In Google’s defense, it has to balance two customer bases that can’t exist without each other. On the one hand, there are the searchers. They want good information, relevant search engine (and paid search) results, fast answers, quality content, and no spam (definition open to interpretation). On the other hand, there are the advertisers. They want traffic, as much as they can get and as cheaply as they can get it. There are also some “bad apples” out there that try and get away with underhanded techniques and get rich quick schemes. These are the ones that Google is the most concerned about.

The problem is that the very measures that Google puts in place to protect itself and its searchers from these types of advertisers are the ones that can make it difficult for the well-intentioned advertiser from making Adwords work for them.

Adwords can be a very profitable place to invest your advertising budget. In fact, I make most of my living doing so. The key is to understand the (sometimes unwritten) rules, tips, and tricks to employ in order to keep Google happy. If Google is happy, then your per click costs will be going down, and your traffic will be going up. The added benefit is that making Google happy will generally result in better profitability for you as well. Google is happiest when your ad is getting a high CTR (click through rate, meaning lost of people are clicking on your ad), and the people who click on your ads are satisfied with the information they see on your web site. This makes Google the most money, and should work the same for you. Google measures how “happy” people are with the web sites they visit by how quickly they hit that back button.

Here are my tips to rescue your Adwords campaigns:

Tip #1 Keywords
You don’t have enough of them.
If you don’t have at least 500 – 1000 keywords in your campaigns (and I don’t care what market you’re in), I can guarantee that you’re leaving profitable keywords on the table.
Use one of the keyword research tools like Wordtracker and Keywordtopia. If you plug in your “root” term (the most general term or two that describes your product or market), you’ll be amazed at the things that pop out and have you thinking.
Don’t forget plural versions of existing keywords.
Look for combination multipliers like cities and states…for example, instead of the one keyword of “weight loss center”, use that along with each state, and then add each state along with “weight loss centers” etc.
Brainstorm a bit with friends and colleagues and add in these ideas. You’ll have thousands of keywords in a very short period of time.

Tip #2 Correct Usage of Match Types
There are three match types in Google; broad, phrase, and exact. Check out Google’s Adword’s help documents for a discussion about how each one works.
Most people who are just starting out with Adwords make this mistake. They only bid on the broad match. That is, putting the keyword or phrase by itself with no quotes or brackets around it. In fact, Google has a built in suggestion to start out only using this match type. That is not always sound advice.
I recommend bidding on all three match types (this also effectively triples your keyword list). There is almost no way of knowing which match type will be the most effective for you. You need to try them and track them, then adjust accordingly.

Tip #3 Keyword Grouping
Most advertisers start out with one ad group and stuff hundreds or even thousands of keywords or phrases into it. This does not make Google happy. They immediately think that you can’t possible write relevant ads for all these keywords, and have relevant landing pages etc. So, they tend to give you a low quality score and your clicks will be very expensive (if you can even get your ads running).
The key is to make tightly focused adwords groups. The way that most people do it is by a “theme”. Generally, if all the keywords or phrases in an adgroup can be served by one highly targeted ad and landing page…they are in a good grouping. However, my suggestion is to have one adgroup for EVERY keyword (include all three match types, so every adgroup really ends up having three keywords or phrases). This is a lot of work, but there are tools out there that can help. Google’s own Adwords Editor is free and will help a lot.

Tip #4 Landing Pages
You simply must have targeted landing pages for each of your customers’ “conversations” that are going on when they sit down to search for something.
If you’re doing advertising and trying to capture leads from people who are looking to sell their home in San Francisco, send them to the page that talks about why they should use you to be their listing broker. If you’re capturing leads from people looking into relocating to San Francisco, send them to a page that talks about your expertise in handling relocations and helping people buy homes.
Too often, advertisers capture totally different type of customer leads and simply send them to their home page. This does not make people happy, as they want to continue the conversation they were having quickly…and get answers to their questions and problems, not try to navigate through your web site to find the information. They’re not happy, so they hit that back button in less than 5 seconds. This does not make Google happy, you’ve lost a sale, and Google may penalize you with higher click charges.

Tip #5 Writing your Ads

This could be a whole article in itself. Common mistakes to avoid:
You must try to repeat the keyword or phrase in the ad (this is why keyword grouping is important). Google makes the assumption that if you repeat what the user typed in, your ad is most likely relevant. They will reward this with lower bid prices.
Don’t continue a thought or sentence from one line to the next. Not many people actually read the ads…they skim and click when their eyes are attracted to something.
Capitalize the first letter of every word. This is scientifically proven to increase clicks. Why? I don’t care, and you shouldn’t either…it just works!
Use the display URL effectively, especially if it has the keyword in it. Don’t use wwwwieghtlossclinic com use WeightLossClinic.com. It should be obvious which one draws the eye more.

Tip #6 Split testing
When you set up an adgroup, always write two different ads. You must then monitor them to see which one is performing better. You can literally increase your clicks 3x or more by doing this. It doesn’t matter what you change and make different in your ads. Just change something and always test and monitor.
When one ad can be declared as the winner (search the web for split test calculators to get the statistical answer), get rid of the under performing one and immediately write another new one to try and beat the one that just won.

Tip #7 Content network
I recommend turning the content network off at first, and then taking the terms that have been profitable for you and starting another campaign that ONLY advertises on the content network.
If you do both in one campaign, it can be very difficult to effectively track your keywords’ and ads’ performance, and your return on your advertising investment.

Tip #8 Geographic and schedule targeting
If it makes sense for your markeLuse both.
In our real estate example in San Francisco, you’d want to run two different campaigns for trying to get listings in your area. People searching on “Sell house San Francisco” not paying attention to geography, and people searching on the more general “sell house” …targeting only those people in San Francisco.
Examine all the metrics for using the scheduling feature. There are campaigns, for example, that are only really profitable on the weekends. If you can determine that, then obviously it makes sense to only run your ads then.

Tip #9 Conversion tracking
If you do nothing else, do this. You must track conversions!
If you don’t know what you’re getting for you’re advertising dollar, how can you make good decisions?
If you’re selling a product online, the best way to do this is to use Google’s own conversion tracking. This works very well. It’s a simple bit of code that you, or your web designer can add to your sales confirmation page that tells Google that, for this keyword or phrase, a sale was made. Google stores and reports on this information so that you can go to one place and see what you spent on keywords, and what the return on that investment was.
There are other ways to do this, and it’s a bit more difficult to do if you’re not selling something; however, it’s absolutely mandatory. Do web searches on conversion tracking to learn more.

Tip #10 Bid Adjustments
All keywords are not created equally. You must examine your spend and your conversions for each and every keyword and adjust the bid (individually) for each of them.

For more information about Jose Sotillo, please visit: http://www.TheOneYearSystem.com

http://www.GPTsystem.com

http://www.WEBtrafico.com

Getting other blogs to link to your blog posts is not easy to do – particularly when you are starting out.

Taking a ‘write quality content and they will link up’ approach can work once you have a readership (although even then it’s not that easy) but what if your readership is small and other bloggers are not likely to see your posts?

One of the simplest things to do to get your contact in front of other bloggers in these circumstances is to email them to let them know of your post and/or to suggest it as a potential story for their own blog.

Sounds simple doesn’t it?

Of course there’s a little more to it than just banging out an email with your link to another blogger. In fact if you do this you could actually do more damage than good.

Here are a few ideas for suggesting links to other bloggers:

Let me start by saying the most obvious thing – your content needs to be of high quality – the type of thing that people will want to link to. You can beg for links from other bloggers until you’re blue in the face but if your content isn’t linkable – you’re wasting your time (and theirs).

1. Reserve it for Your Best Content

Let me repeat what I’ve already said – it is all about ‘great content’. This is not a technique to use with every single post that you write. Use it selectively on your very very best content.

2. Check if the Blogger Links Out

Different blogs have very different approaches to what they write about and where they get their story ideas. For example a blog like Engadget links to other blogs in most posts that it writes – it’s almost like a news aggregator blog and is constantly pointing people to interesting stories on the web. Other blogs rarely link out – not because they’re selfish, but because they are blogs more about original ideas. You are likely to be wasting your time by pitching blogs that never link out.

Also look at HOW the blog links. Do they link to news stories? Do they link to other blogs as ‘examples’ in their posts. Do they link to controversial posts? Do they only link to blogs on certain topics or written in certain styles? The more you learn about HOW another blog links the better position you put yourself in to create your pitch to them.

Special Note: Some blogs even present you with methods to pitch them stories with contact forms dedicated to story submissions. This is a signal that you have permission to send them ideas.

3. Don’t Ask for a General Link to Your Blog

In most cases it is not appropriate to ask another blogger to simply ‘link to my blog’ (as in the front page). You’ll have much more chance of a link if you pitch them a story (a post you’ve written) than just to link to your blog’s front page. I find that generally people link to blogs in their blog rolls after they’ve been following you and relating to you for a while and see you as a helpful resource for their readers.

4. Relevancy Relevancy Relevancy

Only suggest posts on your blog that are highly relevant for the blog you’re pitching the story idea to. You drastically decrease your chances of being linked to if your story isn’t relevant.

5. Present a Posting Angle

When emailing a blogger with a post idea show them some potential angles that they could take with their post. For example – I used to pitch my links to gadget blogs when new cameras came out. I found that when I wrote a short summary of the story in my email with some potential points of interest that the stories got picked up more regularly than if I simply sent an email saying – ‘here’s a link that you might find interesting’. So I’d include a few features, why the camera was better than previous models etc. Often this extra information appeared in the post that these blogs published – in essence I was helping the blogger write their story for them.

6. Present Helpful Resources

Another thing that increased the chances of my camera posts being linked to was when I sent in pictures of the cameras with my email. Gadget blogs love pictures so if you save them time by providing them along with the story idea you’re cutting down work and again increasing your chances of having the story picked up.

7. Have They Already Covered the Story?

There’s nothing worse than being pitched with a story idea that you posted about yesterday. Scan the blog that you’re pitching to for their recent posts – it could save you embarrassment.

8. Be Personal

Where possible pitch a blogger rather than just pitching in impersonal ways. Use their name, show that you know their blog etc. However be careful when doing this to multiple blogs – you don’t want to personalize an email and then send it to the wrong blogger – major embarrassment!

9. Be Brief, Polite and Helpful

What ever you do be polite with your pitch – keep it brief (there’s nothing more of a turn off than a long pitch), introduce yourself and keep your email as helpful as possible. Only include details that will help the blogger write their post and in no way pressure them to write the story.

10. Don’t Ignore the ‘B, C and D-list’

Don’t just promote your content to Top-Tier blogs. Big blogs are being hit with story ideas all day everyday (often the same ones over and over again). Smaller blogs can be just as fruitful to pitch to because they often have more focused groups of readers. Sometimes multiple smaller blogs all picking up a story can get the attention of bigger bloggers too – making the story viral.

11. Build Relationships Before AND After Promoting Your Blog

I’m much more likely to link to someone (either on my blog or on Twitter) if I have had some kind of interaction with them before they pitch their story idea. Spend time building your network and don’t make your relationships with people just about what they can do for you. Also – when people do link to you after you’ve promoted something to them thank them for the link, offer to reciprocate and keep in touch. Don’t take their first link up as a signal to spam them with everything you write – but see it as a deepening of that relationship.

Tags: Blog Promotion, finding readers, links, Networking

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We’ve just announced the winner of our $100,000 contest…and man, was it TOUGH.

More than 600 of you chimed in on these three questions:

1. Do you know what your single greatest constraint is right now? If so, what is it?
2. How many constraints away are you from having the business and the life of your dreams?
3. What are the three greatest benefits you’ll enjoy once those constraints are removed?

You gave us some tremendous answers, making this one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make.

But when it all came down to it, one post shined brightest among all the others.

So without further adieu, the winner of $100,000 worth of my coaching and products is…

Sarah Hurty!

Sarah’s post hit the nail on the head. She truly understands how much the concept of overcoming constraints is affecting her business, and how miraculous it will be when it is removed forever.

Below is Sarah’s winning post:

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o Comment by Sarah

2008-09-22 18:02:45

I work with financial advisors to help them market their practice, especially over the internet.

I work with a premier wealth preservation attorney with a list of approximately 100,000 financial advisors.

1. My single greatest constraint right now is refining processes and automating them. I’m working on that right now.

We sell a templated website with high quality content and interactive features for these financial advisors. It is completely customizable.

Then many of them opt for marketing coaching and SEO services. This is high dollar residual income, from services that provide high value clients for them.

Because their industries are so regulated in certain aspects, there are nuances to each client and site installation. Plus those who have a particular USP need that to be reflected throughout their site.

So much of the process can be automated, freeing up time for the essential one on one for the high level coaching.

2. I am two constraints away from having the business of my dreams. The first one is automating processes for the site installations and the SEO. (Again, both are part way done.)

The second one is "automated" process for content creation for my marketing membership that many of these guys are joining. I’m working toward this as well, but it is not finished.

Quite frankly, my business would absolutely explode both monetarily and in strong deliverables/results for the advisors. That would be a serious pleasure to see their success.

3. The three greatest benefits I will enjoy once these constraints are removed:

a) Spending more of my business time in intensive work with an inner circle of very serious advisors. This is germinating now, and ready to fluorish with the availability of time. I love and believe in the value that some of these advisors offer, and would enjoy helping them succeed to the height of their business dreams.

b) Being able to launch my "real" business goal when I first started three years ago: helping work at home/stay at home moms and dads accomplish their Family Mission. There is way too much to this to go into it here, and I don’t want to share names in this venue. But my dream is for the profits from helping "western world" families accomplish their Family Mission (including the financial freedom to allow them to do whatever it is in the world that they are called to do) to fund the exact same thing happening for families in the "developing world" through micro loans.

c) Bringing my husband home from corporate medicine, setting our family free to go anywhere in the world to do what we are called to do, living our Family Mission.

Thanks, Rich.

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Congrats Sarah–and well done!

To Higher Profits,

Rich

P.S. If you want to learn more about Sarah’s business, go to http://www.whitecollarmarketing.com.

P.P.S. And keep an eye out, because we’ll have more exciting promotions and major giveaways to come in the future…