Hitting Search Engines

There are a lot of statistics about how much traffic a search engine brings to a web site compared to how much traffic is generated by other types of advert. And it's always those in the Search Engine
trade who seem to say "80% of hits come from search engines".

But is it true? Well, if you have an online business, and you don't run printed ads, radio ads, TV ads, or any other kind of offline ad, then I'd say a whole lot more than 80% come from search engines.

HOW TO...

So, if you're good at what you do, you'll get plenty of 'word of mouth' referrals - people who tell their friends and co-workers about your site. But they've got to find you first. Well, that covers
the blindingly obvious. But now let's start on how the search engines pick your site up and serve it up to real people who'll actually find your content relevant and useful. In short, let's advertise!

PREPARE YOUR SITE

You've heard it said: "You've got to get your key words sorted out". Keywords are the things that go in each HTML page's "META TAGS" section (in the 'HEAD' section). But has anyone actually told you how to pick the right key words? How can you know what words and phrases people are actually going to search for? Well, here's how. Go to a pay-per-click search engine (like Overture or e-Spotting), and make use of their Search Term Suggestion Tools. Here's Overture's tool - and it's free to use:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

You give it a term that you already know is relevant to your site (for example 'web marketing'), and it hands you a list of all the RELATED search terms people have used in the past month! And that's where your key words need to come from! How many key words and phrases to use, though? Well, the answer is simple: If you type all your key words and phrases on a single
line (in Notepad, for example), with each phrase separated by a comma, you have to stop just before you reach 255 characters in total - otherwise many engines will ignore you. Should you repeat key words? Not normally, but it's ok if it's part of several different phrases. For example, don't include the word "advert" more than once on its own, but it's alright to include "radio
advert, TV advert, banner advert" and so on. What about variations of words, like "advert", "adverts","advertising", "advertisements" and so on? Well, the search engines prefer the short version, which is already part of the longer variations. You don't need to include "adverts", "advertising","advertisements" at all because including "advert" alone is enough to find all the other variations (because those words all contain the word 'advert' in themselves). That means you don't have to list plurals of words - just the single version ("advert", but not "adverts")
Have you heard of Keyword Density? This is the MOST overlooked part of search engine preparation, and it's the number one reason why good lists of keywords seem to have no effect - and why sometimes a perfectly good page doesn't even get indexed.

Keyword Density is a simple check on how many times each of yourkey words actually appears - for real - on the page!Anyone can list key words in their meta tags but the search engines only bother with those key words that appear in your actual text on the page. There's something that should become obvious once you understand this: Every page has different text on it, so every page needs to have different key words! If every page on your site has the same key words, you can improve your search engine rankings just by building individual key word lists for every page. That's a good start. But didn't we just talk about using key words from the free suggestion tool? Well yes, and this is where you have to do a little hard thinking... (sorry, but it's the only way!)You get your list of phrases from a suggestion tool, and compile your own list of favourite key words based on the most popular searches (suggestion tools normally tell you how many times each was searched in the month).

After you compile your key words list (and this is the interesting part), you'll need to make sure that every last phrase and word appears at least ONCE (but preferably twice or more!) somewhere on the actual page you're working on! That means you have to adjust your copy (the text on the page) to squeeze in those words and phrases, in natural sentences. By the way, search engines are clever enough to know when you're using 'white-on-white' colour
tricks to cram extra words on your pages 'invisibly' - don't do that, you'll get barred.
On the next page I’ll give you a practical example…

TIME FOR A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE...

The phrase "web marketing" For "web marketing", the top 5 related search terms (in May 2003) were:

"web marketing" (30182 searches)
"web site marketing" (21949 searches)
"internet web site marketing" (2984 searches)
"web site marketing strategy" (2953 searches)
"web marketing strategy" (2627 searches)
"web site marketing plan" (2186 searches)

So my list needs to include all of those, plus a few contracted
versions (to catch lazy people who aren't typing in as much in their
search box), such as:

"internet marketing" (111931 searches)
"marketing strategy" (16161 searches)
"marketing plan" (23311 searches)

Added together in one line (as I described above), those all come to
189 characters so we're doing just fine. Now we insert those into
the keywords meta tag, like this:

/*meta name="keywords" content="web marketing, web site marketing, internet web site marketing, web site marketing strategy, web marketing strategy, web site marketing plan, web marketing, internet marketing, marketing strategy, marketing plan"*/

Next, we embody all of them in our text. That bit's up to you, but here's a paragraph I wrote that contains all of them, just to show how it could be done... "When you need a good web site marketing plan, or a marketing strategy that will grow your traffic, why not look at a web site
marketing strategy that uses the latest internet marketing tactics? A good web marketing strategy can take your internet web site marketing plans to new heights, generating visits and sales beyond your wildest expectations. Try our low-cost internet marketing plans, and as your online business grows, there's room to expand into our web marketing strategy packages, high traffic internet marketing plan, and management feedback reporting packages."

In terms of Keyword Density, our page now has several copies of most of the key words and phrases we chose. Just so you understand the value of that, total up the number of searches for each phrase we've used. That's AN INCREDIBLE 214,284 SEARCHES in one month, from one search engine alone. It's reasonable to expect a 1% click-through rate to your site if you're in the top 50 entries (5 pages) of results - which you CAN do if your key word density is good enough. That means this one page we've just optimised could bring you 2,142 new visitors (or more)
every month. Nice.

TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF HTML

There are a bunch of very simple rules and techniques that can make all the difference between search engines loving you or hating you. It's all about making your site as friendly as possible for them, and making it easy for their 'robots' (spiders) to automatically extract your headings, links, key words, and text. Of course if you blindly follow the 'rules' set out by the major search
engines, your site would look very ugly and be almost impossible for a human being to use! These tips will simply help you please the search engines AND your visitors, by including all the right information in the right places, but without ruining the look-and-feel of your site:

1.

The HTML language has 'header tags': H1, H2, and so on down to H7. They're meant to be automatically formatted headings to head up pages and break up long bodies of text. The H1 tag is meant to be the page title, and then you use H2 onward for progressively smaller (and less important) headings throughout the page. Sadly, most browsers make H1 headings far too big (around 30pt text!) so nobody uses them, usually settling for H4 instead (which comes out
around 14pt instead) because it looks nicer on the page. Of course the search engines would pay MUCH more attention to H1 tags, so the rule is this: Wherever you're going to use a heading tag
numbered 2 or more, STOP! Use an H1 tag instead, but put in a FONT SIZE tag to bring it back down a reasonable size again. That way the search engines get their H1 tags but your visitors see
decent sized headings still. Here's an example that looks just like a standard H4 tag, but is given much higher priority by the search engines...

h1 tag font tag size="3" > My heading! < font tag over h1 tag over

2.

Use image ALT tags everywhere... Wherever you've got images on your site, whether it's your logo, your menu bar, or just making white space between paragraphs or table cells, use the ALT
property of all your IMG tags to carry key words. Here's a good tip, too: Search engines tend to ignore images that are sized at 1 x 1 pixel (they know they're just there for the ALT tags), so use a 2 x 1 transparent GIF instead. It's invisible, takes almost no space on the page, but carries just as much 'search engine punch' as a full page graphic! Always insert just such a graphic as the very first line of HTML in each page's section. For example:



3.

Cross-link every page and site... Provide links from each page in your site to every other page so that when one gets indexed, they all get indexed. And if you run a number of different web sites, provide links from each site to all the others. You don't have to make a big thing of it, though. For example, I tend to run a series of tiny grey bullet points right across the bottom of each page, and each one carries a link to another page or another site. You can get away with about 80 of them before it gets too obvious or too ugly. Here's an example of the HTML source for them:

·
·
·
·... and so on. You're not expecting your visitors to click them at all - they're just there to boost the 'external link count' that search
engines keep for each page they index, and to tell search engines to index the rest of the site. One other trick that you should use in your meta tags is to include 'robot guides' that tell spiders to index and follow all your links. A complete meta tag section (to be put in the HEAD section of your HTML page) might look like this:

title Put a short sentence about your site here! title
meta name="description" content="Put the SAME title sentence here!"
meta name="keywords" content="Put your keywords here!"
meta name="robots" content="index, follow"
meta name="distribution" content="global"
meta name="author" content="Put your name here!"

4.

Use different page titles... For every page you create, make sure you work out the keywords and phrases for that page individually. Then you add a unique and very relevant title to the
page, trying to include as many of that page's key words as possible. Once you've done that, there are three places where the same title needs to appear on a single page:

i. The title tag in the /title section. ii. The DESCRIPTION meta tag.

iii. The first h1 tag on the page itself.

5.

Put keyword links in every paragraph... This can be tedious to do, especially if you change the content of your pages often. It can also be an interesting job if you're dynamically generating page content (from a database of articles, for example). Search engines LOVE pages that are heavily laden with links to other pages, but only if those links are part of natural language sentences. That means that for every key word that gets mentioned anywhere in the
entire site, you should ideally make that word a link which goes to an appropriate page. For example, on my news site, The Wise Marketer, when I write an article about a particular company, I always make a link that goes to the last article I wrote about the same company. That gives search engines a logical trail to follow for that company name, and my search engine ranking for searches on that company name goes sky high! If necessary, if you haven't got
other pages yet that you can link to for certain words, set up special 'glossary' pages that explain the term in simple English, and link to those. The search engines will love them. And those are the real obvious rules for making your pages friendly enough for all the major search engines to pick them up, read them, index them, and serve them up to thousands of visitors every month.

SUBMIT YOUR SITE

So now that you've done the back-breaking work of optimising every page on your site, you need to tell as many search engines as possible, starting with the big ones. And let's keep it cheap, shall we? Paid inclusion services do work but punters know that they're just looking at glorified adverts that just happen to look like search engine listings. Let's not go there unless we absolutely have to. Here's the links to the submission pages for each of the key search engines and submission services. The only one that charges real money is "Ineedhits.com", and that's only $2.50 for the 'submit pro 300' option, which I use extensively.

With all of these engines, you'll need to tell them your REAL e-mail address (but I'd suggest setting up a hotmail account for it, just to be safe). Some of them will email you for confirmation of your entry (to make sure you're not a search engine spammer!)

Altavista's free (basic) submission:
http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new

DMOZ.ORG (The Open Directory Project - a web directory) :
http://dmoz.org

HotBot/Lycos :
http://www.hotbot.lycos.co.uk/submit.html

Alexa :
http://pages.alexa.com/help/webmasters/index.html#crawl_site

Google:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

NationalDirectory.com :
http://www.nationaldirectory.com/addurl

Ineedhits.com Submit Pro 300 :
http://www.ineedhits.com/add-it/pro

And those are just the most popular ones - a little thought will produce many more (Ask Jeeves, Teoma, Northern Light, Netscape, AOL, Freeserve, Fast, Inktomi, Yahoo, MSN, Excite, to name just a few more). Many of them feed information to a number of other search engines, and Ineedhits.com's submit pro 300 takes care of most of the rest... eventually.

REFRESH YOUR LISTINGS REGULARLY

Sadly, one of the biggest problems with search engines is that, with the huge amounts of information that web masters are dumping into them daily, even a top-ranked listing is going to be displaced sooner or later, unless it's re-indexed (and treated as 'new') on a regular basis.

Submit your sites to all of the search engines and directories youcan find at the beginning of each month, without fail. It doesn't take long once you've got the routine figured out. I've been doing that for a couple of years, and only once wasn't able to do it for a single month. It took all of the sites three months to recover from one missed month.

THE HIDDEN EXTRA THAT NOBODY THINKS OF

And now, here's that hidden technique I told you about earlier. If you have a few hours a week spare, put together a daily news page about your industry or marketplace. It doesn't have to be original. It doesn't even have to be well written. You don't even need to care if people read it. It just has to be packed full of all the keywords and phrases you want people to find. Once you've had it up and running for a couple of weeks, with at least one new item EVERY WEEK DAY, ask Google News to add you to their list as a news source for your industry sector. Here's what
Google themselves say about people wanting to publish news there: "Please contact us at news-feedback@google.com. We're pleased to work with individual publishers to ensure their content is appropriately represented in Google News."

What good does that do? Well, Google News is said to be used more by business people than any other search facility, and The Wise Marketer's experience certainly confirms the theory. If you have news that changes daily, real people will find you when they search Google News (http://www.google.com/news) for anything to do with your line of business. Most marketers haven't thought of this yet because they don't consider themselves able to publish news. But what is news? It's just saying (in your own words, to avoid breaking copyrights!) what's going on, and who's doing what. At its most basic level, it's a few hours a week of research and writing. The benefits in terms of site visits are well worth the effort. But please remember to report news responsibly, and don't just re-publish other companies' news - you can get into serious hot water if you just copy stuff without getting permission from them.

Further AdSense Resources

Whether you have one website or 100, RSS feeds or no, blogs or no, below is a list of great tools, software, scripts, and other resources that can help you win in your Google AdSense campaign.

Tools and Scripts

These are tools that would help you in a variety of areas such as seeing what ads appear for specific keywords, tracking and analyzing clickthroughs and revenue, scripts and much more.

• AdSense Preview tool from Google – Preview your AdSense Ads

• AdSense Desktop – Tool for analyzing Google AdSense statistics

• AdSenseLog – Another tool for analyzing AdSense stats

• AdSenseCharts – Chart generator for your statistics

• Revenue Checker for Google AdSense – Checks and monitors revenue

• Google AdSense Sandbox Tool – shows what Ads would appear for specific keywords or content

• AdSense Web Tool – similar to the one above

• AdSense Tracker – Statistical Analysis and tracking

• AdSense Monitor – AdSense tracking script

• SysSense - A utility that puts your AdSense information in the Windows system tray

• AdSense Notifier – places AdSense information in a status bar

• AdSense™ Tracker - Another good tracking tool

• Google AdSense Tracking Script – Another tracking script

• AdSenseMasterFlex 2.0 - Script

• asRep: Google AdSense tracking script

AdSense Information Websites and Tutorials

• AssociatePrograms.com - AdSense Forum

• Digital Point - AdSense Forum

• Google AdSense Charts & Graphs

• Google AdSense Preview Tool

• Google AdSense Sandbox Tool

• GoogleRankings.com

• How to Boost Your AdSense Revenue

• JenSense - Making Sense of Contextual Advertising

• Search Engine Forums - Contextual Advertising Forums

• Search Engine Watch - AdSense Forum

• V7N Web Development Community - Google Forum

• Web Pro World - AdSense Forum

• Webmaster World - AdSense Forum

• Googlest

Two More AdSense Opportunities: RSS and Blogs

Adding Google Ads to your RSS feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has gained huge popularity on the Internet. RSS is an XML document format that organizes and stores news-like content from various sources into one source. Think of it like a newswire service, the kind of stuff that scrolls along the bottom of cable channels. A large percentage of the “news” items you find on any website that is not a major news portal got there through an RSS feed.

Google has introduced a specific program known as AdSense for RSS. Although, it is under beta testing currently (mid 2005), you can join this program now and start making money with it. RSS offers a variety of interesting content options that most websites themselves can’t match.
Google AdSense for feeds has its own set of policies. These can be accessed at:
http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=20134 Like the AdSense program, you must follow all guidelines in order to be accepted for the AdSense for feeds program.

Placing AdSense ads on your Blogs

Blogs are similar to RSS feeds in concept except they usually have one author rather than an aggregate of sources of the material they contain. Blogs (short for Web logs) are simple webpages where you can write articles and other content on a variety of topics, and both the famous and the unknown use these online diaries to share their thoughts, post pictures, and so on. The public can view this content and even comment on it in most cases.

Due to the considerable amount – and unlimited range – of content on Blogs, it may make sense to place AdSense ads on them. In fact, it is much easier to generate revenue from Blogs as compared to other web pages, at least in theory.

• First, blogs are full of content, most of which is original most of the time. The content may not be “good” from a human reader perspective but it isusually “good” according to Google’s scans. Thus, getting approved by Google AdSense may be easier.

• The content presented on the blog, in many cases, is quite diverse which, unlike a website that needs to be “about something” can be excused by the “everything and nothing” nature of most blogs. Consequently, the possibility of Google finding targeted ads that are relevant may increase.

• Google AdSense works only with those websites that are already indexed by Google. Blogs get indexed far more easily than regular webpages. Some blogs get indexed in as few as two to three days of submission. Thus, the chances of getting approved by Google AdSense increases.

• Blogs can be created at practically no cost – much cheaper than commercial websites.

Part 3: Summary and Additional Resources

AdSense Do’s and Don’ts

Now that you know what AdSense is all about, we can offer the following do’s and don’ts – which more or less summarizes everything we’ve said so far.

Do’s

The first rule of using AdSense is to follow their terms of service. Google has exceptional monitoring ability, and if they find any violation of their TOS, your account will be suspended, rendering all your efforts moot.
Consider having a number of informative pages about varying topics but with a consistent theme for your website. That way you will have more ads to choose from and can possibly maximize your CTR.

Use keywords to your advantage. Higher paying keywords will usually but not always yield more rewards. Think relevance. Also use variations of keywords for added advantage.
Provide unique information on your web pages. The more specific the content of your website is, the more targeted your ads will be, and the more effective. Always focus on providing good quality information!

Experiment with various ad formats on your web page and choose those that suite your website. You can choose to display ads with different formats on one page.
Position your ad block in such a way that the ad is visible and yet it does not put off the readers. Ideally, place your ad in the top section of your webpage which can be viewed without scrolling down.

Use the Google AdSense preview toolbar to your advantage and see how the ads will appear on your website. Get a hands-on feel of how the visitor to your website will view your web page.
Use Google channels and other external tracking software to evaluate your performance on a routine basis.

Don’ts

Do not resort to fraudulent or deceptive means for generating clicks on the ads that are on your page.

Some of the methods that are prohibited by Google AdSense are:

• Automated clicking programs
• Repeated manual clicks
• Using robots to generate clicks
• Clicking your own ads
• Tricking your visitors into clicking on your ads by using fraudulent means

Don’t have confusing layers of content. Content on your web page should not hide the ad text and URL. At the same time, it is advisable that you use same font type, size and color (background and font) for both the ads and the content on your web pages so that your ad does not announce itself as an outside ad. Ideally, your ad should look and feel like a part of your website.

Don’t have broken links on your site. Your website should not contain any broken links and should be easily navigable. Also, the content on your web pages should be informative, of high quality and the ads should be relevant to the content.
Don’t have old or illegal information on your site. Be careful about outdated information, plagiarized text and obscene or offensive material. Avoid using any of these on your web pages.

Part 2: The 5-Step to Success

Once you’re accepted, you want to maximize the opportunity. In this section, we look at some of the most effective strategies for generating optimum revenue from the Google AdSense program.

Step 1 - Formatting Ad Blocks

You can let Google decide for you the type of ads that will be displayed on your webpage, but as the website publisher, you may be in a better position to decide what ads suit the content of your website and how you would like them displayed. To the extent possible, whether chosen by Google or you, make the ads seem like part of the site itself.

Most internet marketing experts believe that the ads on your website have a high probability of getting clicked if they blend in with the rest of the content of your web page. Factors such as color scheme, font size and type, and the appearance of your ad should match your web page. Borders are optional and we think often you should opt out – why put a box around the ad that says “Hi! I’m an ad!”?

Also, regardless of other design choices, text links should be blue. Why are text links blue? For the same reason Henry Ford said of the Model-T “They can have any color they want so long as it’s black.” They just are.

Though we think text ads are generally better than graphic ads, also known as image ads, Google does offer them with the program.

Actually, you don’t need to struggle much with whether graphic ads or text will be better on your pages, as Google’s technology will suggest whether an image ad or a text ad will be more suitable and which will earn you maximum revenues (since you earn part of they earn, they have motives to get this mix right).

However, it remains totally up to you whether you wish to run image ads or text-based ads. You can select only image ads, or text ads or a combination of boththese formats on your entire AdSense account or on one page at a time based on your discretion.

Step 2 - Ad Placement

“Location, location, location.” It is true in real estate and true in advertising, including web advertising. Since the “location” of the user is your site already, the “location” of the ad in this context means on which pages, where on the pages, and so on. As noted, the less an ad looks like an ad, the more effective it is likely to be.

Then there are general design and usability factors to consider.

If your webpage is cluttered and you can’t dispense with any content, you may want to break it down further into sections or more pages to provide easier reading. This also gives you the potential benefit of placing additional ads.

As noted, we generally recommend text-based ads. However, text-dense sites may actually do better with image ads. If your site has very few graphics, you may want to balance it out by putting image-based ads. In the monotony of a lot of dense written information image-based ads and graphics provide what’s called visual relief. This can also prompt clicks.

Where should you put the ads? The chances of your ad getting noticed by the visitors to your site increases greatly if you place ads as close to the top of your webpage as possible.

If you choose to place so-called ‘skyscraper’ ads – in magazines these would be called columns – on the sidebars of your webpage, it would be wise to place them on the right side of your principal content areas. The reason for this is the visitor to your page (in most languages) will read from left to right, he or she will chance upon the ad ultimately, if not consciously then at least out of habit. Their eyes will go there. From the left, they can visually “skip” the ad when they start reading next to it.

Your ads should be placed in such a way that it matches the links to otherwebsites on your site. If you already have a links section on your site, put the AdSense links in that section or list. This is not dishonest – if it were Google would not allow it.

Obviously if you have a “most popular” area on your website, such as a page that is updated daily with some kind of material that people bookmark to revisit often, place your ad(s) there instead of somewhere else that may get less traffic. For many websites the home page is not actually the most accessed area. If you don’t know what the traffic pattern is on your sites, it’s easy to find out – ask your hosting provider about usage logs.

One more thing: While some affiliate marketing programs encourage host sites to encourage clicks directly, it is not appropriate to expressly ask your readers to click on the ads served by the Google programs. Not only is it unprofessional and arguably unethical, it also annoys people and moreover Google AdSense actually prohibits any such activity. You can neither directly solicit clicks nor can you do anything considered deceptive to encourage clicks.

In conclusion, the emphasis is always on quality of content on your web pages.

Good and interesting content makes your site better, more acceptable to Google, more likely to win with AdSense, and therefore more profitable for you!

Step 3 - Researching Keywords

After you are done choosing the right format and location for your AdSense ads, don’t sit back and wait for the money to roll in just yet. The next important step is to choose the right keywords for your web pages. These will influence both who visits your site, and how AdSense assigns ads to you.

The number one mistake most website publishers make is to constantly choose high-paying (i.e. expensive!) keywords assuming that it will yield them more income. While it is tempting to choose such keywords to get higher rankings on search engines, be prudent when it comes to selecting the right keywords that go with the AdSense ads that are to be displayed.. Remember the goal here is clicks, not SEO rankings. This is a case where you often do not get what you pay for.

Consider this scenario. Your webpage talks about wine tasting courses. You review search phrases and keywords with “wine” in it and you find “wine rack” is in the top three and available, so you buy it. The corresponding ads also focus on buying wine racks online, wine storage and building your own wine racks. After a week when you check on the statistics of your webpage and AdSense account, you see that you are losing visitors and your income is dipping! The keyword selection is faulty in this case even though it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Why? The visitors to your webpage were actually looking for wine racks and have landed on your webpage talking about wine tasting courses instead. The wine course types want to sign up for the courses, maybe buy a book on wine, or a wine of the month club. They don’t want to build a wine rack. Think strategically, not tactically.

Just because a keyword is high paying and is seemingly related, does not mean it is totally relevant and you need something relevant. Relevance is more important than value! In the above case, you could have – and should have – chosen wine tasting tour, wine tasting party, wine tasting event, wine tasting class, wine tasting school, course tasting wine and so on. You are interested in relevance more than popularity. Tasting is a match. Racks are not.

Let’s look at some of the ways in which you can research your keywords for AdSense ads:

• You can check out the popularity of various keywords if you already have an account with
Google AdWords. This way you will get an idea of the popularity of various keywords as well as the cost and returns that entail.

• Google AdWords also has a tool known as the AdWords Keywords Tool which can sometimes help you search for alternate keywords and variations.

• Another tool known as Keyword Analyzer can generate numerous key phrases that are typed by Internet users in different search engines.
Consider getting a WordTracker account. They have an excellent tool that suggests top 1,000 most popular keywords. This tool can also help you create a list of relevant keywords for your webpage. You can learn a lot from a small investment here.

• Another great idea is to search for top 100 keywords on 7search which will give you an idea of high-paying keywords.

Your clickthrough rate will be boosted tremendously by including the right keywords in your web copy, of course. Keywords occurring in your ads are usually highlighted on the search engine results page. This also helps in drawing additional attention to your ad.

The URL of your webpage is also an integral part of achieving success on Google AdSense program, as it is on the Web generally. Current wisdom holds that the keywords in the URL are equally if not more important than the ones featured in the actual webpage content or in metatags. If you change your ordinary URL to a keyword rich URL relevant to your market, it is possible to raise your CTR as much as 200% or more without doing anything else.

Obvious domain names with the keywords that you want might be expensive to purchase from a broker, but you can also buy used domain names that are no longer active, often for just a few dollars per year.

Step 4 - Developing Content

Let’s assume you have good ads, good placement, and good traffic.

This step is all about how to tweak your pre-existing content to support the most effective profitability from your new AdSense program.

One major mistake many web publishers make now is to lard up their pages with a bazillion keywords for so-called “search engine optimization.” Do not fall into that trap and clutter your webpage with high-profile buzzwords that do not contribute to the value of your webpage or the experience of your intended audience. Remember, we’re focused here on clicks, which means bringingrelevant readers to your site and giving them a good experience that puts them in an inquisitive or buying frame of mind.

As a general rule, all content shifts should make some kind of sense. You may well be able to make connections between articles on sports, to articles on sports medicine, to articles on herbal supplements which feature ads for those products. On the other, a web page on bicycles should not have ads for other kinds of pumps, if you know what we mean.
Before you decide to add that magic Google AdSense code on any page of your website, you should have dealt with the following two important steps:

• High quality textual content

Ensure that your web pages have enough textual content so that the AdSense program can set up ads that are relevant to the content on your pages. If you have very little content, it will be difficult for Google to determine the focus of your page and end up displaying only public service ads that do not earn any revenue.

• Use different page titles for different pages

Have unique page titles based on the specific content of each page. Avoid generic or vague page titles such as ‘Untitled Document’ or ‘Page 1’. Be crisp and precise and avoid using long phrases and difficult words in the page titles. If your page has a very long title, it might get banned from some search engines, so be pithy.

Step 5 - Tracking and Reports

Tracking the results of your marketing efforts can help you focus your efforts and make adjustments to win.Google offers a great free tracking feature known as ‘Channels’. You can use these channels to track ads on specific URLs or to categorize ads based on their formats, keywords, location on web page and so on.

You can choose from two channel types offered by Google.

URL Channels

This will help you track the performance of your web pages without altering your ad code. All you need to do to track your performance is to enter a full or partial URL in the channel and you’re done. A full page URL will track the performance of the specific page having that address. If you want to track all the pages on a specific domain, you need to enter a top-level domain name.

Custom Channels

Custom channels are used to track the performance of your webpage based on the criteria that you specify. You can choose what specific factor you would like to track and customize the channel according to your requirements.
As the name suggests, custom channels are very flexible, and if you have ever used any kind of data reporting tool you will find setting them up easy and logical. You can have up to 50 custom channels! You can compare the performance of different ad formats and the relevancy of ads. You can also compare how ads on one page are performing when compared with ads on other pages. You can do so by assigning each group of pages to a specific channel and eventually comparing results in your customized channel reports. You can also see where your clicks are coming from by assigning a channel to each of your separate pages. Also, it is a good idea to name your channel in such a way that it is easy to identify different channels in reports, especially if you are using a dozen or more.

Server Logs

In addition to the ‘channel’ program offered by Google to track your AdSense ads on your web pages, you can also use any of the various high quality external AdSense tracking software packages to track your performance in greater detail (except actual revenues – you need to get that from Google). One major advantage of such software is that it runs locally, which enables you to access specific information that Google doesn’t track. Be aware that none of these third-party software solutions are “endorsed” by Google currently but most of them guarantee to operate within AdSense guidelines. Just make sure they do, because you don’t want to lose your account status over a technical violation by a third party.
Some of the information you can obtain by using tracking software:
• Referring website of all your visitors
• The type of web browser they are using
• Where the actual ad-clickers are coming from
• Search keywords typed in by the visitors to your website that eventually brought them to you
You should use a combination of Google channels and a reliable AdSense tracking program so as to get comprehensive information about your AdSense account.

Part 1:Join the AdSense Program

Understanding Google policies

We discussed earlier how rewarding the Google AdSense program can be. However, joining the Google AdSense program is not that easy or everyone in the world would do it (which would defeat its purpose, ultimately). You have to be approved by Google in order to create your AdSense account and start earning money from it.

How do you get approved? Google famously has never publicly published details of its approval process, there are tips you should follow to ensure a high possibility of getting approved.
The good news is that Google does publish its policies and you do not need to be a member to read them. You should read them and be certain that you are in 100% compliance with them, not only when attempting to start your AdSense account, but once you are already a member. They update these policies regularly and a violation will get you suspended. A list of Google AdSense policies can be seen at: http://www.google.com/adsense/policies

Content – The Key to AdSense!

As stated earlier, we cannot say exactly how Google decides to accept or reject a site. However, one thing is for sure – the main criterion for approval is always the content of the website!
Most sites get rejected simply because they do not have any – or enough – good content. What constitutes “good” content? We can say what it is not. The types of websites that only have links and “filler” content aimed at attracting Search Engines, and sites that do not offer any informational content but solely focus on their own products and services. Google is one of the smartest companies on the Internet, and they can easily tell “junk” content from “real” content, even if many web surfers themselves can’t.

Google approves websites that have significant real content. These could be in the form of informational articles, analyses of various topics, and much more. For business websites that solely focus on selling their products and services through their website, including informational articles about their industry is smart, and this data is usually pretty easily available.

Another reason why most business websites do not qualify for the program, is that most businesses are specialized, and these websites are most likely to get Ads from their competitors, as only those ads would be relevant. As discussed, competitor ads would be blocked by you, filtered by Google, or both, so an AdSense program that serves no ads makes no sense!
Similarly, websites that focus only on links for generating search engine traffic do not have any content at all, according to both common sense and Google. These sites may rack up fairly high traffic scores and so forth, but they do not qualify for AdSense.

One of the best and simplest strategies is to include at least 30 to 40 informational articles of 400 to 450 words each and update them from time to time. Writing these articles yourself may be a daunting task. However, the good news is that there are considerable websites that offer articles for free, and plenty of professional writing resources who can not only write high quality material for you, but can especially optimize that material to work well with search engines and the “qualification” processes for systems like AdSense.

How much can I make with AdSense and how do I get started?

You’ve seen the nutty claims by so-called “internet experts” that strategies and programs they have devised enable surfers to earn thousands of dollars within a matter of days! Or minutes!! No such thing.
However, there are several lucrative programs that can provide an extremely generous income with comparatively little effort – Google AdSense is absolutely one of them.
But it takes some time, and it takes some planning, like anything real does. The rest of our report is all about unlocking that potential.
To start understanding the potential, think about how you make money with this program. Each time someone clicks an ad on your pages, you get a percentage of what Google is paid for placing that ad.

Revenue (or Income) from an Ad = Clickthrough value of the ad * Payout Rate * Clickthrough rate of the Ad * Webpage traffic * Frequency of Ad

In the above equation, Clickthrough value is the amount the advertiser pays per click for the Ad (this figure varies); the Payout Rate is the percentage of revenue to be paid for every click fixed by Google (this figure varies); Clickthrough rate is simply the # of times the ad is clicked on in a certain period of time divided by the # of times it is displayed during the same period; Webpage traffic is the # of visitors to your website; and Frequency of Ad is the # of times this particular ad appears on your webpage.

Let’s put some figures into the above equation and see what the income is.

The figures below are for a single day:

Clickthrough Value > 30 cents or $0.30 (The advertiser pays 30 cents per click for the Ad, to Google)

Payout Rate > 50% or 0.5 (This is an assumption based on what many experts believe to be the current payout rate for most deals)

Clickthrough rate of the Ad > the ad is displayed 100 times within the day and clicked by 9 people > the clickthrough rate would be 0.09

Webpage traffic > 150 visitors during the days
Frequency of Ad > 100

The Income per day from a single ad would be = 0.30 * 0.5 * 0.09 * 150 * 100
= $202.5

If you consider this to be the average income per day, the total revenue generated within a month would be more than $6000. This is incredible, considering you basically did nothing to earn that money. We know of cases where people have earned even more than $25,000 a month with AdSense, which is a large sum to anyone.

Goal is to equip you to get started on the road to making money with AdSense.

Advantages of the Google AdSense system

Google AdSense is simple to use and manage. Once approved, displaying ads on your webpage does not take time and requires minimal technical knowledge.
Google AdSense is very smart about ad selection. The ads that are displayed are only those that are relevant to your content, and Google has strict quality control on the general quality of the ads.
Google AdSense uses text-only ads. Far from being low-tech, text ads are more effective than flashy ads. The clickthrough rate of text ads is proven to be higher than that of animated ads! More clicks equals more money, and text ads equals more clicks. Also…text ads are very “low weight” and very fast loading. The AdSense program will not slow your website, or your visitors, down. You can also use graphic ads.

Google AdSense programs: Choose your weapon(s)!

Google currently (mid 2005) offers three programs: AdSense for content, AdSense for search, and Premium AdSense.

AdSense for content

AdSense for content is the main AdSense program – contextually targeted ads are displayed on your webpage, and you get paid for every click. These ads are specifically targeted to the content of your webpage. Consequently, if you change the content of your page, the ads that are displayed would also change. AdSense allows you good control over what ads get served, since there might be some obvious problems if it didn’t. These include:

Blocking Ads – you choose

While the ad selection is automatic, you can block unwanted ads – such as those from your competitors. You just tell Google which companies to block from your sites.

Reviewing and filtering Ads – semi-automatic

Google has its own strict policies for ad content (no profanity, no racial discrimination, etc). These are filtered out automatically from your point of view. Additionally, you can choose to block additional content through custom filters. This is slightly different than blocking an advertiser, since with this method an advertiser you generally allow may submit ads that would individually be filtered out.

Allowing the publisher to select an ad

In the rare case where Google’s content engines can’t make a clear match of ads to pages, they will let you pick which ads you want served. If you don’t pick, you’ll get public service spots.

The look-and-feel of Ads can be customized

Ads shouldn’t look out of place or be jarring on your website. Google allows you to customize colors and layout. You can choose options provided or have your own custom layout and color applied to the ads. The advertisers have no control over this; as the material appears on your site, you can and should select how it looks.

Tools for analysis

Tracking and analyzing the performance of any marketing campaign is critical. Google AdSense provides a range of comprehensive online reports that allow you to monitor and analyze your earnings as well as the performance of ads many metrics, including size, color, and so forth, so you can make adjustments to maximize the value of the placements.

AdSense for Search

This is another program whereby Google allows you to ad a Google Search box to your website. By doing this, visitors to your site can search the entire internet from your website itself. In a way, your site becomes a host to Google. Except you make money!

The search results page that is displayed when a visitor on your website searches through the search box on the site itself, also displays Google Ads (AdWords ads) next to the usual listings, just as it would on Google.com. If the visitor clicks on any of these Google Ads, you get paid as well. Thus, with AdSense for search you can enhance your income potential beyond what just the content of your actual site can provide.

AdSense for search offers all the same options and controls as AdSense for content. These include ad customization, ad filtering, monitoring and tracking results, and so on.

Google AdSense Premium service

The AdSense Premium service provides advanced functionality and features, provided your website qualifies for it – which in fact very few sites do.
As a base requirement, your website should received at least 5 million search queries or 20 million page views a month to qualify for the Premium service. (We’re betting if your sites qualify for this level of service, you already know all about AdSense!)

How the Ads Get On Your Site

Once you join the AdSense program – and Google approves your site or sites, which we’ll cover in detail shortly – the actual process of displaying ads on your website is extremely simple. You are provided with a small HTML script, which you can paste anywhere on your webpage. You may paste this code any number of times and on multiple pages, and watch the ads get served! Google automatically places AdWords ads that are most relevant, from its extensive advertiser base. Google employs various sophisticated algorithms to determine the relevancy of the ads to your content.

Before we get into how Google assesses sites, and whether a few or many placements of that magic script will deliver optimum results, let’s review the advantages of AdSense.

AdWords beyond Google.com

AdSense is an application of AdWords beyond Google.com

Making “sense” of AdSense means understanding that it is really an offshoot of the older Google model, AdWords. But they are not the same thing.

Google AdWords

If you have ever searched on Google, you have seen AdWords.

Google AdWords are the small text ads that are displayed on the side of the search results in Google. These ads are contextual of course – in this case the context is the search terms you entered. The ads will be served based on what you’re looking for. So, if you do a search on “printing services” you will get ads for printing services along with your search results!

How does this generate money for Google and the advertisers?

Google AdWords works on a model known as pay-per-click. When someone clicks on an AdWords ad, the advertiser of that ad has to pay Google a certain amount. It’s easy to track and fully automated.

We say “certain amount” because that amount is different all the time and is subject to market forces – in this case, bidding. Something has to determine the placement of those ads, and what determines it is how much the advertiser offers to pay per click. When you submit this kind of ad to Google, you submit it with a bid – which is compared to other bids for similar keywords. It’s an auction style process.

The position of the AdWords ads is based on the bidding amount of keywords of an ad. Obviously, the higher the bid, the higher the position the bid buys you. For instance, if the highest bid for the keywords “Internet marketing” is 80 cents per click, you can get top position by bidding 90 cents. Then every time someone clicks on your ad, Google would charge you 90 cents, and you would retain the top position until someone else bids more for the same search word placement.

Google AdSense, as stated earlier, is an extension of Google AdWords. It takes the AdWords concept and moves it off of Google’s search page and onto thousands of other web pages. The ads that are displayed on the websites are Google AdWords ads.

It’s good for the advertiser, who gets more and broader displays, for Google, who charge more for this program, for you, who will make money from the clickthroughs on your pages, and also for the consumer, who will see cool ads for stuff they are probably interested in!

So how exactly are you making money from all this? You earn a share of the pay-per-click amount, every time a visitor clicks on the ad. So you just need to get ads on your site…

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is an ad-serving program that places ads that “make sense” – specifically, that make sense based on relevant content, and assumptions about who might be interested in that content. AdSense is an application of the broader concept of Contextual Marketing. Contextual Marketing is just what it sounds like. On a website about custom cars, you might have an ad for fancy wheels or car care kits. On a website about off-roading, you might have an ad for durable truck tires or spotlight rigs. A hockey site might advertise hockey sticks…and a tennis site, tennis shoes. Contextual Marketing just means aligning the ad serving with the context/nature of the website and its audience, the same way like items are grouped in a store. And the “context” can be cut much finer than website level, it can be page level, article level, and so on, so the ads always match the material they are appearing near, and thus, appeal to the interest of the reader/buyer at any given moment.

So what’s in it for you – the website publisher/owner? That’s easy. Every time a visitor to your site clicks one of these ads, you make money. The better the ads are targeted, the more clicks you get, the more money you make. AdSense displays easy-to-read, text-based, relevant ads that don’t overshadow the content of your website or annoy visitors. Actually, you have seen hundreds of these ads yourself, as you’ll realize in a moment.

Today there are probably only a few places in your website that can directly make you money, if any. The magic of Google AdSense is this: It allows you to earn money through every page of your website. On top of that, with algorithmsused to align ad content with page content Google automatically selects and displays ads for your website that are likely to generate the highest revenue for you.

Step 4: Submit your website

The basics: Why should you submit your website?

By submitting your website to search engines you invite search engines to visit your website. You ask search engines to take a look at your pages.

Tips: How to submit your site correctly .

IBP allows you to submit your website to search engines, Internet directories and special interest sites (vortals or vertical portals). Only submit your website to the correct categories in Internet directories and only submit your website to a special interest site if the site matches the topic of your website.

Do not submit your website if you don't have your own domain name or if your domain name is only a redirection to another domain. Do not submit multiple domains that lead to the same web space.

Warning: What can happen if you do not submit your site correctly?

When you submit your website to search engines, you invite search engine spiders to visit your web pages. That does not mean that your website will get high search engine rankings.

If you did not optimize your web pages, it's pointless to submit your website to search engines. You won't get high rankings if your web pages are not search engine ready.

If you don't use your own domain name or if your website is hosted by an unreliable web host then it is likely that your website will not be listed on search engines. If the submitted website URL is only a redirection or a welcome page then it's also likely that search engines won't index your website.

Step 3: Optimize your inbound links

The basics: Why are inbound links important?

Links are one of the most important factors for high search engine rankings. It is not possible to get high search engine rankings without good incoming links!

The idea behind this concept is that search engines think that your website must be important if many other websites link to your site. The more other websites link to your website, the higher your search engine rankings will be.

If more than one website has been optimized for the same keyword (see step 2) then the page with the best incoming links will get the highest search engine rankings.

Tips: How to optimize your inbound links?

High rankings on Google and other search engines are the result of optimized web page content and good incoming links. You need both to get high search engine rankings.

The number of links alone is not enough to improve your search engine rankings. It is also important that the other websites are related to your website. If the links to your website include your important keywords in the link text, then it's easier to get high rankings for these keywords.

If the links to your site include your keywords, then search engines will think that your website must be relevant for these keywords.

Warning: What can happen if you do not build inbound links?

It is impossible to get high rankings on Google or other major search engines without good inbound links. It is absolutely crucial to the success of your website that you work on the inbound links to your site.

Inbound links are extremely important for modern search engines. You cannot get high search engine rankings without good inbound links.

Step 2: Optimize your web pages

The basics: Why is it important to optimize your web pages?

By optimizing your web pages, you tell search engines for which keywords you want to be found.

If you do not optimize your web pages, then search engines won't list your website or they will list it for the wrong keywords.

Optimizing your web pages makes sure that your website can get high rankings for the keywords of your choice.

Tips: How to optimize your web pages High rankings on Google and other search engines are the result of optimized web page content and good incoming links. Start with optimizing your web page content.

By optimizing your web page content, you tell search engines for which keywords you want to be found. Search engines can only give your web page a high ranking for a certain keyword if your web page is relevant to that keyword. Make sure that your web pages don't have major HTML code errors that prevent search engines from indexing your site.

You should optimize at least six different pages of your website for different but related keywords (the keywords that you found in step 1). Do not optimize the same page for

more than one or two keyword phrases.

Warning: What can happen if you do not optimize your web pages?

If you do not optimize your web pages then search engines might not be able to index
your pages. In addition, search engines might not be able to find out what your web pages
are about.

If you optimize only one web page of your site then it will be very difficult to get high
search engine rankings. Search engines take your complete website into account. If you

have many web pages that are optimized for different but related keywords than search
engines will think that your web pages are relevant to a certain topic.

Relevant web pages get better search engine rankings. For that reason, you should

optimize as many pages as possible for different but related keywords.

Some HTML errors can prevent search engines from indexing your web pages. If your web pages have such an HTML error, you won't get listed on search engines because search engines cannot index your pages. For that reason, it is also important to check the HTML code of your pages.

Step1 : Find The Best Keyword

The basics: Why is it important to invest some time to find the best keywords?

Keywords are the words that web surfers enter in search engines to find websites. It's pointless to optimize your web pages for keywords that nobody uses in the search engines.

For a successful online marketing campaign, you must target the right keywords. The keywords you use should be relevant for your website and web surfers should be searching for your keywords.

If you target the wrong keywords, your website promotion efforts will be in vain and you will waste a lot of time and money.


Tips: Which keywords are good keywords?

There are three different keyword types: keywords for browsing, keywords for comparing and keywords for buying.

Keywords for comparing are usually the keywords that work best for search engine optimization. People who use that keyword type are looking for a solution to their problem and they are ready to buy. To get best results with your search engine optimization efforts, you should concentrate on that keyword type.

Details about the different keyword types can be found By Searching Above.

Most people use a two to four word phrase in a search, so phrases are very effective. Single words cannot be promoted effectively because they are not very targeted. Internet users who use four-word searches are more likely to purchase goods or services than those using fewer words (source: Oneupweb Research).


Warning: What can happen if you target the wrong keywords?

If you target the wrong keywords, you will lose time and money.

You will invest a lot of time in optimizing your web pages for keywords for which your website cannot get high rankings at the moment. Or you will invest a lot of time in optimizing your web pages for keywords that don't convert to sales.

It is very important that you choose the right keywords that lead to high search engine rankings and sales. Make sure that you choose the correct keyword type.

Landing Page Tips

Conversion is a large part of how successful a pay per click campaign is. A few tips to improve landing pages:

• Remove navigation: unless it is necessary remove other options. Let people do what you want them to do, and don’t give them many other options.

• Make link text appealing: people tend to glance over copy instead of deeply reading every word. Since links are action points people tend to pay more attention to link text. Make sure link text is appealing since it is far more likely to get read than most of the page copy.

• Give them a clue they have found the correct page: Place the words they searched for in large text at the top of the page to show them they are in the right location. If you are a large merchant with many products maybe use something like ‘search results for: their search term’. Typically it is best to point people at a landing page instead of the home page.

• Other ideas: some of the other concepts listed throughout this ebook (such as using short paragraphs and concise subheaders) also apply to landing pages. Corey Rudl constantly retested his landing pages. You can learn a good amount by seeing how he changed his landing pages over time, by looking through how they changed in Archive.org. MarketingSherpa also has a landing page handbook for sale.

What is Pay Per Click?

In 1998 Overture pioneered the idea of selling search ads. You could buy search results for as low as a penny or two per click. This system has quickly evolved into one of the worlds most competitive marketplaces.

Why Use Pay Per Click?

Sometime you can not afford to...or simply do not want to wait. Pay per click search engines allow you to list atop search results quickly. This will allow you to:

• Prototype ideas to track demand before you invest into a new business model or are stuck footing the bill for a new site.
• Quickly gather feedback on market conditions.
• Split test to a live audience and gather results in real time.
You can use Google AdWords to offer a free white paper about some topic from a one page website. If nobody is interested in downloading your white paper or you can not seem to get enough clickthroughs then odds are:
• the market is not yet ready for your product
• or you are marketing it from the wrong angle
• or you are marketing it to the wrong people

Who Should I Trust in Pay Per Click?

There are a few major players in the pay per click arena. Overture (as of writing this) currently has network partnerships that span Yahoo!, InfoSpace, AltaVista,AllTheWeb and many other partners. Google AdWords has a larger distribution network across Google, AOL, About, Earthlink, and many others sites...even a few of my own. Microsoft is a new player in the market, but their limited syndication network means their traffic quality is high.

Why Use Large Pay Per Click Search Engines?

When you use large pay per click search engines you guarantee you are getting at least some good traffic, and that your business model is scalable.
Smaller engines provide slower feedback loops, and some may not even provide quality traffic.

• The results will be scaleable.
• The feedback will be quicker.
• They offer many great tracking and targeting features free.
• Larger pay-per-click search engines generally present higher quality traffic and are less susceptible to fraud.
• It is less complex managing two or three accounts versus 100 accounts.
• It’s easier to track the ROI on 2 accounts than on 100 accounts.
• Many of the extremely small search engines never have real traffic. You are wasting your time registering with them.
• Even some of the better second tier search engines may waste a big hunk of change. In early November 2004 I tried using LookSmart. It sent me twice the traffic as Yahoo! Search Marketing and traffic from LookSmart had a 95% bounce rate. That means that 19 of 20 site visitors from LookSmart immediately left and I paid for garbage traffic. The quality of traffic from smaller engines will vary from term to term, but its best to go with the biggest guys off the start, and then, if you have spare time, try some of the smaller engines.

What is Pay Per Click-PPC ?

Pay per click search engines can give you instant traffic and allow you to test new business models in real time. The pay per click market is competitive though. It is worth spending an extensive period of time learning how to write and target ads, tracking your competitors, and doing deep keyword research before jumping in.

Before You Start :

Metrics Based Marketing:

PPC search engines provide a highly trackable marketing medium. Frequently people begin marketing without any idea as to the approximate value of a click. If you do not set up a value range and track the results you have no way to distinguish good marketing from bad marketing.
To know the value of a click, you need to decide what the goal of your marketing is. If you are just branding, then you should expect to lose money to gain mindshare or reinforce your brand, and tracking may not be that important. If you are using pay-per-click search engines for direct product marketing, you need to know how much each click is worth.

Typical Conversion Rates:

Lead generation sites typically have a conversion rate around 10 to 12%, but can go as high as 30% + if they are properly targeted and exceptionally appealing to visitors.
Since little investment is needed to arrive at your website and many other sites are just a click away, selling stuff on the web has a conversion rate similar to direct mail advertising. High ticket items have a lower conversion rate and unique cheap items tend to have higher conversion rates. Many stores find typical conversion rates might be anywhere from .3 to 5%.

Doing the Math:

There are a ton of factors that go into click price. It is somewhat hard to measure branding, but ad distribution can help with that. Most other things are tangible.
If you know your average order size, profit per order, and estimated conversion rate you can get a good idea what clicks are worth. Some people also factor in lifetime

value of a customer, but it is harder to measure and there is still enough opportunity in many markets to do your math primarily based on direct return.

Before You Start:

It is a good idea to look at the various ads which are displayed in which order over time. The top guy might be an idiot losing tons of money or a person who is paying an extreme premium for branding.

If ads from affiliate marketers or smaller sites are ranking around the same ad position over the course of a few weeks to a month then they are probably doing something right (generating profits). It is worth it to take a couple weeks to do deep keyword research and market analysis before jumping into pay per click search engine marketing.

You Will Lose Money:

Most clicks end up being failures. Even if you have a 30% conversion rate that means that 7 out of 10 clicks did nothing for you. When you dip your toes into the pay per click market there stands a good chance you will lose money before you start making money. The main reasons are:

• You need to learn how the systems work, learning:

o what terms are important and what ones are not.
o how to target the ads
o how to write the ad copy
o how to bid
o where to rank
o what terms are overpriced

• You are competing against the best accounts.

o Some competing advertisers may have other intangible assets which give them an unfair advantage.
o If you are brand new your competitors have more experience than you do.
o Some ad campaigns have been fine tuned for months or years.
o Search engines are building trust factors into ad accounts. Some advertisers may get quality boosts and cheaper ads just for being long-term advertisers.
Search engines try to sell the concept of pay per click marketing saying that it is so targeted that everyone makes money, but in the real world that is not how things work. Some markets are competitive and will require learning, sound strategy, and tracking to generate profits.