Anyone Need Help with PPC?

[Mary Green]

Hi all, if you have a question about PPC, please post it below and I will do my best to answer. Here are some of the questions and answers:

Who am I helping?
I've done a lot of learning when it comes to PPC so if you have a question at any level, let me know and I will do my best to get you an answer, however most of these questions are on the newbie to intermediate level.

Longtail Keywords:
Sometimes long tail keywords don't get a lot of traffic. They are more specific, but get a lot less searches. If you find a keyword with few competitors it might be that the search term is just searched too little to make it effective.

Doing Polls for CPA offers:
I have done great with polls for CPA offers and I definitely recommend ppc coach, check out my PPC Journey link to read a review. The scripts and the forum there are the best for the poll method.

About Landing Pages:
There are a lot of different landing pages you can try to use to send PPC traffic to, I recommend direct linking first, and finding out what your competitors use for their campaigns. Chances are they are using landing pages that work for the niche. Use the time machine tool in the free part of keywordspy to see if they have been running their campaigns long. If they have, copy what kind of page they have, with no plagarism of course.

About Optin Forms:
I have not done a lot of lead collecting with PPC, but intend to start. I think it is a great way to build a list while making money. My main problem has been email marketing, I always fell behind a little there. So yes if you can build a list with PPC first in a niche, then offer the CPA offer, great idea, go for it. Just be ready to lose some people who won't want to optin.

Keywords:
One word keywords are very broad, and usually very expensive because they can get so much traffic and a lot of people don't know better to not bid on them. The example below was employment for an employment website. I would try to bid on search terms that are still getting a good deal of traffic, but don't cost nearly as much. I tend to stick to 2 and 3 word keywords, anything longer doesnt seem to get enough traffic. Check the keyword tools to see what keywords are getting a lot of searches in your niche, target the ones with a lot of searches and lower CPC. As a rule you also need a Beautiful negative keyword list.

Step by Step Campaign:
I am running a series on this in My PPC Journey, you can see a new post to it this afternoon.

Linking to the Order Page:
If you are so great at preselling that you feel the merchant page is killing your conversions you can link to their order page. The best thing to do is to try it and see. One of the biggest things you have to know about PPC is to test test test.

Your Website:
Have your landing page on a website, make sure you have the About us, contact us, privacy, terms, etc pages. Google wants to see a website that is constantly growing, so you want to add new content regularly. Now this doesnt mean you have to start with this. What I do is direct link, then build a lander, if all goes well, I build a whole niche site around it.

Direct Linking:
You can direct link still, the rule is that you can not direct link while another affiliate is doing it on the same keyword. However you can get around this short term. I use a redirect mask script for this, it works for the first several days usually which gives me an idea on how well the campaign will do.

Yahoo Accounts:
To be able to upload campaigns and such quickly you need a Gold account, call Yahoo and convince them your account is going to be so large that you need this feature. If one person says no, try another. Other than that you can send them the campaign to upload for you.

Quality Score:
For every campaign you get a quality score before you even launch. It is based on other competitors experiences and your own history with QS. An example below talks about a 10/10 QS while not even being related to the niche. I can't explain that, I wouldn't think it would last too long, but Google is ever changing.

More on QS:
Usually you need a keyword that pertains to your campaign, ad and landing page. They all need to be related. This will get you the highest QS.

Buying a domain for redirecting to the vendor page:
As long as you use the correct script you can do this. I have even used sub domains for this.

Other PPC Engines to Use:
I have never used MSN, but I do and have used Yahoo, it is slower, which I hate, but still works. I love Google, but Yahoo is a good alternative.

Clickbank Gravity:
I usually stick with something at 30 and less than 100, seems to have fewer competitors. However it depends on the niche, if something else in the same niche is doing HUGE with the same keywords, that is a lot of competition.

CPC vs. CPM:
cost per click is when you are paying for each click seperately. CPM is when you pay for 1000 impressions of your ad. You have to compare your ads and see what is more cost effective.

Tidy Up Your Accounts:
In both search and content I put 1 keyword per adgroup, and 2 ads. I have just started doing this for content. If you have a new account there are restrictions on your account, something like 100 adgroups per campaign or something like that, so you need to split things up. You don't want a list of keywords that is too large to manage. By the way, the search and content campaigns are completely separate, never altogether in one campaign.

CPC:
This is closely related to your QS and CTR, on search you need a CTR of 1-2% minimum and on content .05% is good. If you have anything lower your CPC is almost certainly going to go up.

Taking Campaign from Search to Content:
An example was where he turned off search and turned on Content. I dont know why you would do this, it is NOT a good idea, but he did it and the campaign stopped running. There could be a lot of reasons why. Mostly I am thinking it can take up to 4 days for a content network campaign to start.

Here is a quick way on how I start a campaign:
Take the landing page you are targetting over to the google keyword tool, to see what keywords google thinks your site is about.

Once you know use those keywords to plug back into the tool and see what else you can come up with, I love the second part of the list that shows other related searches. Get your list between 50-100 different keywords long.

Take those keywords and set up a campaign, phrase match, 2 ads each keyword. 1 keyword per ad group.

Now watch and tweak. I would do at least $10 a day in budget. Now depending on the niche you might need to increase that, do more creative keyword research, or
use fewer keywords. Really depends on the CPC you are trying for.

You want to get a good CTR to start with, then start tweaking from there. Do NOT choose keywords that are too basic or broad, narrow it down to get better results.

I obviously cant teach everything there is to know about PPC in this post, but, this should get you started without losing your shirt.

Exporting a Campaign:
If you want to send me a campaign I can tell you what I think is wrong with it. For exporting a campaign you need Adwords Editor, download it for free and send me the campaign to marywgreen gmail.com

LPGen:
landing page generator is a script that puts keywords throughout your site based on the search term someone uses from Google. this is suppose to increase your QS. I find that theme based landing pages work just as well and think Google is catching onto this script insertion of keywords.

How Long it Takes to Get Started:
I have always seen my ads go live within hours on Google. I could look at the campaign in question and give my opinion.

Clickbank Keywords:
Bid on the benefit keywords, put the benefits in your ads. I bid on review keywords too, but those arent always the most money making keywords because people arent yet sure what they want, it can work though, if they are at that point of the buying process. I hardly ever use product name + review though, because most clickbank product names don't get enough searches to make it worth. Some do, not all.

Favorite Keyword Tools:
Google Keyword tool and free wordtracker.

I have about 5 more questions to post the answers to here, but any new questions can just be posted, all will be answered here.

Here is a link to the post in pdf form so far
http://ppcmom.com/post622.pdf

[Srikanth D]

You are looking for complete newbies?
I mean, I am kinda familiar with PPC and most of my campaigns are profitable. But I haven't scaled it to the level that many successful people are doing..

btw, nice that you are offering help

[Mary Green]

Pretty much anyone that needs help. You can either pm me or post a question here.

[dwt]

I was researching keywords the other day and found a few with high searches and low competing sites. When I plugged the keyword phrases in the traffic estimator the results were only 0-1 clicks a day (i used a $100 budget per day just to get an idea). We use long tail keyword phrases for other marketing methods. Wouldn't this be the same idea with ppc?

I have zero experience with ppc, so any advice is appreciated!

David

[Mary Green]

It really depends on the niche you are talking about, some niches do very poorly on adwords (very few of them) and some niches are banned. If the niche is banned, it doesnt matter on the keyword, you just wont see any ads. As for the long tail keyword, it really depends on the campaign you are running. If you want to send me more specifics through pm, I can tell you what is up with what you were looking at.

Anyone else have questions?

[dburk]

Originally Posted by dwt

I was researching keywords the other day and found a few with high searches and low competing sites. When I plugged the keyword phrases in the traffic estimator the results were only 0-1 clicks a day (i used a $100 budget per day just to get an idea). We use long tail keyword phrases for other marketing methods. Wouldn't this be the same idea with ppc?

I have zero experience with ppc, so any advice is appreciated!

David

Hi David,

You may have made a mistake on your keyword research, or you may have used a maximum bid that is too low. Try raising your maximum bid (or leave it blank) and see what the traffic estimator reports. If it's still very low then double check your research.

[Scott Casey]

Wow...I am new to this forum and your kind offering is awesome. I will PM you in a day or so...just need some tweaking. Thanks.

[Gooddeal86]

i'm thinking to do poll for cpa offer. wat do u think mary? just want to get started, wanna do keyword search for the poll

[keivn2]

The current problem that I am facing is writing the landing page...I just dont know what type of landing should I go...

A landing with short content?
A landing page with long content?
A reviews type landing page?
A pre-sell type landing page?
A colourful and graphic landing page?
A static page? A wordpress blog? and etc...

Any suggestion or sample?

[Mary Green]

Gooddeal, I have done polls before and made some great money with them. They are super easy to put up, maintaining is a little more work, but if you have a good tracker, it shouldn't be a problem. PM me if you want more details, but PPC Coach is definitely the best way to get started if you want to do polls. Im a member there, you can read about it on my blog http://ppcmom.com

Keivn2, it is crazy how many different landing page styles you can go with. I recommend you choose something that has a clear and concise call to action. There is an affiliate theme for wordpress that makes this very easy. Review pages are another option, I would try to go for different keywords and different ad copy with these though. As for the content, I would put the call to action above the fold and then have the content (however long you want) underneath it. You can PM me specific questions about your campaign, so I can help or post more here if you like.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by keivn2

The current problem that I am facing is writing the landing page...I just dont know what type of landing should I go...

A landing with short content?
A landing page with long content?
A reviews type landing page?
A pre-sell type landing page?
A colourful and graphic landing page?
A static page? A wordpress blog? and etc...

Any suggestion or sample?

Hi keivn2,

As a general rule, short content works best when you have a free offer or are looking to generate leads. The more expensive or complicated the offer the longer the content needs to be. Naturally there may be exceptions to this rule so you should test different versions for validation.

The two most important elements of a effective landing page are the Headline and the Call-to-Action. Having a well honed value proposition that is reflected in both of these elements is key to successful conversions.

Slick graphics are not really essential for optimum conversion rates, however well written sales copy is absolutely essential. Focus you attention on the most crucial elements and use graphics sparingly and primarily to call attention to your most important element, your call to action.

An entire book could be written on Landing pages and if you look around I'm sure you will find a few.

[soamz]

Hi there..
I seriously need that. How are you intending to help me ?
Plz let me know..

[Mary Green]

Soamz, to who and what are you referring?

Also, I agree with dburk, on the content. I usually make sure I have unique content and the more the item costs the more unique content I try to add.

As for the headline, it is something very important I didnt discuss and Im glad he brought it up. It is hard to know what headline is the best when you are putting together your campaign, so I suggest you test everything, the headline, the keywords, the call to action button (i hear a green call to action button is best) and everything else. Please make sure you are tracking though, that is just as important.

[vuedoolor]

How long are you going to offer this help?

When doing PPC is it wise to have an opt in right there for the visitor to opt in for building a list? Or should you get rid of the opt in when doing ppc?

I joined ppc coach a while back but cancel due to it not being newbie friendly. Boy was I lost I had no idea what all those geeks were saying. Coach said you need to know how to build a website if you were to join.. The only sites that I have ever built was with xsitepro and I don't know html..

[DotMK]

Hi Mary,

PPC just doesnt seem to work for me.

I know i am competing in the most saturated area of the internet..

"making money online" and "home based business" but, i have been promoting a free marketing system, and knowone bloody even signs up.
i havent tried google yet, but have tried other networks, and i now i believe they are BS, and just get your money for BS clicks..

[dburk]

Originally Posted by DotMK

Hi Mary,

PPC just doesnt seem to work for me.

I know i am competing in the most saturated area of the internet..

"making money online" and "home based business" but, i have been promoting a free marketing system, and knowone bloody even signs up.
i havent tried google yet, but have tried other networks, and i now i believe they are BS, and just get your money for BS clicks..

Hi DotMK,

Marketing in general requires a great deal of skills. You can't expect to be an expert when you first start learning. PPC advertising requires all the usual marketing skills, plus extensive knowledge of PPC strategies and tactics.

If you jump into PPC without any marketing skills, you have a steep learning curve, both in marketing and PPC strategies and tactics. You need to plan on spending a couple of years learning it to be at level to compete with the professionals.

[Mary Green]

vuedoloor, hi, im just offering the help to be nice to the wf, so whatever help you need, i dont mind your asking and helping out.

as for ppc coach, i try to help out the people who go through my link when they sign up because I know it can be a pain to get your way around at first. While coach is doing better having the site laid out and easier to follow, its still a little difficult if you are a real newbie to IM in general, but it can be done.

if you want to collect optins, send your visitors to your squeeze page and give them an incentive, that is if you are trying to build a list. if you arent trying to build a list get rid of the optin. if you are doing the list make sure you monetize it to help pay for the ppc costs.

dotk, getting started with those kinds of keywords is going to be difficult. Unless you have a great page and great ppc skills you can lose a lot of money. The cpc for that niche is usually pretty high. Have you considered going after a less competitive niche?

If no one signed up at all, i would guess you were bidding on the wrong keywords, and the niche you got wasn't very interested. I dont think you have to wait a couple of years to do well on ppc, i know people who have done it in months, but its good to have a coach of some kind, or at least a blueprint to follow, did you happen to have either of these?

Mary

[vuedoolor]

If you hold my hand I'll join through your link but thats not going to be till maybe later cause right now Im unemployed and low on cash. Just trying to get by with article marketing right now. And I would really much rather do CPA than the pay per sale clickbank products.

[Ron569]

Hey Mary, I could always use a couple of pointers. I may even have something for you in return.

[Mary Green]

vuedoloor, thats awful sweet, just let me know when you are ready. i wish you well on the article marketing, ive been there myself.

Mary

[Mary Green]

Oh, and Ron, what do you need help with, anything specific? PM me.

Mary

[mailco]

Hi Mary, it's very nice of you to offer up your time to help people, what's the old saying?
Help enough people get what they want and you will get everything you ever wished for.
Anyway, something like that...

My question is for your opinion on keywords, I have heard two or three word key words are best rather than just one?
I have tried the word "employment" for my employment site and found it very expensive and costly.

[se7en]

Mary,
Could you do a step by step for keyword research for ppc?
How do you track?
How long do you leave a keyword before deleting it?
Do you bid high to start with?
How do you keep Google happy?

Regards,Steve

[keivn2]

Another question about the landing page.

Is it possible or wise move to link your customer from your landing page to the products's checkout page instead of the merchant's sales page?

[nashelver]

If your landing page is Keyword Rich and has good original content but is part of a domain with only the landing page i.e no other pages just the landing page will you be punished by google if yes what are the minimum number of pages a domain should have?

I am still only running PPC for clickbank as its the easiest to get paid for and setup but low conversions on ppc at the moment... and becauase no direct linking allowed iam struggling to setup all the unique websites to conform to best google standards/


By the way thanks for the offer of help very kind.

[Samos]

I got a question about Yahoo PPC. Do you use it and how do you make campaigns as fast as with adwords editor and excel. Is there an easy way?

I made a thread for this question already, maybe you would like to reply there or here.

Yahoo PPC

Thanks for helping newbs :P

[ishansoni]

Nice to see that you are willing to help the newbies. Good luck man.

[Korey Carter]

Hi Mary,

I sent you a PM earlier today. Did you get it ok?

Thanks,
Korey

[Mary Green]

Mailco, what do you mean 2 or 3 keywords. Employment is very broad, try to narrow down what kind of employment you are pitching and you should get a lower cpc, and possibly (hopefully) a better ctr.

se7en, I dont have enough time to post all of that now, but I will put something together for you very soon on that.

keivn2, that is a good process if you are confident that you can do all the selling yourself. If you are a preseller and not too good at copy, I would let the page sell. If the page sucks and you can do better, give it a shot, test it all, to be sure of results.

nash, a landing page by itself is a good way to test, after you have results you need to add more to the site to stay good with google. they do manual reviews of accounts and campaigns when they get around to it. if they see you arent adding to the end user experience they will slap you, or give you trouble. i would make sure you have a terms page, contact page, privacy policy (if you are collecting personal info), a links page, article page, etc. I would add new content weekly as well.

btw, direct linking is allowed, it is just one affiliate per keyword, so you have to test it, better to test with your own domain but not mandated. i would check the waters though before setting up a new site for each offer.

samos, going to check your thread

khali, i answered this in a pm to you today.

ecommerce, got your pm, answered it.

now available on yahoo and aim as ppcmom2009 for those who want to chat

Mary Green

[Nutrifitness]

wow...I may be contacting you again...I remember your offer to help a few months back

[nashelver]

Thanks so much very informative answer.. what do you know about this thing alot of guys are talking about where you buy a domain name similiar to the one your vendor has and in godaddy change the landing adress to your affiliate link so its like direct linkning but you have a unique URL so your ad shows seperately to anyone else's?

[Mary Green]

Nash, I have heard of that, from what I understand it is perfectly ok to do. The only problem would be if the site doesnt convert and you can't make changes for testing purposes, but its only a few bucks and worth the shot for direct linking purposes.

Mary

[Mary Green]

Yahoo and MSN are good places to go. They usually have lower costs and a bit lower conversion rate, but they are worth a shot. I dont know what product you are referring to, but if it is something specifc let me know, I might be able to help.

[nashelver]

Thanks again mary great help I hope to simulate some of your PPC success

[keivn2]

Mary Green, did you promote any related products from the Clickbank?

Because I am wondering should I promote a products that used to have 80+ gravity in the last month which recently dropped to 70 Gravity.

and same goes to a products that have low gravity like 8? Should I give a try or pick the higher gravity products?

[riolas]

I would like some help please.

Thanks very much

[Mary Green]

I try to stick to products on cb that have at least 30 gravity. I have some campaigns where I am doing well on cb products.

I have not used 7search, I try to stick with the top 3.

riolas, what help do you need?

[huineng]

Can you please tell me the difference between CPC and CPM in Google adwords?

[Mary Green]

Sure, no problem.

Cpc- cost per click
cpm- cost per 1000 impressions

[nashelver]

Is it ever useful for an affiliate marketer to use CPM? and if yes under what circumstances

[SoundsGood]

PM sent!

[Mary Green]

nash, it really depends for using cpm. I have always stuck with cpc, but I have heard that for branding purposes, you could specify sites to show your ad on and pay cpm for those. This would be where you just want to get your name out there and you dont care if people actually click.

[obbydoc2]

Hi Mary

Thanks for your offer.

I have a number of questions and I'd really appreciate your insight.

1) I have seperated my Adwords campaigns into Search and Content campaigns - and have litterally thousands of keywords allocated to each adgroup in these campaigns. The list is now seriously big. Unfortunately the majority are inactive.

My first question - do you think this impacts account performance overall? Would it be better to tidy up the lists?

2) I've noticed my CPC creeping up recently, while the number of impressions / clicks has fallen substantially. Any ideas on how I can recover this and drive CPC down while recovering clicks?

Many thanks in advance;

[Mary Green]

1) I absolutely believe you need to tidy up those lists. And I think it does impact your account performance. While separate search and content campaigns are great, you should also have the campaigns set up completely differently.

2)If you are talking about the same campaigns, I understand why the cpc is going up. If you dont have a good QS, you have a low CTR, or either of these things, this will happen. You need to tidy up the campaigns, email me for more specific information to your campaign, and, you absolutely need a higher CTR if you want to have a decent CPC. marywgreen@gmail.com

[Mary Green]

Anyone need more help? Please feel free to email me marywgreen@gmail.com

[sydnj]

I am a newbie and I could use some help. Please let me know if you are interested in helping me.

[Mary Green]

Of course, shoot me an email and I can help you out through there, unless you have general questions, you can feel free to post them here.

[sydnj]

Will do so but I think to start the phone may work best as i am pretty slow with this online stuff. That is why I am here.

[chaumi]

Mary

Can you think of any obvious reason why I have a page which has a 10/10 QS...runs OK, gets a good CTR.......but if i disable Google search and network, and only try to run it on content then nothing happens, just get 0 impressions?

[Mary Green]

Your cost per click may be too low chaumi. why dont you send me the specifics through pm, or email.

Sydnj, pm me your details so we can set up a phone call.