Does This Happen To Your Google Adwords Campaigns?

Posted in Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Google Adwords | Friday, January 19th, 2007 | Trackback

I don’t consider myself an adwords expert, I have however been using Adwords since the day it was started and have spend 10’s of thousands of dollars on it.

When adwords first came out I used it alot then for a while I got away from it. Last August (2006) I got back into using Adwords once again.

I measure everything I can in every campaign I do to the best I can. Meaning, sometimes I can’t measure something because of a limitation of an affiliate tracking mechanic.

There’s one thing I’ve noticed which I can’t remember anyone talking about (could
be just me not paying attention to them) with adwords, which is…

>> The longer you advertise the better your results

Now I have noticed a few exceptions to this which I will explain in a second but for most programs that I’ve been working with, which is a wide range of markets testing adwords (I have about 54 campaigns/sub-campaigns running) there is a common trend.

First let me say there are going to be many factors to this, for example some of my campaigns get 15% clickthrough some get 1% but they both have one thing in common…

It took MONTHS before I started to see a steady flow of sales from the campaigns. In fact if I had deleted some of the campaigns that were doing nothing for weeks I would have never knew they were actually some of the best converting.

The majority of the campaigns converted like CRAP for the first month or two, then all of a sudden one day they started converting and more and more started to do the same in approximitely the same time from when they had started.

So, if you have a campaign that’s failing you may want to test lowering your CPC to something managable you can maintain and not worry about losing too much money because one day the sales may start rolling in (and when I say one day it’s very strange to all of a sudden get several sales a day consistantly what has been a failing campaign.

Let me note with Adwords my basic strategy is to bid on extremely specific keywords a
person would enter when they were ready to buy something, AND i bid extremely low. Usually the products I promote I can get in the top 8 for 10-15 cents.

So, what I also wanted to explain is that adwords DOES seem to work extremely well for me when I’m bidding on keywords that have not been searched for heavily in the past. I’m talking about products that got a big buzz in the news or something that were not searched for in the past.

This article is simply an observation from my testing. There may be external factors that
are causing this with my ads (such as the way I setup the landing pages). However I do want to note I’ve gotten the same results testing a review page, squeeze page and a direct affiliate link (while there was no other affiliate links in the results) in multiple markets.

10 Ways To Increase Pages Indexed

By Jason Lee Miller - Tue, 01/22/2008 - 12:15pm.

Or how to make Google pay more attention


For a while now webmasters have fretted over why all of the pages of their website are not indexed. As usual there doesn't seem to be any definite answer. But some things are definite, if not automatic, and some things seem like pretty darn good guesses.

So, we scoured the forums, blogs, and Google's own guidelines for increasing the number of pages Google indexes, and came up with our (and the community's) best guesses. The running consensus is that a webmaster shouldn't expect to get all of their pages crawled and indexed, but there are ways to increase the number.

PageRank

It depends a lot on PageRank. The higher your PageRank the more pages that will be indexed. PageRank isn't a blanket number for all your pages. Each page has its own PageRank. A high PageRank gives the Googlebot more of a reason to return. Matt Cutts confirms, too, that a higher PageRank means a deeper crawl.

Links

Give the Googlebot something to follow. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden as the trust is already established.

Internal links can help, too. Link to important pages from your homepage. On content pages link to relevant content on other pages.

Sitemap

A lot of buzz around this one. Some report that a clear, well-structured Sitemap helped get all of their pages indexed. Google's Webmaster guidelines recommends submitting a Sitemap file, too:

· Tell us all about your pages by submitting a Sitemap file; help us learn which pages are most important to you and how often those pages change.


That page has other advice for improving crawlability, like fixing violations and validating robots.txt.

Some recommend having a Sitemap for every category or section of a site.

Speed

A recent O'Reilly report indicated that page load time and the ease with which the Googlebot can crawl a page may affect how many pages are indexed. The logic is that the faster the Googlebot can crawl, the greater number of pages that can be indexed.

This could involve simplifying the structures and/or navigation of the site. The spiders have difficulty with Flash and Ajax. A text version should be added in those instances.


Google's crawl caching proxy

Matt Cutts provides diagrams of how Google's crawl caching proxy at his blog. This was part of the Big Daddy update to make the engine faster. Any one of three indexes may crawl a site and send the information to a remote server, which is accessed by the remaining indexes (like the blog index or the AdSense index) instead of the bots for those indexes physically visiting your site. They will all use the mirror instead.

Verify

Verify the site with Google using the Webmaster tools.

Content, content, content

Make sure content is original. If a verbatim copy of another page, the Googlebot may skip it. Update frequently. This will keep the content fresh. Pages with an older timestamp might be viewed as static, outdated, or already indexed.

Staggered launch

Launching a huge number of pages at once could send off spam signals. In one forum, it is suggested that a webmaster launch a maximum of 5,000 pages per week.

Size matters

If you want tens of millions of pages indexed, your site will probably have to be on an Amazon.com or Microsoft.com level.

Know how your site is found, and tell Google

Find the top queries that lead to your site and remember that anchor text helps in links. Use Google's tools to see which of your pages are indexed, and if there are violations of some kind. Specify your preferred domain so Google knows what to index

Your Web Startup Is A Basket Of Fail

Hey everyone, check this article out! I guess it all depends on the way or what you think. Read the replies to this article.

Sincerely J. D.



By David A. Utter - Fri, 01/18/2008 - 11:52am.

Someone else will do it better


One person took a few hours and about a hundred dollars to build a credibly effective music search engine, and why that experience demonstrated how addressing problems will be a better use of time than building the next Google.

As the eponymous Red of RedFerret.net observed, "How hard is it to make a simple web application today?" As it turned out, not real hard at all.

Those efforts comprised about four to five hours of time, half of which appears to have been spent on crafting a logo and a page, and around a hundred dollars. Meet Groupzz, a meta music search engine.

We filled the lead-lined writing room with the sweet strains of Cliff-era Metallica, to the "delight" of WebProWorld admin and co-worker Raf Robinson across the hallway. 'Ride The Lightning' and 'Master of Puppets', streamed nicely through the Groupzz player. The proof of concept site sped through our searches and found hundreds of options for each.

Here's how Groupzz came into being, according to RedFerret.net:

Step 1 - Spend half an hour searching, locate a $99.00 script on Sitepoint (there’s probably free around, but I’m in a hurry see?)
Step 2 - Spend a couple of hours creating and tweaking a simple logo and page (yeah, so I’m not the world’s best designer, OK?)
Step 3 - Locate a free hosting supplier at webmaster-networks.com
Step 4 - Upload the whole shooting match via FTP and test
Step 5 - Point an unused $9.95 a year domain of mine at the server
Step 6 - Sign up for Shopping Ads, and embed the advert codes
Step 7 - Promote on the Red Ferret Journal…and profit!! Or not!!
"Unless your idea is unbelievably different, and more importantly, useful or hugely entertaining to a major section of a target population, you probably won’t gain traffic fast enough to make it work before someone else comes along and does it cheaper, faster, easier, or just plain better," said Red.

"Please stop trying to create yet another MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Google or whatever."






News Tags: Search, Social Media, RedFerret, Groupzz
About the author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Follow me on Twitter, and you can reach me via email at dutter @ webpronews dot com.
Comments
By Steve (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 2:07pm.
It is possible - I did it.
I own www.slwebsolutions.com and I started this company out of nothing. No outside funding just thousands of hours of building the site and business and marketing it. The business works and is successful and now supports the income of many people. Myself and my company have learned many effective ways of marketing websites and we can lead you in the right direction.

What I did? Built on an idea and focused on marketing, marketing, and more marketing. Made sure that my clients were given enterprise quality services and treatment and my business has flurished. The web solutions industry is very competitive which was a huge obstical. If you have a niche that is not very competitive it is NOT hard to gain steady traffic nor expensive. If you are depending on ads as your only source of income you will need a very large number of visitors.

Don't give up. If you truely want an online business to happen it can happen. Understand that It's not easy and takes time to be profitable. You can't whip up a script in a day and expect success. Be prepared to spend a large amount of money or put hundreds to thousands of hours in it. Contact me on our website and ask for Steve in your email.

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By Adam (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 12:31pm.
Fast Baby Steps...All The Way To The Finish Line!
In the new web-world, rapid development is a must. As Michael mentioned in his comment, this simple site probably won't last on this $99 sciript if it gets some real traffic.

In reality though, you only need to go one step further than this example, but that does not necessarily involve large sums of money. Using a quality open source programming framework and a talented programmer or two, can net a truly scaleable professional app/website.

The old days of building some Titanic application with a team of developers on some monolithic platform is long gone. Anyone using this old style will be buried. Every day that passes 'rapid-development' speeds toward 'hyper-rapid-development'. You need to get your idea out there as fast as possible before someone else does.

So it's true, it's quick and easy to build a simple web app. However, you'll likely need to go a step further than buying an off-the-shelf script to create your new empire. But, look at Python/Django. There are numerous small quality web apps that have used this combination and been built in a matter of days.

Now in the case of Groupzz.com, they have teh idea out there in sa few hours with just $99 our of their pocket. They can watch and see if it becomes popular. If it is a hit, take that next step and artie a replacement app that will scale. Seeing the simplicity of this app, a scalable replacement should not take long to build anyways! Marketing is the key...and you've already started down the right path there. :)



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By Guest (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 12:15pm.
Keep Trying - YES
RedFerret must be talking about himself and his lack of success. Too bad. He should keep trying.

I had never heard of RedFerret, so perhaps his article was just a last desperate attempt at gaining attention. I looked at his sponsor filled website and see why his is a failure.

My only question is why did David at WebPro feel his article was worthy? Perhaps even after the somewhat success of WebPro, David still does not accept that small level of success as successful?

In the mainframe days, my small company sold $30,000 software products and we did not need to sell many to achieve a level of profitable success. But even after success, holding onto the benefits can become a serious problem.

Now, I am screwed after the dotcom-bust. My only option is to attempt to gain a little success on the Internet. I'll drop dead before I give up.

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By ThoughtSponge (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 12:15pm.
Too negative
I never like articles like this. Reason being that you don't know and can't tell anyone else what the next big idea will be. So how can you tell people what not to create if you don't know what is going to work in the first place?

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By Darren E (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 10:20am.
If at first you fail, fail and fail again!
There will always be someone out there with an idea of being able to start their own web developer's business. Many of them will be married housewives with kids looking for an outlet to create extra income for their families. Many will be graphic artists who want to expand their skill set through the web. Some will be computer I.T. people who dabble with Adobe products or (gasp) Front Page.

The good news with this is the web CUSTOMER wins. There are enough developers out there to satisfy budgets from $100 to several thousands of dollars. Those who try to discourage other developers or the less experienced creative minds are often the ones who are wallowing in their own failures or frantically holding on to their current success with fear of falling behind.

With just about any business there will be success and there will be failures. It's whether or not we triumph in the face of adversity or let the negativity of others drag you down with them.

Overall, there is money to be made in this industry in more ways than one and new ideas are evolving every day.

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By Al (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 9:27am.
You never fail until you quit trying
Telling people to just give up is about the worst advice anyone can give concerning any subject.

It is those of us who continue to try in the face of adversity that make the innovations that improve our world.

There are others who have "already done that". There will be others who "do it better". That simply means that I must continue to investigate, learn, and innovate.

Do NOT give up! Keep developing ideas and methods. Yours may be the next big sensation.

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By Red (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 9:26am.
We're back, and we want your money... :-)
Yep, my web host disappeared from under me just after the article ran, but I'm now back on another free host and we're shooting for the moon. Or at least somewhere East of that nice restaurant in the main street. :-)

More seriously, I wasn't trying to put anyone down or discourage hard work and a dream. Just perhaps putting it into perspective so that people would think a little more about the reality of their chances of success.

Red

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By Michael (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 8:51am.
Your Web Startup Is A Basket Of Fail
David, I had to chuckle after reading your article, Your Web Startup Is A Basket Of Fail.

As a person who has spent over $100,000 and countless hours creating a start-up website, to be launched this year, I saw your article and my heart sank. I thought, "could he be correct, am I just wasting my time".

And then the "chuckle". I clicked on the groupzz link and ... nothing.

I think it only fair to explain to your readers that virtually anyone can create a website in minutes, but unfortunately that is how long it will last once "real" traffic starts hitting the site.

Business fundementals and planning for success are still critical in this web world, and that still takes time, money and risk.

Thanks for the chuckle.

Getting back to my Big Basket of Fail.

Michael

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By Guest (WPN reader) - Sun, 01/20/2008 - 8:47am.
keep trying
For every thousand or 10 thousand web 2 start-ups there will only be a couple who succeed, but that is not a reason to tell people not to try. Some of us dream of being the next Google, YouTube... but understand that it is not always possible.

I have been working away on Mobbly.com now for a year and it just start to get there but as i get there the goal posts move. But as with the start up of webpronews I am sure there we others about when you started but continuing to provide a good resource you have steadily increased your market share.
So in conclusion yes i would like to be the next google, but I will settle for adding a little to my living.
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