Webpit.com - A Coder's Blog

There are definately some gotchas with Adwords that you need to avoid if you’re just starting out. First of all, there’s this voodoo bidding system that they use, which most people don’t understand. Add on top of that the dual mode, Content vs Search network ads, and enough vague rules to confuse even the best, all this adds up to a confusing and intimidating advertising system. But fear not, I have cracked the code! Well, not really but I will share with you some insight.

First of all, there are ads that work better than others. A well written ad should contain a keyword that you are bidding on, as well as match the content of the site you are linking to. The “landing page” that the ad points to should be specific enough in nature that the user who clicked the ad should not be confused in any way about why they landed on your page. Thus, if you’re writing an ad on sports drinks, the landing page definitely should have Sports Drinks in the title and have plenty of content centered on sports drinks. Depending on your sales model, you might have some buy now buttons on the page, or you might have an opt-in box on the page. Regardless, you need to have content pertinent to your ads.

The next thing you should know about Adwords ads is a little bit of psychology. The ads that perform the most seem to be the ones that raise doubt, fear or a question in the readers mind.   These are called Negative ads.  Although I’m a positive thinking person, the proof is in the pudding.  I ran four ads for the same product.  The one that stood out was the one that told the user they were doomed unless they read this important report.

It seems, however, that I’m not alone in that observation.  It’s really funny, sometimes depending on what I’m searching for, I might see ALL negative ads.  If you find your ad in this mix, you should change your approach.  You want to go AGAINST the stream, not with it.  Thus, if 8 ads are negative, you should do a switch and play the positive side.  You can have one of each in your Ad Varations window, point both to the same place, and see which one produces better results.

Google’s stats are only half the story however.  Even though they keep track of impressions and clicks, the one metric they can’t show you is conversion.  This is where things get tricky.  For one, you might be directing your traffic to a landing page that has a goal of opt-in newsletter subscriptions, or you might be focused on a sale.  Either way, Google cannot track how many “conversions” you received.  So you’ll need to do some tracking of your own.  This isn’t easy, though.  You will have to read and understand Google’s conversion tracking system.  You will need to have a Thank You or confirmation page that the user lands on after they buy or subscribe to your newsletter.  You then need to place some tracking code on that confirmation page so Google can connect the dots.  It’s a bit more work but in the end, you can see that an add is producing clicks AND sales.

Case in point, let’s say you have two ads that cost an average of $20 per day each (click cost).  Ad A received 30 clicks, while Ad b recieved 10 clicks.  Without the conversion tracking, we would immediately assume ad A was more productive.  However, if we look at our conversion stats, we might see that ad B produced 4 orders while ad A produced 2 orders.  Of course these are fictional numbers, but the point is, we might inadvertantly ditch Ad B based solely on click stats.   There could be a number of reasons why more people converted because of Ad B.  In this hypothetical situation we can’t say for sure.  But with Adwords, you can target by area, by keyword, by time/day, etc.  With so many variables, it’s difficult to say why there might be this gap in conversion.  Suffice it to say, the most important part of advertising is tracking results.  Without tracking, we may uneducated guesses about performance.  Do you havetips for adwords can you share?

The year was 1997. I was contracted by Tabnet, Inc. to write a piece of software that would automatically submit sites to thousands of “link farms” and search engines. The software worked so well, or I so impressed the CEO that I was offered a job. We used the software to sell a service to our web hosting customers. A year or so passed by and search engines began changing their algorithms. Link farms were no longer a viable means of getting your site noticed. Then the king was born. Google enters the arena with its plain-faced home page. It was all the rave back then. Oh, how I can remember the days. The days of yesteryear, when cloaked pages worked. When Search Engine Optimization was a sure thing.

They say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Here it is, 2008, and if Google is King, then “Social Bookmarking” sites like Digg, Deli.cio.us, etc are most certainly his most trusted advisors. Last year, I didn’t put much stock into these sites. I didn’t understand them, and didn’t care to. I wasn’t blogging at the time and I only really knew of Digg because our web designer insisted on having a button that linked our pages to Digg.com. Since then, and especially since starting this blog, I have come to realize, things really haven’t changed. The names have changed. Instead of Link Farm, we call it “Social Bookmarking.” The method’s haven’t changed either.

In all its prowess as a search engine, Google trusts human submitted content more than its own algorithms. Case in point: Just a few short years ago, you would have had to be superman to get your site on the first page of search results for your desired keywords. Now today, its really not that hard. Is it too easy? I mean, if I can do it, certainly those silk suite wearing SEO gurus with the Porsche’s paid for by SEO-hungry companies should have no difficulty achieving the same thing right?

Rumor has it that Google despises Search Engine Optimization. Maybe they call it cheating, who knows. But to be honest, those who call themselves SEOs have their own greed to blame. In the never ending quest to be first on the list, companies resort to hiring SEOs to implement sketchy tactics and fooling both the search engine and the internet user at large into clicking links to what seemed like legitimate content, only to be led down an unrelated path.

I’m still unclear as to why Google trusts Social Bookmarking (cough, linkfarms, cough) now when just a couple of years ago, heck maybe not even that long ago, they openly stated they would avoid them. Volumes of blog articles attest to the suspicion that listing your site in link farms was the equivalent of search engine suicide. So it seems we have gone full circle and it took only about 10 years to do it. So what’s next, we start cloaking pages again? Are we just in a cyclic paradox that we are incapable of escaping? Is this really Web 2.0? What would Jean Luc Picard do?

Ok, I admit, I can’t decide what I want to be when I grow up!  Webpit.com has changed themes more times than I care to count.  From whacked out ideas to alien encounters, Webpit.com has had its share of ideas and none of them were really good.  Now, I’ll try something new.  They say to be successful you have to stick to what you know.  So, what do I know?  Well I know programming!   And I know the web, well, some of it!  So rather than not having anything to write about something else, I figure I’ll start a blog about what I know, and maybe help some others along the way.

To be honest, I’ve had an itching to write a blog but wasn’t sure what to write about.   Now, with my newfound niche, I can go forth and blog!