How I doubled the click-through on my cheap PPC ads

I just doubled up my click-through rate on some cheap PPC banner ads I've got running in Google AdWords. If you're already familiar with the technique of running every size banner ad on the "content network" and bidding super low for them (a penny to a nickel), then you know what I'm doing.

Well, here's what you DIDN'T know...

I have a set of banner ads running on some long-tail keywords in a niche with very little competition. I'm currently paying 5 cents a click for these on the content network, so each click-through comes cheap enough. I checked my logs the other day for that landing page, and found that a fair chunk of the cheap clicks were coming from one PARTICULAR page on another guy's site. I went and inspected the page, and sure enough, there was my ad in a very prominent position on a page that is loaded with content that is relevant to the ad.

So here's what I did:

I went to Digg and StumbleUpon and all the other popular sites where you can submit a URL, and found to my delight that the page where my ad keeps appearing had never been submitted. So guess what? I submitted the OTHER guy's page to all the sites, just like I would submit a site of my own. Within no time at all, my click-throughs more than DOUBLED on that ad to that landing page!

Sweet.