When we are going to sell something through PPC advertising, the first thing we need to do is to determine the niche we think is the most suitable for our product. Let’s say that we are going to promote an affiliate website that sells Hi-Fi Stereo systems. I think we should have a closer look on the words Hi-Fi and Stereo. But we should also try to think of phrases instead of single words. Could the phrase “quality stereo systems” be one that we could use for our campaign? How many searches is there per month on this phrase? How many advertisers are bidding for this word/phrase? How much are the actual advertisers willing to pay? This brings us over to the next and most important step in the process of creating a successful PPC campaign: – KeywordResearch and PPC analyzis.
We know that our affiliate website sells Hi-Fi Systems, and we also know that a stereo system with speakers often could cost severals hundred if not thousands of dollars for a quality system. Therefore we could allow us to bid more for a prospect’s visit if the competition demands it. We see that if let’s say one of a hundred prospects actually buy the system we sell, and you only have to pay ,- per click, and the system costs 0,-. The affiliate program pays us 55% commission. So with a conversion rate of only 1% is enough to give you a nice profit for this phrase. Remember, this is only an example, so the numbers fictive. But I hope you get my point. To bid for a word or a phrase in order to bring targeted customers to a website, is excactly what PPC advertising is all about.
Through advanced keyword and PPC analyzis we will find out which keywords/phrases that are most searched for in our niche per month, how many relevant website results there are, some factors of high importance(we’ll get to them later), and also how many PPC campaigns there is for each of the phrases and even how much the other advertisers are willing to pay for a single click. This kind of research requires you to spend hour after hour doing it manually. Unless you posess the same insainly powerful tool which I personally use to tweak my Adwords campaigns.This Dynamite software sure does cost a few bucks, but it is junkchange when you compare it to the profits you will make through the years to come. A one-time purchase for a lifetime of free upgrades and you get the power to even spy on your competitors. A key is to find out which words/phrases your competitors bid for and how long they do it.
The longer an Adwords advertiser bids for a word/phrase, the more sure you can be about that either is he profiting from that phrase, or he don’t bother with his campaign at all and just keep throwing away their money. To succeed in Adwords a quality analyzis software is a must if you ask me, and I know that many other Adsense advertisers who would agree with me on this. A simple fact is that many of us does it correct, but more than 90% of PPC advertisers fails completely because they don’t really know how this system works. It is possible to manage without software, but after 6 months of analyzises done with this power-tool, and creating campaigns constantly, I would not even start thinking about doing it the manual way no more. The use and features of this piece of software is covered in greater details through the awsome ebook you can download at the bottom of this article.
A cheaper solution for those who would like to try it is a KeywordResearch tool available for free on GoodKeywords.com. You simply input a single word or a phrase and it will look up how many searches per month there is for this phrase/word and every subphrase(estimated monthly overture traffic) down to nr 100. This tool will only show you the estimated number of monthly searches and nothing more, so you need to check every phrase in Google to find the number of relevant websites. To set up a profitable Adwords campaign you need to know more important factors. This includes R/S value(Results divided by Searches per month), Keyword Effectiveness Index(An index for how profitable a niche is(only available through pro software), The number of current advertisers and the Cost Per Click.
We want to try to find phrases with as much searches per month as possible, because this will bring us the most traffic. And that is what we want, right? But there is usually more competition around very broad words such as “computer” instead of the phrase “online computer games”, and the phrase is less relevant to our website which sells “online games”. If you instead use multiple subphrases that will match your product, you could bid less for each one, and you will win over those who compete for a broad match single word for example. These advertisers will pay for a lot of clicks from non-prospects and even pay a higher cost-per-click simply because the phrase is too broad to match their product. They will most likely get a much lower conversion-ratio when bidding for such a broad phrase. It could be anything including the word “computer” and that is a enormous word.
Think of the word “Computer” again for a second, and that you are trying to sell “Computer Generated Landscape Images” on your website. See my point? There is absolutely no need at all to bid for the term “computer” in this particular case, because most of the visitors(which you pay for every single one) is looking for something else regarding computers. You pay to bring people to your website, which most likely leaves your site pretty quick because they didn’t find what they were looking for. This is the absolutely best method to use when you want to produce terrible coversion-rates along with high PPC expenses and no profits. You are free to do as you like.
We see that the phrase is way too broad to make it work at all. It is very far from relevant, so to find smaller subtopics or phrases you could utilize the force of this killer software and collect data for thousands of phrases and subphrases in one operation. But remember that you could create profitable campaigns manually, but not so quickly and effortless as with professional software.
The key in KeywordAnalyzis is in short termes to find the right phrases for your niche, with the highest monthly searches, few relevant website results, and with fewest possible advertisers. We want to dominate our niche as much and as long as we could, so when we find out that there are no advertisers in a certain niche, we are alone and could bid minimum amount which currently is $ 0,06. We get straight to the top, and are all alone in the “sponsored results” area. This will increase your chances of creating a successful campaign dramatically, rather than just trying to beat the others in a flooded niche where huge companies could outbid your startup budget. I just don’t want to see you there.
Ok, maybe we should have a look on another option you have targeting the already flooded niches?!
How you could take advantage of flooded niches with so-called “high paying keywords”. The method goes by the term “The Adsense Arbitrage” and could only be used if you are both an Adwords advertiser and an Adsense publisher. Adsense publisher means that Google’s Adwords network shows ads related to your website’s content, and you get paid per click from your visitors. Same thing here, just the other way around. You pay for visitors in your niche by targeting more exact phrases that is little or no competition for, and then send them to your Adsense website that will show relevant ads for broader phrases, and you get paid more for a click from your visitors than you pay to get them to your website. It has been found through studies of this method that the expense/profit ratio is usually between 1:2 and 1:3. This means that you pay a third of what you earn. The hard part when it comes to this technique is that you need to convince your traffic to click on your Adsense ads when they are visiting your website, or else you will loose money quickly. So optimizing for high CTR is of great importance when using this method. But, Adwords and Adsense gives the educated and equipped PPC advertiser a lot of different options to quickly start reaping profits, but I am not going to cover this method any further in this quick guide as it is covered in the ebook you get for nothing below. So now over to the next step.
A cheap way to collect the data we need is to use the free tool on GoodKeywords.com. We find phrases and sub-phrases after a sinput to check out. When that is done you need to go to Google.com and search for the phrases by using the [ ] symbols around the words ex. [computer games]. This means that you are bidding for the exact phrase match. You are looking for the number of results for the exact phrase and not a single or both words in the phrase or no other words in addition. The phrase must be in this exact order(not backwards), [games computer] does not include in the exact match. If you would like that to be included in your campaign too, you could add the ” ” symbols around the words computer & games. Then it will use phrase match, which means that the phrase must be exact, but it could have other words both before and after the words. Ex. “Cheap quality computer games” would be used for putting in “computer games”. If you use broad match, you don’t use any symbols at all, but then any of the words could be used or every word, and even in random order. Ex. “Games for your computer”. Or even an exclusion of one word. Ex. “Funny games for the whole family” . This issue is ofcourse also covered in greater details in the ebook below.
Calculating the R/S value for each phrase is not a bad idea. A low R/S value is often a sign of a good niche. You go to google.com and type the command line in the searchbox- allintitle: “computer games”. This way google will limit the results amount to only those websites who includes the phrase match “computer games” in their website title. Website title tag has for a while now been a major factor in Google’s ranking system for onpage factors. Websites with this phrase in their title tag clearly competes for this phrase, and is often optimized for this phrase including the offpage factors. If you are interested I have written a quick guide to SEO which could be found on this database too.
On the right hand side of the Google results page you will see a number of sponsored links. These are the actual bidders for the phrase you searched for. If there are none, Great! You are alone in this niche. With hundreds or maybe thousands of searches per month you could have found a profitable niche. If the number of relevant website results are showing less than the number of searches per month you have an R/S factor of less than 1 which is also very good. Usually we call niches with Good numbers such as low R/S Value, High KEI, and few advertisers for “Starving Crowds”. This means that these could very well be profitable phrases/words to bid on because the demand is greater than the number of websites with relevant content. The KEI value is also important when determining whether a niche is profitable or not. If the KEI is high(>100,000) you should look into it. The KEI value will only be available through analyzis with pro. software.
When using such a powerful analyzissoftware to do research for your PPC campaign, you will have all data collected automatically, and you have the ability to create large list of thousands of words/phrases/subphrases with a single click. It saves me a huge amount of time and effort every single day. That’s why I quit using the old methods. I like to do more of the things that I should be doing, and less of the things I don’t have to do. Work smarter, not harder.
Keyword analyzis is the main key to a profitable PPC campaign. What also is important when it comes to PPC advertising is to write effective ads. You are only allowed to use 70 characters for each ad. This limits your possibilities for writing an ad. Including the phrase you bid for in the headline, and maybe once more in the ad text will cause Google to automatically use broad text for the words in your ad that matches the searchphrase, and it will make the ad more appealing to the human eye, and the searcher actually sees what he searched for few seconds earlier.
There are also other aspects of writing ads. By looking at all the other advertisers’ ads and then try to do things slightly better than them, or maybe just try to be a little different from them. If your ad is the one that differs from the others, you could get more clicks, despite the fact that you bid less, and that you start with a low CTR. Because of the attention your ad get simply by being different, you will increase in ranking just because Google rewards ads with better results and you will pay less per click. This technique really works for me.
To summarize this quick guide to Adwords profits we get five points:
1. Determine your niche. Which words/phrases could be suitable for your niche.
2. Find possible keywords or phrases to bid for through indepth keyword analysiz.(The most timeconsuming part of the prosess)
3. Find the low cost phrases with less competition to bid for through analyzis.
4. Choose effective affiliate landing pages. The website you send your visitors to should be of best possible quality, and a good conversion rate is always appreciated. See if the website is appealing to yourself.
5. Write effective ads. There are limitations, so be wise and use your available space the best way possible. I use to keep in mind that “When your prospect has clicked your ad, they should be ready to buy immediately.” So if we are selling a quite expensive product such as a stereo system, you propably would do the smartest thing when you show the price of the product in your ad. This will ensure that you reduce the number of visitors that are trying to find out what your product costs, and you thereby lower your curiosity clicks and your expences.
Some clicks are always wasted, and you really can’t help it. But by improving your click-through-rate on your ads, you will lower the minimum bid for that phrase. So in other words, Google rewards their advertisers with the highest CTR, simply less cost per click for you.
By applying the techniques in this article, and also reading and applying the ebook you are free to download below, you will be skilled to compete with even large companies in the PPC market. So, I’ll leave it up to you now. It’s YOUR time to roll in some serious cash. Best of Luck.
Ray,
