you have the following keywords in your ad group and the ad is setup to use key keyword insertion.
Keywords:
adwords guide
google adwords guide
Ad:
{KeyWord: Adwords Gude}
Learn Adwords Secrets in Minutes.
#1 Selling {KeyWord: Adwords Guide}!
Now, when the user types in the key phrase “google adwords guide”, the will appear as follow:
Google Adwords Guide
Learn Adwords Secrets in Minutes.
#1 Selling Google Adwords Guide!
Similarly, the same ad will appear as follow when the user types in “adwords guide”
Adwords Guide
Learn Adwords Secrets in Minutes.
#1 Selling Adwords Guide!
Neat eh 
What’s the purpose of using keyword insertion?
Keyword insertion is used to increase the relevance of your ad. The user is more likely to click your ad when the key phrase they type in the search appear in your ad. This will help improve ad click though rate, giving you more traffic. Keyword insertion in ads should be used with care thou.
When to use keyword insertion?
Keyword insertion should most definitely be used when testing a bunch of keywords. When launching a new campaign, you can put a bunch of keywords (related) in one ad group and use keyword insertion to test which keywords perform better.
Using keyword Insertion in your ads
Using the keyword insertion your ads real simple. You just need to follow the syntax defined by the search engine ad system. Keyword insertion ad examples for both Adwords (Google) and YSM (Yahoo) are shown blow, with links to their help pages.
Keyword insertion in Adwords:
In adwords, the syntax of using keyword insertion is straight forward. You can use {KeyWord:default text} anywhere in your ad. This includes ad title, line 1, line 2 and display url line. See below.
Example:
Buy {KeyWord:Phones}
Selection of {Keyword:phones}
in stock. Free shipping!
www.example.com
http://www.example.com/?kw={keyword:nil}
Google Adwords help page:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74996
Keyword insertion in Yahoo Search Marketing:
In the YSM, the syntax is very similar. {KEYWORD:default text}
Note: In YSM, you can’t keyword insertion in the display url. I never tried it but I believe you can’t do that.
An example in YSM:
Buy {KEYWORD:Phones}
Selection of {KEYWORD:phones}
in stock. Free shipping!
YSM help page:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/fi/yahoo/ysm/sps/manage/mngad/manage_inskey.html
My own experience with keyword insertion
I saw my ad CTR definitely go up. In some cases I have gotten better conversions when using keyword insertion and in some conversions dropped. The ad groups with dropped conversion rate had generic terms. The more targeted the ad group the better it will perform and with keyword insertion you will definitely squeeze in more clicks.
New Design
First of all I hope you guys like the new blog template I selected for this blog. I wanted to get a new theme for my blog and I was struggling to find that good simple theme. I had been looking for a theme for few days and selected this one. I like this theme for few reasons.
- This theme is simple and techy looking at the same time. I like the fact that I could add a little welcome message and a picture (for authenticity) on the main page.
- I like the green/brown combo. Since this is an online money making blog, so green color suits well.
- I like how the RSS and Email subscription button on top are more visible then my previous templates. I want to get more subscribers on to my blog and having the button visible on all pages will help. I’m trying to figure out to put my RSS feed link at the end of every post.
If you are interested to find out where I got the template, you can go to the theme page directly. This template comes in a 3 column style as well.
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/greentech-wordpress-theme-released/
You can find more templates here.
http://wphacks.com/best-wordpress-3-column-themes/
Goals for 2009
Of course, with New Year comes new goals. I was sitting down the other day and thinking, what do I want to achieve in 2009 from my online business. Here are few things I want to do.
I know I said I was going to update this blog occasionally and that’s it. But I want to do more than just update this blog. I want to get more readership to my blog, get this blog up in page rank and drive more traffic to it. Similarly, I want to set a revenue goal for my affiliate marketing business as well.
So, for 2009, I have set following two goals.
Affiliate Marketing Goal:
In 2009, my goal is to drive 200k in revenue from affiliate marketing efforts.
In 2008, I did just over 100k in revenue in 8-9 months. I think 200k is a reasonable goal. It would not make sense for me to have said 300k. I probably be able to do 300k but I believe moving forward in small steps makes more sense and is more attainable.
Growing my Blog:
Being an active blogger and growing my blog is another goal for 2009. I like to increase my readership to 300 readers (feedburner) at the end of 2009. That’s my goal for this blog.
The other day I read a post on Problogger “The Essential Guide to Growing Your Blog on Minimal Time”. I really liked this post since it shared a lot of simple techniques you can use to grow your blog.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/07/the-essential-guide-to-growing-your-blog-on-minimal-time/
Conclusion
Having goals is easy but following through is a another ball game. Having a action plan for your goals will definitely help you achieve your goals. So my action plan is to continue actively doing affiliate marketing well into 2009 and also by better scheduling my time, setting small daily and weekly tasks and most importantly following through.
So what are your goals for 2009?
-G
Ad click through ratio can make a world of difference in your overall revenue and profits. Today I’m gonna show you a trick that I’ve used in the past to improve my ads click through rate.
Lets use an example
Imagine you’re promoting an ebook that teaches people how to effectively use adwords system for their business. Now, you may have 100s of keywords split into dozens of ad groups.
Side Note: Remember, to get a good quality score on search network, it’s important to split your keywords into targeted ad groups. This applies to both Adwords and YSM.
Say one of those ad group is called “adwords guide” and you have the following set of keywords in this ad group.
[adwords guide]
“adwords guide”
adwords guide
[google adwords guide]
“google adwords guide”
google adwords guide
Tip: Yes, I normally add all match types of the the same keyword in the ad group. I do this to test the keywords. I pause the ones that don’t perform well after a few days of testing.
Now compare the two following ads for this ad group. Notice the differences?
Your Copy:
Google Adwords Guide
Adwords Secrets Guide Revealed.
Double Your Revenue In Just Days!
My Copy:
Google Adwords Guide
Learn Adwords Secrets in Minutes.
#1 Selling Google Adwords Guide!
Which ad caught your attention? Certainly the 2nd one, right. Not necessarily for it’s language and tone but for the choice of keywords used and how the keywords were placed in the ad.
Why 2nd ad gets higher CTR:
1. Keyword presence
Our keyword adwords guide or google adwords guide appears in the 2nd line at the end. Having the keywords at the bottom line in this way has a higher chance of catching user’s attention.
2. Higher visibility
Notice the number of bold keywords between ad #1 and ad #2. Ads with more bold text are usually more noticeable. In the 2nd ad we have bold text in all three lines of the text ad. It creates higher visibility for our ad.
3. Better quality score
Having the search keywords in the ads results in higher quality score. With better quality and competitive bids, your ads will appear higher in rank, resulting in more clicks and higher CTR.
This trick I have used in almost all of my campaigns so far ever since I first discovered it accidentally. First I noticed my ad started getting higher CTR. Then I figured out what I did to get that and I saw my ad was using this technique.
I can’t make any guarantees that this will have either good or bad affect on your ad CTR. There are lots of variables here for an ad to succeed or fail. It depends on the niche, keywords, demographics, age, user’s mind set and so on. But it never hurts to try this. I think, it will definitely have some positive effect as I’ve experience myself. Good luck!
-G
