Enjoy the video!

Here Is The Link To The Guidelines

First, let me say I in NO WAY agree with how Google has handled the recent series of slaps and bans. Over 100,000 people had their AdWords accounts terminated since Sepetember.  Some didn’t even get a warning.

No reasons for the most part… just “low quality landing pages”. Some had content sites LOADED with content to the tune of hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of articles. It didn’t matter.

BTW here is an official reason for a ban (ARBITRAGE_AFFILIATE_BRIDGE) from a Google rep who sent this to a person who was actually banned when he asked for more info as to WHY. Affiliate Bridge… hmmmmmm.

My take? I think Google is really taking favor to merchants because they view affiliates as “duplicate content” servers. Think about it. No matter what site people click on, if people are all basically hitting the same merchant sites in the end, then the site is really a duplicate content server.

Example:

bestwidgets.com – 100 unique articles, aff links to allwidgets.com
topwidgets.com – 100 unique articles, aff links to allwidgets.com
widgethub.com – 100 unique articles, aff links to allwidgets.com

In the end, these are basically bridge pages to allwidgets.com.

The big question is, what can you do about it. I think the game has changed to where you need to have your own product, whether it be an ebook on widgets, a membership site on widgets, SOMETHING. Just don’t have blatant affiliate links.

Another reason is I believe Google will eventually become the world’s largest super affiliate. They now have their own affiliate network and are looking to draw merchants whom THEY will advertise.

I won’t go in depth, but it’s covered pretty well here.

My point is, if you want to continue on the AdWords gravy train, look to where Google is heading, and join them. That’s all you can do.

I hope 2010 brings you much prosperity, happiness and health and I look forward to continuing to provide you  even more insights!

All is well NOW but i’ll try to post more frequently now.

I want to talk a little bit about writing effective ads on the content network. Most people struggle here, and rightly so. Unless you’ve really tested a lot of different types of ad writing styles, it can be a battle initially!

The content network is different for search. Sometimes on search, just including the keyword in the title can assist your CTR.

On the content network however, it is based on the “theme” of the adgroup, and on top of that, people are actually looking for a specific thing. You are interrupting them, PLUS you are being thrown on many different types of blogs/forums etc, making it nearly impossible to be too direct and targeted.

Here is how you should write an ad on the content network.

If your keyword theme is “Blue Widgets”, then make the headline mention Blue “Widgets”. Now because you will most likely be thrown on “widget” pages (perhaps red widgets, green widgets etc) you’re going to need to cover yourself by making the rest of the ad more generalized..

Need Blue Widgets?
Find Any Widget In 2 Minutes!
Guaranteed 2 day Delivery.
WidgetsAreUs.com

You see what I did there? I covered myself my mentioning in Description Line 1 that they can get ANY widget…

I would also make a generic widget page versus red, blue, green for the same reason… you will be thrown on a very broad spectrum of pages and you want to cover yourself.

I hope this helps you write more effective ads on the content network!

In the video below, I talk a little bit about how you can be more aggressive, sacrifice ROI, and put more money into your bank account.

OK obviously it was a mistake… site.com is getting some free traffic… hooray for them!

Seriously though, when using AdWords Editor, always upload your campaign paused and then manually inspect it as best you can before you make it active.

Until next time…

Peter

I don’t go through every single feature but you’ll get a great idea of how great the program really is. Also, make sure you set your campaign settings properly in adwords editor before you upload to Goolge… By the way,  you can get SpeedPPC right here.

Enjoy! Please feel free to leave a comment below… i’d love to hear it!

Here’s the LP code: <? echo $_GET['id'] ?>

By the way, SpeedPPC gives you all the information on how to use this code once you join

But i’ve taken it a step further. I check and see what exact phrases were used to trigger my keyword (for my broad and phrase match campaigns), and then peel and stick those top performing keywords as exact match. Normally I would have had to run a search query report but now with the new interface, I can pull this data in seconds.

Check out my technique (no big secret, but for many, it’s something they don’t do):

Please feel free to leave a comment… i’d love to hear it!

Direct from Google, here is there definition of how they calculate quality score on the content network:

“Quality Score for the content network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your ads. It’s calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your ad is to a particular page in the content network. The higher an ad’s Quality Score, the more likely it is to appear on a content page and the higher its position will be.

Quality Score for the content network is based on the following factors:

• The relevance of the ad and the keywords in the ad group to a content page
• The ad’s performance history on the page and similar pages
• The quality of your ad’s landing page”

And also, here is what Google says happens if you’re slapped with a poor quality score on the content network:

“Quality Score also affects your eligibility to enter the ad auction. Lower-quality ads may require a higher bid to compete in the auction. Fewer impressions on the content network may mean your Quality Score isn’t high enough for your ads to be shown at your current maximum CPC or CPM bid. If you’d like to receive more impressions without working to improve your ad quality, you’ll need to increase your maximum bid.”

Many affiliates i’ve talked to lately have mentioned they are seeing their content network traffic dry up. There are two reasons this can be happening. First, maybe competitors are using CPM bidding on high traffic/converting URL’s and this is taking the whole ad block leaving your ads on the wayside.

It’s a fact that image ads produce a much higher click through rate than text ads, especially if you take up an entire ad block. Think about it, Google has one thing of value to them. Ad space. They want to maximize this ad space by showing ads that get the best possible CTR… oh and by the way, Google considers your CTR a “vote”. A vote telling them that users are finding your ad relevant. That’s what they are looking for.

The second reason is exactly what we’re talking about in this post. Quality score. Now, it’s a fact that Google grades quality score “on the curve” that is, you are compared to everyone else for that particular keyword, or in this case, URL.

If someone has a kick butt CTR on a particular URL, guess what? Sorry. It’s over.

I’m sure you’re wondering how you can tell your quality score on the content network? Google really doesn’t say however, I have found something interesting. If you use AdWords Editor you can “seemingly” see what Google has you rated.

Now, I can’t officially say it is 100% the way to tell, but all my stats prove that I believe it does.

First, download all your campaigns in AdWords Editor, then download the statistics for all time.

Next, click on a content campaign on the left, and select the Keywords tab and you’ll something interesting. Just like search, you will see a content network quality score.

Now, here’s a screenshot of a current campaign I am running that has loads of traffic:

And here is a screenshot of a past campaign that dried up:

Now the thing is, the bids really aren’t sure high on a lot of these keywords, and it still says active however, I can tell you first hand my traffic went from stellar to almost non-existent. So you tell me?

The key here is to run placement reports and get rid of URL’s with tens of thousands of impressions, even if you get a sale or two. It’s worth the trade off! I’ll sacrifice a couple sales a month and a profitable URL if it helps my overall campaign CTR.

What good are those measily sales if Google puts the hammer down and dries it all up?

That’s why it is absolutely critical to monitor and optimize a content network campaign. You can’t let them run on autopilot anymore. You really have to continue monitoring and excluding, and also using the placement tab to bid higher on favorable URL’s.

Don’t let things become stagnant and remain active in your optimization, and remember CTR is a major factor in the success of a content campaign, more so now, than ever.

I remember when every guru would recommend that you opt out of the content network. While that was the case early on, it’s definately not the case now. Google has developed some really great tools to let you optimize your content network campaigns.

Not only can you run placement reports and exclude URL’s that are costing you money and not converting, you can also use the “Exclusion Tool” and ditch specific topics. Be careful here though.

It’s hard to believe but I’ve had great success with certain offers on parked domains and error pages, two topics most people will tell you to opt out of right away. While these topics may not work in every market, I find it worthwhile to spend the extra testing cash to see how they perform before I pull the trigger and opt out of them.

With all that said, what would be some good “rules of the thumb” for content network campaigns? Let’s take a look:

1) Use 30-200 keywords per adgroup, tightly themed. This has been a great debate, but I will tell you that my traffic is always a lot higher and better quality when I do this. The less keywords you use, the more of a “broad” URL list your ads end up on. It’s like telling google, “I’m willing to test on a wide variety of broadly semi-related sites”. When you add a lot of keywords, Google sees the theme you are looking for, and places you accordingly.

2) Use your placement reports to the fullest. Make sure you run a placement report after 7 days or so at the URL and adgroup level. This way you can be completely granular in your optimization efforts, and not excluding entire domains when really, it could have just been one URL on that domain that was losing you money. Also, add high converting URL’s as placements in the adgroup the conversion came from, and bid a lot higher on them. This will ensure you stay there!

3) Don’t pause your campaign. What I mean is, unless you want to stop it because you are losing a ton of money, never just flat out pause a content campaign thinking that when you restart, everything will be fine. It won’t be. When you pause a campaign, Google has to go and find people to fill your spots. When you unpause, those spots are gone and you’ll be starting over. You’re telling Google, “OK cool! Now let’s start all over”

4) Don’t be afraid to try CPM bidding on favorable URL’s. Seeing a URL getting a very high conversion rate? Look at the domain and see if the adsense ads are above the fold. If they are, target the page in a new campaign using the exact same ads from the profitable converting adgroup. You can also create an image that will take up the whole ad block on that URL which will skyrocket your CTR and give you massive sales. *Just make sure the placement is favorable because it could take a day or two for traffic to stop on a CPM campaign!! Imagine having your ad at the bottom and getting few clicks but paying $10-$15 per 1000 impressions… ouch!

All in all, if you find the right offer, and optimize your campaign properly, you can make a lot of money very quickly on the content network.

Just test test and test again until you find the right offer, and you’ll be surprised how much the content network can mean to your business.

I saw massive differences right from the start. We’re not talking 1-2% increases either. One of the first split tests I conducted, I doubled and almost tripled my CTR, and not only did I get more customers with this increased CTR, I quadrupled my conversion rate. Yes, the right domain can make the difference in a winning campaign, and a losing campaign.

Now that Google has tightened the knot once again, it makes it harder to split test domain names. Before it was easy… just put two ads in a campaign, one went to url1 and the other to url2. Done.

Now we can’t do that. We can only include one URL per adgroup. So how can we effectively test if that’s the case? I have been using a pretty straight forward technique and it involves using the “Ad Scheduler”.

First, set up two identical campaigns using adwords editor (it’s faster). These campaigns should be identical including keywords, ads etc. but the only difference will be that one campaign will use url1 and the other url2.

Once you have these two campaigns uploaded (upload paused!) simply click on campaign settings of one of the campaigns and then scroll about 3/4 down the page.. you’ll see “Ad Scheduling:”. Click on “Turn on ad scheduling”.

For the first campaign you’ll want to have it run every other hour. Turn it on from 00:00-01:00 and off from 01:00-02:00. keep alternating. BUT before you start, there is a little trick that you can easily miss. You don’t have to do this for all seven days… there is a link on the top left you can click and it will make these changes for all seven days… click on “all days” next to “Bulk Edit”.

As mentioned above, set up the campaign so it is running every other hour, and I think at this point you’re seeing where i’m going here. On the other campaign, set those times at just the opposite. That way you have one campaign on and the other off and it rotates every other hour.

Many people ask, why not just have one on from 00:00-12:00 and the other off, then vice versa. The answer is simple. You want an even sampling of traffic through the 24 hour window. Traffic can convert differently and react differently through various times of the day.

Testing domains is important, and we need to continue to figure out how to keep doing the things we should be doing when Google makes changes like this. This is what seperates the affiliate from the super affiliate.

Now go out there and start split testing domain names today… it’s really that important!