Here are several ways to maximize your traffic for your pay-per-click marketing campaign:

Keyword Research – The first key is to do your keyword research. This may sound obvious, but not many people do this. Keyword research is the core of PPC advertising, because PPC is all about targeting keywords. You need to find out what people are looking for and the best phrases to use for your campaign. You cannot just go in blind, thinking you can earn thousands of dollars, because you are just going to end up being eaten alive. So you have to do keyword research if you are serious about PPC advertising.

Below are the keyword research websites I use:

http://www.spyfu.com – It gives you:
•Average Cost Per Click
•Current Adwords Ads
•Organic Results
•Related Terms and Concepts
•Terms Others Buy With Your Main Term
•Categories
This is a great tool used for serious competitor research.

Keyword Elite – This is a paid keyword research tool that I highly recommend. I personally use it and found it very useful. It is much better than the free keyword research sites:

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/keywordelite

Split Testing – You should always create at least two ads for any particular campaign so that you can run one ad against the other and test to see which performs best and which one has a higher return on investments and click through rates. Google rewards ads with good click through rate by giving you a higher ad placement, so a higher CTR means less cost per click. Once you have created two ads and see which one performs best, the one that performs best becomes the new control and you create a new ad and so on. So you are constantly tracking, testing and improving your ads.

Creating Winning Headlines – If you have a good headline, people will click on it, even if your ad is crap. By split testing, you should be able to create winning headlines.

Global Negatives – By having global negatives, or negative qualifiers, you are able to qualify the traffic and filter out the rubbish traffic. For example, you do not want freebie seekers clicking on your ad when you are selling something. So you can have a price tag in your ad to stop freebie seekers from clicking on your ad, so that you can decrease your cost. You can also filter out the rubbish traffic by telling people what your product: is it a downloadable product? Is it a physical product? Some people prefer downloadable products over physical products.

Benefits - Write the benefits in your ad since benefits can improve your return on investment and click through rates. Use the word “you”, like “you can get…”, “you will discover…”, “you will make more money with this…” etc.

Targeted – Keep your ad targeted, not broad. Do not use general keywords such as “shoes”. You should narrow it down by using terms such as “tennis shoes”. Broad match is usually used by lazy advertisers or advertisers with a huge budget. The problem with broad match is that it decreases your click through rate and return on investment, so you should always try and target and narrow down your keyword market. This may mean that you will have to create one ad per keyword.

Capitalization – Another tip is to capitalize the beginning of every single word so it looks more professional. Would you rather click on an ad that looks like this:

Or like this:

The first one right? So make sure your ad copy looks professional. By the way, capitalization also includes capitalizing your URL.

Ask Questions – Another tip to increase your ad performance is by asking questions. Asking questions creates curiosity.

Avoid Top Paying Slots – By creating great ads using the techniques I have mentioned, you should be able to work your way to the top, rather than stumping up the cash.

Do Not Go Into Bidding Wars – You want to be No.1, but your competitors also wants to be No.1. Do not fight for the first place. The best thing you should do is to take a step back, take a deep breath and consider is it really just that important to be No.1? If you have a better product and a better ad copy, your click through rate and relevancy will help you get to No.1, even though you are still paying the same amount.

Conversion Rates – Track your conversion rates and return on investment. That way, you will be able to work out how much each of your visitors work, and what price you should bid for your keyword. You can work out your conversion rate by calculating how much visitors it take to make a sale.

For example, your website sells video games for $10. And your conversion rate is 1%, in other words it takes 100 visitors to make a sale. Then your maximum click price should be 10 cents. Get it? You can calculate your maximum click price using this formula:

Profit per Sale / Conversion Rate = Maximum Click Price

By using this formula, you will be able to work out how much your visitor worth and what your maximum click price should be.

Call-To-Action – By having call-to-action phrases in your ad copy, it allows the visitor what to expect, meaning your click through rate and return on investment will increase.

Learn From The Experts – My final piece of advice is to learn from the experts. Just follow what the Adwords and PPC experts do. You can get a free ebook which goes into more detail on Google Adwords here:

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/beatingadwords

[tags]google adwords, pay-per-click marketing, ppc advertising[/tags]

Because of the fierce competition in the industry, some search engine optimization firms began using tactics that the search engines have labeled as “black-hat”, or “illegal”, in the search engine world. Every major search engine (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) has issued rules and guidelines listing several of these black-hat tactics. Failure to comply with these guidelines will most likely get you de-indexed, or worse, banned from the search engines.

Black hat SEO is the intentional misleading of search engines and their spiders. Nothing is worth the risk of being booted out of a search engine index. This is an article on what NOT to do for search engine optimization on your website.

DO NOT DO ANY OF THESE THINGS TO YOUR WEBSITE!

1. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the intentional overuse of a particular term or phrase in hopes of achieving higher search engine rankings for that term or phrase. The best way to avoid this is to fill your page with text that was written naturally and do not over use your target phrase. Often keyword stuffing leads to sentences sounding funny or awkward. Not only is this deceptive, but your customers will see it and run.

2. Hidden Text

Hidden text is setting the color of text the same as the background of a webpage. By having your text and background the same color, the text or repeating phrases is invisible to human visitors but not search engine bots. Search engines now look for the color of the text and compare it to the color of the background. Some webmasters create a colored image and set it as the background to the page to avoid being detected; this tactic does circumvent the search engines, as they are not able to tell the color of an image, however, your competitors will be quick to report you to the search engines if they find you are using this strategy.

3. Cloaking

Clocking, in short, is intentionally displaying different information to human visitors than to search engines. There are numerous ways of cloaking content, and not all have been determined “black-hat”. Would you be willing to share you tactics with the search engines themselves? Black-hat cloaking will work for a short time, however, you run a high risk of having your domain banned permanently. There are ethical reasons for cloaking and they are not bad if used properly.

4. Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are “landing” pages added to a website to specifically target a keyword or phrase. Often these doorway pages have no value to visitors and only exist to capture the attention of search engines. Doorway pages are added specifically to mislead search engine spiders and will get you removed from an index faster than you can blink.

5. Redirects

Redirect pages have several white-hat (usable) purposes, however, when used as a black-hat tactic – often combined with doorway pages – they serve as a red flag to search engines. Sneaky Redirect pages take a visitor from one page to another automatically and normally are used to guide search engines to page they will like better than the one you send your customer to.

6. Duplicate Site

This is not often used but, when affiliate programs were first gaining in popularity, webmasters would create several copies of the same sales page in hopes that quantity over quality would prevail and they would make a sale from one of their many websites selling a product. With the advancement of search engines, they are able to find excessive duplicate content and will penalize you heavily for it.

[tags]seo, search engine optimization, black hat seo[/tags]

Here are 12 strategies to create buzz for your internet marketing campaigns and make money online:

1. New

2. Inspirational

3. Edgy

4. Engaging

5. Innovative

6. Controversial

7. Funny (Humorous)

8. Heart Warming

9. Taboo

10. Secretive

11. Anticipation

12. Suspence

For more viral marketing strategies, visit http://www.viralmarketingblackbook.com or the viral marketing posts

[tags]internet marketing strategies, viral marketing, buzz marketing, make money online[/tags]

Have you ever heard the term, “mind your own business?” Sometimes it is used in a rather derogatory way but it really is actually very good advice when it comes to Internet marketing.

Every day a great many new people enter the internet marketing arena. They join the mailing lists of internet marketing gurus who they hope will guide them and then they are simply bombarded with ‘offers they can’t refuse’ by these gurus.

A lot of these offers are nothing more than hype and fluff designed mainly to separate the new marketer from his money. It doesn’t usually take very long for even the most naive new internet marketer to begin to feel used and disillusioned.

Negativity sets in…Big time!

It really isn’t hard to get caught up in all of the excitement of a product launch by a big name internet marketer.

After all, they are the gurus…the head honchos….the guys that are supposed to know what new marketers really need in order to become successful.

They are great salesmen! How do you think that they became a big name internet marketer? They are masters of the hard sell.

Now I am not telling you that all of the products that are launched by big name internet marketers are bogus or that they are all nothing but hype and fluff. That isn’t true at all.

There are a great many very good…even excellent products out there than can help you become successful.

The trick is being able to tell which ones are good products and will be of value to you and which ones are being launched for the sole purpose of selling them to you.

This is where that old saying, “mind your own business” comes in. It really is up to you to know your own business well enough to be able to distinguish between the products that will really help you and those that are just ‘built to sell’ as my grandpa used to say.

[tags]internet marketing, internet marketing strategies[/tags]

When you are looking to sell things to others through sales letters you should consider some of the most essential elements of selling. Knowing the market you are selling to is important, and having a good relationship with your potential customers will also be helpful. Getting the attention of the readers and have a successful closing for your sale are also valuable elements of selling. Whether you are using a large sales letter or just a simple classified ad you can use these elements of selling to your advantage.

The first of the elements of selling that you need to be aware of is that of your market. The potential customers that you are looking to target will be different in terms of various different factors. These include age, race, gender, geographical location and the general interests that the people have. In most cases one general approach to selling will not work for every single person, so it is important to think about who you are going to be specifically targeting in your sales copy.

Having strong relationships is one of the elements of selling that is especially important. Having a strong rapport with your customers is important. You should work on being personal with the people you are communicating with and be sure to focus on the reader. Using identifying terms like “You” is better than “I” in that you will give the reader an idea that you are talking directly to the reader.

Headlines are essential in your sales copy. This is one of the elements of selling that you should definitely focus on. This is because headlines will stick out in your sales copy and will generally be the first things that people will read. Subheadlines for longer sales copy works will be especially useful because your readers may not be as attentive during the entire time with a longer letter. With subheadlines you will be able to get your customers to stay focused on what you have to offer.

Closing the sale is generally the toughest thing to do for selling, but it is still one of the elements of selling that you will need to work on. Your sales copy will need to end with a call to action, which generally states why your customer should get what you are offering and how there may be a limited time to what you are offering. The closer should be direct and easy to understand so that you can keep from losing a sale and therefore will make it easier for the customer to recognize the benefits of what you have.

These are all important elements of selling that you can use to help get your sales copy to be more successful. It’s important to be able to have a good relationship with your customers and to have a sales letter that will be attractive and persuasive. With these elements of selling you can achieve the goal you are looking to accomplish.

[tags]internet marketing strategies, copywriting, selling, sales letter[/tags]