As you manage your Google AdWords campaign, it is important to monitor your click through rate (CTR). If your (CTR) is less than 1%, your ad is not attracting potential prospects. Since you are split testing, any ad that’s getting less than a 1% CTR should be deleted and replaced. Furthermore, ads that cost a lot, have low CTRs and low positions are idea candidates for deletion. (Note: CTRs can be improved by changing ad content.)

Idea ad positions are anywhere between positions 1 and 3. Position 2 is preferred among many pay-per-click (PPC) users. Ads in positions 5 through 8 that are costing a lot of money and have low traffic should probably be scrapped.

Don’t get discouraged if none of your ads are working. It takes time to get good at writing ad copy. What you may find useful is to take a look at current ads running in your niche for your keyword phrase. This is, however, simply to get ideas for your own ad copy. You should avoid copying other ads verbatim.

While creating a successful ad campaign is much about trial and error, it’s important to read the information Google supplies about AdWords advertising. Google AdWords is a dynamic program that requires advertisers to stay abreast of AdWords changes. And always remember to stay patient, be responsible and monitor your results.

Good luck and feel free to leave a comment sharing your Google AdWords experiences!

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Part Two of the Google AdWords Mini Course focuses on identifying additional keywords for purposes of split testing. Market Samurai will be used to identify these additional keywords.

Using Market Samurai

Within the Keyword Research function of Market Samurai, select Google Synonym Tool and AdWords Traffic Filter. Click Generate Keywords to continue. Next, you should heavily edit your keyword results to filter out those words that are not tightly related to your main keyword phrase.

Once you’ve filtered your keyword list, click the Analyze Keyword button to continue. Turn off the Organic keyword research and turn on the AdWords option before again clicking Analyze Keywords. Sort the results by the AdWords Traffic (AWT) tab. You want to target those keywords that have some AdWords traffic. The more AdWords traffic, the larger the number of impressions you are going to have. That also means the larger the possibility that people will click on your ad.

You may then use the export function to export the keyword list. This list can be your starting point to expand your Google AdWords campaign. By bidding on a larger list of keywords, you increase the chance of getting more traffic.

Split Testing

To continue with your ad campaign, go to the Campaign Summary page. Click on your current ad group to get detailed results of your current campaign. Next click on the Keyword tab. Activate the Quality Score column by choosing from the Show/Hide Columns drop-down list. The Quality Score gives you an idea about what Google thinks of your landing page, based on a score of Great, OK, or Poor. If the column says Poor, Google tends to raise your cost per click.

Based on the current CPC data, you may want to edit your Default Maximum CPC. For example, if your Default Maximum CPC is $.25 and your actual CPC is $.14, you may consider adjusting to $.15 per click.

With that adjustment, it’s time to add a new ad group. Select the keywords exported from Market Samurai, with a minimum AWT of four visitors per day. Create an ad group with each keyword phrase you’ve selected. Include broad match, phrase match, exact match and any appropriate negative keywords.

Next, you want to create your text-based ad. If you don’t want to change the ad, AdWords automatically uses the last thing you entered. Click continue and choose your Maximum CPC bid for the new ad group. Check the Traffic Estimator to see Google’s estimate on various variables based on the Maximum CPC you entered. You can adjust your Maximum CPC, if necessary.

Now you can review your ad group detail and save it. Complete this process for each of your keywords exported from Market Samurai.

To see different ad variations, go to the Ad Variations tab. You can create a new text ad variation from that screen. Click the Text Add tab to proceed. Creating two to three ad variations is a good start.
When split testing ads, you want to create minor variations. For example, you may change only the description lines or headlines. Depending on the speed of your traffic, you may gauge how the ads are doing within a few days or after 200 clicks.

Going back to the Keyword tab, check the Quality Score of your landing page. Next, go to Edit Campaign Settings. Make sure “Rotate: Show adds more evenly” is selected. This will distribute the impressions evenly across your ad variations. Click Save Changes.

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If you’ve considered adding Google AdWords to your traffic generation strategy, do so with your eyes wide open. Google AdWords is a pay per click campaign that can be quite costly if not properly managed. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that you will get the results you expect. That being said, a pay per click campaign is worth exploring to determine if it can assist in meeting your traffic goals.

To start, you’ll need to create an account at http://adwords.google.com/select/Login. Click Start Now. On the next page, click Standard Edition and then Continue. You’ll then be prompted to create your AdWords account using an existing Google account or a new one. Once selected, you will be prompted to set your currency preferences. This completes Step One of the process.

Step Two of the process is to create your first ad campaign, as follows.

• Target your customers by language (English) and location. Select the location by clicking Change targeting. Under the Browse tab, choose the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and/or Australia. Click Continue to proceed to the next step.

• Create your text-based ad, which includes your:

- Headline – up to 25 characters.
- Description line 1 – up to 35 characters to include a benefit/attribute.
- Description line 2 – up to 35 characters to include a call to action.
- Display URL – up to 35 characters representing the domain name to appear in the ad.
- Destination URL – up to 1024 characters representing the actual location the visitor is taken to.

As a personal preference, you may consider capitalizing the first letter of each word in your domain name. Also, test the link in the Example (preview) box to make sure your URL works properly. Then click Continue.

• Input the main keyword(s) for your niche. It’s advisable to identify negative keywords as appropriate, such as “-free.” This could save you a lot of money on traffic. Next, type your keyword phrase as broad match (without quotations), phrase match (with quotations) and exact match (with brackets). It’s recommended to use one keyword phrase per ad group to optimize your ad the best.

• Set Pricing by inputting the amount you are willing to pay on a daily basis. To start, you may want to input $100 a day. Google tends to be more responsive to advertisers that demonstrate that they are prepared to spend money. However, you need only spend what you are comfortable with and in all cases make sure to monitor your campaign closely.

• Next, input the maximum you are willing to pay per click or Maximum CPC. Here, $.25 is a good start to get a feel for what Google thinks about your ad group. With these data points in place, click View Traffic Estimator to get an idea of the number of clicks you’ll get per day and in what position.

• Set up your billing information.

• Pause and rename your ad group to a more descriptive name. The ad group will show you how many clicks you have, impressions for the ad and the click through rate (CTR). Your target CTR should be 1% and above. Check to make sure your ad is exactly what you want by clicking the Edit campaign settings link and before resuming your campaign. In particular, disable content network for now. The content network allows ads to appear on other’s websites. When testing ads, you want to make sure you have traffic from search before you try the content network.

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You’ve done some market research, created a blog and announced it to the world through Web 2.0 sites and social bookmarking techniques. But, are you getting any traffic?

Before you spend too much time on your niche, you want to make sure you’ve got enough traffic coming to your blog. One gage to test your niche potential is your results after you’ve had 200 unique visitors. If you have not had 200 visitors, look to where you are ranked in Google for both broad match (keyword phrase without quotes) and phrase match (keyword phrase within quotes). It may be that you are not ranked high enough in the search engines to receive at least 200 visitors yet.

If you’ve had 200 unique visitors, check Google analytics to determine how long it took. Next, determine if you sold anything. If so, you’re on the right track. If not, swap in a new affiliate product. The ultimate goal is to get 200 visitors a day and convert at least one of those visitors.

By the way, if you happen to be number one in broad match and you’re not getting traffic, you may want to try something different like target a new keyword phrase.

Once you’ve analyzed your results to date, don’t spin your wheels. Determine whether to move forward with your chosen niche or abandoned it and select a new one.

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After a couple of weeks of going live with your site, bookmarking and creating backlinks, it’s now time to check your blog rank. One method to check your blog rank is to go through pages and pages of search results until you find the site. But, if you don’t have that kind of time or patience, here’s a bit of a shortcut.

First, you’ll need to turn on the SEO for Firefox plugin. Next, change your results in Google to display 100 per page. You’ll find this setting by clicking on “Preferences” next to the Google search bar. Toward the end of the page, you’ll see a “Number of Results” field. Change that to 100 and click “Save Preferences.”

Now with the prep work complete, check your blog rank first by keyword phrase match, i.e., your keyword phrase within quotes. You should have a hundred results displayed for that phrase-matched search.

To determine if you are in the first 100 search results click Ctrl+F on a PC or Apple+F on a Mac. This opens up a small search window at the bottom of your screen’s browser. Type your domain name into the search field, such as “abcreviews” (with or without the .com). If the result is there, you’ll immediately see it highlighted. The SEO for Firefox extension will provide you an exact rank. If your site is not found in the first 100 results, go to page 2 and so on until you locate it, using the search field.

Once you determine your site’s rank for your keyword phrase match, repeat the process for the broad match (your keywords without quotes).

Have you reached the top 100, 50, 25 or 10? Let us know your results and how you got there.

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Day 16 of the 30 Day Challenge focused on creating Ezine Articles. Ezine Articles are a great source of strong authority backlinks to your blog and can generate some quality traffic to your site.  When creating content for submission to Ezine Articles, it is important to review their Terms of Service and Editorial Guidelines. For further information on creating an Ezine Article, click here.

And if you are struggling with content, consider Instant Article Wizard.

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Weebly is another Web 2.0 site presented by the 30 Day Challenge to build links to your main WordPress blog. Weebly is similar to Squidoo, HubPages and Tumblr. However, it is a bit more focused on building a complete website with multiple pages.

To get started, sign up at http://www.weebly.com. You’ll need to enter a username, password and e-mail address. You can create up to five sites under your account. They do have a professional version, which costs $4.99 a month, if you want to build more. For purposes of the 30 day challenge, the basic account is sufficient.

Step 1: In the “Title Your New Site” box, enter your main keyword phrase and click enter.

Step 2: Click on the “Designs” tab and select a theme. You can use the predesigned templates as is or upload your own banner.

Step 3: Click on the “Elements” tab. This section allows you to add various content to your site such as text, videos, RSS feeds or Google adsense. You first want to add text so drag and drop the “Paragraph with Title” element to your page. Input your keyword phrase as the title and a keyword rich article. Hyperlink your keyword phrase to your WordPress blog.

Step 4: Go to “More” and drag and drop the “Feed Reader” icon to your page, underneath the content you added. Next, click on the RSS content box to get the “Element Options” toolbar. Enter the link to your blog’s RSS feed into the “Feed Address” field. Adjust the width to 100% so it fits the entire page. You can also adjust how many items you want to display on the page. Change the “Text” length to medium to show enough content to be picked up by Google.

Step 5: Click ”Publish.” Here, you choose your website address. Choose “Option A: Subdomain of weebly.com.” Enter your keyword phrase. If it is already in use, try a plural option or insert a dash (‘-‘) between each word of your keyword phrase. Click continue and your site is live.

Step 6: To add additional pages, click on the “Pages” tab. Click the “New Page” button and enter the title of the page in the “Page Name” field. Drag and drop the “Title Text” box into the page and input your title and article. Click “Publish” and you are done.

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The third Web 2.0 property that will be used to leverage blogs created by 30 Day Challengers is Tumblr. Tumblr is a blogging site. To create a Tumblr blog, go to http://www.tumblr.com/. When signing up, you’ll need to add an email address, password and URL. The URL should be your keyword phrase.

Next you want to customize your settings:

1. Change the title to your keyword phrase and include a brief description with the keyword phrase as well.
2. Select a theme.
3. Add a RSS feed for a source you actually own.
4. Under the directory tab, make sure the boxes are checked next to “Allow search engines to index your tumblelog” and “Promote me on Tumblr.”
5. Go to the advanced tab and click “Ping the Blogosphere.”
6. Click on the “Text” icon and “Add a Text Post” using your keyword(s) as the title. Hyperlink your keyword phrase so that it points to your WordPress blog. Click save and you’re done.
7. Bookmark the page.

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Using Google Analytics installed to your blog on Day 7 of the 30 Day Challenge, you now want to analyze your blog stats. In particular, you want to look at your traffic sources and the keywords used to find your site. You want to continue to optimize these keywords to increase traffic over time.

Once you’ve reviewed your stats, take some time to right another article and do some social bookmarking.

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HubPages is the second Web 2.0 property that will be used to leverage blogs created by 30 Day Challengers. To create a HubPage, go to http://hubpages.com/user/new/ to create an account and begin creating your hub.

As with Squidoo, you want to choose your main keyword(s) as your title and HubPage address. Next, add some additional keywords related to your niche as tags. After inputting this information, you will be taken to a screen that sets forth a few HubPages rules. Of particular note is the prohibition against spam and the requirement to provide “original” content on your page. After reviewing the rules, you can proceed to building your hub.

Some modules to include on your HubPage are your profile, an RSS feed, a photo and content. In your article, use a keyword phrase to link to your blog.* This link should be different from the site provided in your RSS feed. For example, the link in your RSS feed might point to your Squidoo page and the anchor text in your article might point to your blog. Be careful of including more than two links as your page may get flagged.

Once you complete and publish your HubPage, use Social Marker to bookmark it.

*Select to open the link in the same window because ultimately, you want your visitor to end up on your blog.

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