• Google AdWords and Overture have different editorial standards. At Overture, editors are employed who then make sure that the keywords are relevant by manually checking them. Google AdWords use Click Through Ratings to ensure the relevancy, which means that at least 0.5% of viewers should click on any given keyword or phrase, if not, then that particular keyword or phrase will be disabled. Google also employs editors, but they they are there mainly to check that people do not have offensive content in their ads, and that they are following the Google Adwords guidelines. In Google Adwords your ad can run immediately without editorial approval. With Overture it can take up to 5 days before your ad is up and running.
• CTR is critical at search engines such as Google. It also acts as a financial motivator for advertisers. If your CTR is three times higher than your competitor’s CTR, then if he is vying for the same ad position, he needs to bid three times as much. Overture on the other hand does not have any such click-through rate contesting.
• Google has a tool which bridges the bidding gap. Your maximum bid is not your actual bid. Your actual bid will be the amount which is required to be above your immediate competitor. Overture did not have this facility earlier, however in recent times, this has been introduced.
• Google AdWords has a number of options such as broad matching option or wild card matching option, phrase matching, exact matching, negative keywords, etc. Overture provides it customers with some other features such as variations on the same keywords like singular to plural, and so on.
• Google ads appear on the Google search engine, Google Groups, AOL, Teoma/Ask Jeeves, Earthlink, Infosearch metasearch properties and also the Canadian portal Sympatico. Overture ads are displayed on countless portals including Lycos, MSN, Yahoo, Infosearch Metasearch properties, and so on.
• Google has an option of turning off syndication which means that you can control the display of your ad. Overture does not have that feature.
• Google supports multi-lingual ad display and support as well as shows ads relevant to different countries and has tools that help users in different countries. Overture does not have either.
• Google has a minimum bid of 5 cents and Overture has a minimum of 10 cents.
• Google does not support external bid management software. Overture does, and which can give rise to ‘bidding wars’ among its advertisers.

Try putting the price in the ad

For Overture, sometimes it is desirable to put the price of your product in your ad. This is because if you put your price in the advertisement it will mean that only the people who are serious about buying your product or service will click on the ad. Many people are searching for free information and if you put the price in the ad you will ward away these people, and decrease your cost of advertising hopefully without decreasing the number of sales you make. However, you should not lie in your ad and quote a wrong price for your product or service. So, putting a price in your ad is often a very practical thing to do. Everyone knows that there is a price tag on everything. If your price is competitive and reasonable, then they will probably click on it. You will probably see less clicks on your ads, but overall your sales conversions will benefit as you will eliminate freebie-hunters.

In Google AdWords it is less likely to work to put your price in the ad, because you are always trying to increase the click-through rate of your ad. With Google you might want to try the opposite strategy and offer something for free, like subscription to a free online newspaper, a free online analysis, market report, a preview, free 30 days trial and so on. You can use the word free in your ad copy, but with caution as it may lower your return on investments. Also, it must be relevant to your ad; otherwise Google will disapprove of your copy. So even on search engines like Google don’t use the word ‘free’ excessively, unless you have a business strategy that actually works on giving away freebies.

If you search popular terms like "business", you’ll find the cost to be number one is quite high and the position is usually held by a large enterprise like Inc. magazine or Entrepreneur magazine. Large companies are often willing to invest millions of dollars in building their brands so they’ll pay more for traffic than it would normally be worth. It is strongly recommended that you don’t compete with them unless you are absolutely sure your business model will justify it.

Often, you’ll be able to find a top ten ranking for a third or less than the price to be number "One". Since you’re limited to buying only traffic that’s profitable for you, this position will be better suited for you. Even if you end up far lower in the rankings, you must stay within your proper range for investment. You’ll probably get less traffic than the number one ranking, but you’ll get traffic you can make money on.

However, if your budget permits, you must consider going for the Premium Listings (Top 3 positions). This will give your ad maximum exposure. Classic Listings as discussed earlier are not displayed in sites such as Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, or AltaVista. Overture claims that premium listings reach as high as 80% of all active Internet users, whereas listings at position number 4 have much lower exposure, and listings after number 10 have very little exposure.. The higher the exposure, the better are your chances for higher revenue.

Always include search terms in the title as well as description lines for your ad. This helps immensely in increasing the click through rate of your listings.

 

As stated earlier, Overture offers advertisers two sign-up plans. These plans, Fast Track or Self Serve, give you the choice of expert assistance or starting out on your own. Fast Track charges an additional one-time service fee of $199 whereas Self Serve does not have any service fee. With Fast Track you get expert assistance from Overture specialists as well as Overture tools, whereas with Self Serve you pretty much do everything without any help.

When you sign up with Overture using the Fast Track Sign-up program, you will receive a customized proposal prepared by one of the Overture experts. When you receive your proposal, all you have to do is approve Overture’s choices to get your search listings online. You can also make changes in the proposal yourself. If you have a reasonable budget to spend then it may be useful to use this service, but remember that they are trying to make increased profits for Overture and so they will suggest that you bid for all of the most expensive terms. If you do not have a lot of money to spend it is probably not a worthwhile feature.

You do not receive a proposal when you sign up with Self Serve, and so you must determine all the keywords yourself. In order to keep your account active, you have to spend at least $20 a month. Apart from this, Overture also charges an initial non-refundable deposit of $50. These charges are mandatory for both service plans. The turnaround for approval of listings with Fast Track is around 3 days, whereas the turnaround for Self Serve is 5 days. Moreover, listings submitted through Self Serve are subject to strict editorial approval. Listings submitted through Fast Track may be easier to get approved.

The sign-up process for both plans is similar. However, with Fast Track you get a lot of assistance during every phase of the sign-up process. This includes Search Term Selection, assistance with Titles and Descriptions, Budget Management, and Account Optimization.

The first step is to select a target country. You can select more than one country for your listing. However, you will need to create a new account for every country, thus, multiplying your costs. The next few steps include entering your account information such as First Name, Last Name, Email Address, and Phone; your username and password; and your mailing address.

Once this is done, you need to select a payment plan. Overture offers three payment plans:

 

• Non Stop Traffic Plan - You select an amount and before 3 to 5 days of funds left, your account is automatically recharged.
• Fixed Budget Plan - Like Google AdWords, you specify a fixed monthly budget. If the amount is used up before the end of the month the listing is taken off.
• Pre-Payment Plan - You add an amount to your account whenever you feel like. For instance, if you select $50 initially and your account gets used up in 25 days, you need not recharge that day itself or even at the beginning of the next month. You can recharge whenever you want. However, the listing will not be displayed until you recharge your account.

The next step is to enter your URL. With Fast Track you are asked to enter your ideal monthly budget, your search term ideas, and information about specific focus areas of your site. Overture specialists will use this information to create the customized report. You are not offered these features with the Self Server plan.

The next steps include entering your credit card details and accepting Overture terms and conditions. This completes the sign-up process. Your account is activated once your payment is accepted.

You have created an Overture Account. The next phase involves the process of creating an ad listing on Overture. The advertising process can be described in 5 basic steps.

Step 1: Selecting a range of search terms or keywords relevant to your website.

Step 2: Writing a title and description lines for your listing. This is the actual content of your ad.

Step 3: Entering a bid amount for each of the search terms. The higher you bid, the higher your position. Unlike Google AdWords, Overture ranks your listing primarily on the basis of your bid amount. Overture listings are classified into two categories - Premium Listings, and Classic Listings. The top 3 positions are termed as Premium Listings, whereas positions 4 to 240 are Classic Listings. Ads that qualify for Premium Listings are displayed on all partner sites of Overture including Yahoo, Lycos, and MSN. Ads qualifying for Classic Listings are displayed in partner sites, however, this sites are not very popular.

Step 4: If you submit your listing through Self Serve, it is reviewed by Overture specialists for approval.

Step 5: Once the listing is approved, it is displayed in Overture and other partner sites.

This completes the process of activating an account with Overture, and designing and submitting the Ad.

Making sure that your ads get approved

Overture provides a number of guidelines for designing ads. Compliance with these guidelines is crucial for ensuring acceptance of the ad. Moreover, these guidelines are also aimed at improving your ad’s click-through rate and in turn, your ROI.

Relevance of Search Terms

Overture specialists have a look at your website before approving your listing. This is done in order to ascertain whether the search terms you provide are relevant to your business. For instance, if you have a website on Online Education, a keyword such as "Sex" is completely irrelevant. Your ad would be rejected if Overture determines irrelevancy of search terms.

Titles and Descriptions

Overture does not allow titles and descriptions that contain all capital letters. Generally, only the first letter should be capital. Besides, titles and descriptions containing hype and excessive use of symbols will be rejected.

The Landing Page

The landing page should be relevant to the Ad. Your ad may promote a specific product or service. In this case, the landing URL should be the page containing information about that product or service and not the homepage.

Generic Terms

As stated earlier, use specific and targeted keywords. Overture may reject the use of very generic keywords. Besides, this would hurt your sales as well.

Overture is a human-edited site. Once you submit your listing, you will get a response from Overture specialists with a list of terms that were approved and the ones which were not. Reasons for rejection are also given. You can always work on the listing and resubmit it.

A very interesting aspect of submitting ads to Overture is that listings rejected by one human specialist might not be rejected by some other specialist. There is no penalty for resubmitting terms and listings, if you feel they are relevant to your product or service. There have been many cases where rejected listings have been approved after a second review.

 

Overture is the only pay per click search engine that competes with Google. It works in a totally different way to Google, but it is definitely worth signing up for because you should be able to get some extra profit from it, on top of your Google Adwords profits.

When you advertise in Overture Premium Listings™, your business appears in the top U.S. search sites: MSN, Yahoo!, InfoSpace, Lycos, AltaVista, and Netscape.

Let us first understand briefly how Overture works. Overture offers two sign-up plans, Fast Track or Self Serve. You have to select a few keywords with reference to your website. You have to then bid an amount (per click) and position in the search results for each of the keyword. If you have the highest bid for that position, Overture will display your website in the search result of the keyword selected, at the position selected, in each of the above mentioned search engines. Note that even if your website is displayed in the search results you do not get charged the amount bid by you per click. It is only when a user clicks on your website link from the search results that you get charged that amount.

1. Maximize the number of variations of keywords (for example, plurals etc)

Often people miss out on affordable advertising strategies because they blindly follow the way that people most commonly search for things. You need to be creative in order to cut down your advertising costs. Let’s say you want to ‘sell cars’ over the internet. The keyword ‘sell cars’ or ‘car sale’ might be very expensive. Think of other variations like ‘car trade’, ‘auto trade’, ‘automobile dealer’, ‘cheap cars’, etc.

2. Use unusual combination of words

Do not ignore some words because they appear unusual. People type the most unusual or unexpected things in the search engine. Bring in your profits by tapping in these resources. Use words like ‘cars deals’, ‘cheaper autos’, etc. These keywords are probably not going to be expensive. They may be around 5 cents, and that way you get to control your budget and get favorable clicks.

3. Use long keyword phrases

Use long keyword phrases like ‘cheap used automobile dealer’ and different combinations of these words instead of the obvious keyword and phrases.

4. Spend a LOT of time on keyword research (You should really be thinking about spending 6-8 hours MINIMUM on keyword research).

Do not underestimate the keyword research task. It is going to take a lot of time and effort if you want to optimize your ads. Remember that there are probably a lot of people selling the same products that you are selling and a lot of advertisers in the market placing ads for those products. You cannot expect to spend one hour on researching your keywords and assume that you have exhausted all your resources. Do a lot of brainstorming and consult a lot of resources like dictionaries, thesaurus, online keyword suggestion tools, experts, etc. and come up with a comprehensive collection of keywords and phrases for your product. You are certainly going to chance upon a few keywords and phrases which will only cost you 5 cents whilst everyone else is paying 50 cents, $1 or more.

Spend the time on this, and you can easily generate traffic which will translate into big profits!

5. Use product names, and competitors names

This is a sneaky but effective way to get cheap clicks. If you do this, it really is at your own risk though (we don’t suggest this because you might be violating trademarks, but some people we know have made a lot of money doing this

6. Using Google AdWords in foreign countries

The United States is a big market, but do not ignore other markets as well. The Internet has brought all the countries closer and hence a common local business market has also gone global. Consider publishing ads in other countries. For example, let’s say that not a lot of people in France have registered on Ebay. Consider putting an ad for Ebay in French and displaying it in France. Competition will be less so there are more opportunities for success.

7. Use misspellings of words

Do take into consideration misspellings of words. Sometimes people type in incorrect words like ‘car sevices’ or ‘car lubericant’ and so on. There are tools available to research these keywords. These keywords are not going to be extremely high in demand and hence you will probably be able to get them for 5 cents.

8. Bid for 5 or 6 cents even though you are number 26 on the list

It is strange the way that search engines like Google work, and sometimes its difficult to explain. If you are bidding only 5 cents there might be 25 people bidding higher amounts above you. This might lead you to think that you would not get any impressions for your ads, but this is not always the case. Sometimes you can still get impressions for your ads, so it worth making a 5 cent bid anyway.

9. Use website names as your keywords

Yes people do type website URL’s into search engines. You can ensure that your ad comes up when they are searching for that URL. This is an easy way to get visitors for 5 cents, because there are unlikely to be many people bidding against you.

10. Use two word phrases combined with no space in-between the two words.

You would not think that people search for things without a space in-between the words, but for some strange reason they do. For example, you can bid for healthinsurance without any space between the two words.

11. Use single words with brackets around them

Let’s take the example of digital cameras. A certain percentage of people who are searching on the net will type in just the word: digital. Most of these people are actually searching for digital cameras. If you use the keyword [digital] in square brackets then you will get people who are interested in digital cameras and you will have little competition from other people bidding for that word.

 

Case study: Satellite TV systems - profitability of $250 per week. Here is a real life example of a Google Adwords campaign run by Robert Rawson that was started at the beginning of 2002 and generated initially $250 per week. This profit dropped off a bit after one year as more people started to compete in the same area, but it is still making some nice profits today.

• Use variations, like idioms, clichés, commonly accepted terminology, and grammatical options like superlative/comparative degrees, present/past/future tenses, singular/plural, verbs etc.
• Use the permutation concept to come up with a variety of phrases. Let’s say your keyphrase is ‘vegetarian recipes’. You can come up with synonyms and related words for both the words like ‘meatless’, ‘no-meat’, ‘kosher’, ‘vegan’, etc. for vegetarian and ‘food’, ‘cuisine’, ‘delicacies’, ‘products’ and so on for recipes. Also look at alternative items people may be looking for, so to continue the ‘vegetarian recipes’ example, you may also include ‘how to cook vegetarian curry’ etc. Then you can come up with various keywords by combining all of these words. See the keyword combing tool for more information on this.
• Eliminate irrelevant keywords by adding a minus sign to these keywords.
• Pay attention to opportunities with common spelling mistakes. Also consider grammatical errors.
• Use various adjectives to describe your product.
• Consider the geographical location of your target customers and include local words and common spellings that are used indigenously.
• Include hyphens, combination of two or more words, abbreviations and acronyms.
• If and when necessary, use jargon words and buzzwords.
• You can also use domain names as your keywords. Sometimes people do type those into the search box. Some people have even used their competitor’s domain name as keywords. This means that when someone searches for your competitor’s website, your ad will come up. Be careful as this may leave you open to trademark disputes or legal action.
• Use brand names, model numbers and/or serial numbers of products, however be careful that you do not get in trouble for violating trademarks. (Eg: Google’s procedure when told that you are violating trademarks of a particular company is that they will eliminate those keywords from your campaign.)

How to find misspellings of words

Misspellings of keywords are a great way to get traffic for 5 cents when other people are paying 50 cents or more for the correct spelling of the keyword. Unfortunately search engines like Google are now matching misspellings of keywords so this technique is not as effective as it used to be, but it can still have some benefits.

There are a few ways that you can find misspellings:

1. Use the misspelling search on Wordtracker.
2. A great way to find misspellings of words is to search for words that are associated with the keyword that you want to search for. You need Wordtracker to do this, because the Overture keyword tool matches misspellings. Let’s say you are trying to find misspellings of the keyword "satellite". You can search on wordtracker for the word Satellite and you see that one of the listings is "satellite tv". So you can then search for "tv" on Wordtracker and see what comes up. "Satellite tv" is there, but a bit further down the list you will see "satelite tv" and then a bit further down "satalite tv". So there are two other ways that people misspell the word satellite.
3. Another way you do search for misspellings is to cheat and find a website which has a list of misspellings. Search for "satellite satelite satalite" on a search engine. You will get some pages which have listings of misspellings of the word satellite. All the research is done for you. Easy!

Keyword research is the most critical phase in creating a Google Adwords campaign. It is vitally important for your success. Don’t even think about skipping this step or spending less time on this step.

There are a few different tools that you can use for keyword research. If you have the site build it software then you will have all the keyword research tools you need incorporated into the software. Otherwise you will need to use Wordtracker and the Overture suggestion tool. Google also has a suggestion tool which can help you, but it is not as useful as Wordtracker or the Overture tool. Overture is a free tool that you can use, and Wordtracker is a paid service (but you can get a free trial to test it out).

Using Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a very interesting brainstorming tool to look up keywords. It is also a great resource for search engine optimization. Wordtracker has a thorough database of millions of keywords and keyphrases which you can utilize. They have a free trial version which gives an idea about the kind of service they provide.

Most advertisers wrongly limit the number of people searching for a particular product. This is a strategic blunder that many businesses commit unknowingly. They forget to take into consideration other related aspects and hence limit their vision. If you are manufacturing baby strollers and you think that the only people who will buy your product will be new parents, then you are probably wrong. Friends, colleagues, grand-parents, soon-to-be-parents/expectant parents, wholesalers/retailers of baby-related items, are some of the people searching for that. You need to take a look at the bigger picture and do your research accordingly. Here, Wordtracker is a nifty tool which takes care of most of your worries. It also helps to find common spelling mistakes that people make while searching online, like baby strolers, baby strullers, babby strollers, and so on.

Wordtracker recommends that you look at the bigger picture as well and don’t limit your searches to closed options, like if you want Austin powers soundtrack, search under ‘soundtracks’ and then you can restrict your search at a later stage. Do not narrow your choices at the very first stage, otherwise you will lose some of the great internet traffic.

Wordtracker helps you study your client’s surfing behavior and you can utilize the keywords accordingly. It also helps you find negative keywords that you can include in your Google AdWords campaign.

Wordtracker will suggest to you real keywords and phrases which are used by real people on the internet, but you still have to do all the rest of the work like actually eliminating irrelevant keywords and choosing the right set of words and phrases for your campaign.

Using the Overture keyword tool

Overture offers a free keyword research tool. This is a comprehensive database of a variety of keywords. When you feed in a keyword, it searches for it in its database to come up with plenty of options for that word, it uses the singular as well as plural version of the keyword you entered. In many cases, Overture displays multi word phrases with the words in alphabetical order, not the way people actually enter them into search engines. You should not depend on such tools blindly, but instead follow your own insight and make some intelligent deductions to come up with the right set of keywords.

The Overture tool is best used for identifying keywords which can be purchased on the Overture website, but it can also be a starting point to do a preliminary research for keywords to optimize your site.

How to do your keyword research

Your goal when researching keywords is to come up with as many keyword phrases as possible, and as many variations of the type of phrase that people are typing into Google. You will need to spend a significant amount of time on keyword research. A good indication is that you should spend 6-8 hours on keyword research per area that you are trying to optimize. When you get better at it, you can hone your skills and decrease the time to 2-3 hours.

Why you should never forget this!

While you obviously want to pay the least possible amount for each hit you get, you’re going to have to bid more if you want a higher listing and, therefore, more traffic and a higher ROI . You have to carefully track the traffic you get from the ad so you know the value of that traffic. If you don’t know the value, you could be paying too much for your traffic or missing great opportunities to generate more traffic if you can afford the higher price.

You should focus on calculating your ROI as all your other calculations like counting hits on your page, tracking your results, and budgeting depend on how cost-effective the traffic to your website is.

It is absolutely essential that you work out how much money you make on average per person that clicks on your Search Engine ads. You need to know that the amount that you are paying per click for the ads is less than the amount you are earning. Otherwise if you are spending MORE than you are making, you could be throwing money down the toilet and not even knowing it (and there are plenty of companies who are doing this).

How to calculate the ROI for your Google AdWords ad

Let’s assume you’re selling an item with a $25 profit margin. If one (1%) percent of visitors to your site buy the product, then each visitor is worth twenty five ($0.25) cents to you. If you get the traffic for less than that, you’re making money on each sale.

Another strategy to improve ROI involves bidding for several keywords at low prices such as 5 cents each. This way you get listed very frequently. Each keyword won’t bring you much traffic by itself, but the total may be a hundred or more hits per day. If you’re only paying a couple of pennies per hit for this traffic, then it should be profitable for you. However, Overture may reject some of the keywords terming them irrelevant.

Example of calculating ROI

Basic ROI can be calculated if you know three variables: (1) the amount you invest in a pay-per-click search engine, (2) the total sales generated by that PPC and (3) the revenue earned from sales (through that particular PPC).

It is very important to calculate ROI after a few days or weeks of putting up your ad. Once you have done your initial ROI calculations, then you should look at doing a monthly analysis of ROI. Just because an estimate like 5 cents bid for every click on your choice of keyword with a reasonable sales conversion rate sounds alluring, it does not mean that it is profitable to you. The word ‘return’ in ‘Return On Investment (ROI)’ implies profitable return.

Let’s assume that you are paying 5 cents for every click on your ad and you receive 400 unique visitors to your website. Out of these 400 visitors, 4% of them are actually buying your product.

Your total cost will be 5 cents x 400 = $20 for 400 unique visitors. Out of these 400 visitors, 400 x 4% = 16 of them are purchasing your product. Your cost per sale will be (20/16) = $1.25. Assume that your minimum tolerable return on investment is 150%, which means that every $1.00 you spend on click-throughs, you want to get $1.50 as your return. Let us assume your profit margin to be no more than $2.25.

ROI is calculated by dividing profit by Cost per Sale (CPS) and is expressed in the percentage format. In this case, your ROI will be (2.25/1.25) * 100 which will be 180%. 180% is not a very impressive ROI, hence if you had settled for that 5 cents deal for every 400 clickthroughs, you probably wouldn’t have made lot of profit.

You can calculate in reverse to find out the suggested bid per click if you want to earn reasonable ROI. For that, you need to have a few figures handy. First, you need your profit margin, which is $2.25 in this case, and then you need your total sales conversion rate (the percentage of unique visitors to your site actually buying your product), that is 4% here and most importantly, the percentage of your profit return which you are willing to commit to the PPC for that particular keyword. This figure ranges from a mere 1% to 80% where you barely leave any profit for yourself. Generally, 20% is a good figure to aim for (although it might not be realistic for all types of products). Let us assume it to be 18% in this case.

Now, let us calculate your suggested bid per click.

This will be [Profit Margin (2.25) * Sales Conversion Rate (4%) * Profit Margin committed to PPC (18%)] = $0.0162

This means that you need to bid 1 cent for every click in order to get the desired ROI. Let us now calculate the ROI you will get if you bid 1 cent.

CPC = (0.1 * 400) = $4 for 400 visitors.
Sales Conversion Rate = 400 * 4% = 16 visitors will buy your product
CPS = 4/16 = $0.25

Your ROI will be profit/CPS, which will be (2.25/0.25)* 100 = 900%.

Now, this is nice ROI. Comparing your 5 cents bid with 1 cents bid, you will find that even though your 5 cents bid will probably raise your rank on the PPC and will receive more clicks than 1 cents bid, it will generate only 180% ROI. On the other hand, you will be ranked lower on PPC and you will receive fewer clicks, but your ROI will be 900% if you bid 1 cent per click.

What is my cost per click and what is my revenue per click?

If you found the ROI calculation a little bit complicated then let’s look at a more simple way of looking at it.

Basically you want to know two figures:

 

1.    How much money do I pay on average per click for people to click on my
       Adwords ads.
2.    How much revenue do I make on average per click when people are clicking on
       the ads.

No 1 is easy to calculate because you simply look on your Google Adwords stats and they will tell you much you have earned. To work out no 2 you need to do a little more calculation.

Let’s use a realistic example so you can see how the figures work in real life. Say you are selling an electronic book, and the commission you get per sale is $35. The conversion rate is around 0.5% … in other words about 1 in every 200 people who click on your ad buys the product. This means that for every thousand people 5 would buy the product. For every 1000 people that click you would make 5 times $35 which is $175. This means that you make on average $175/1000 which is 17.5 cents for every person who clicks on your ad.

If you were to pay any more than 17.5 cents per click for people to click on your Google Adwords ads then you will be losing money. If you were paying 5 or 6 cents you would be making a reasonable return of about 3 times your money.

How much will I be paying per click, in reality?

The Google AdWords Select has a tool known as ‘bid gap’ which helps you keep your place above your competitor and at the same time making sure that your cost per click is in accordance with how much your competitor just below you is paying. Thus, if you are bidding $1.05 per click and your competitor is paying $0.90, then all you have to pay is $0.91. If that competitor drops out and the one below that one is paying $0.75, then you end up paying $0.76 per click.

You need to understand the full implications of this system to understand how much you end up paying. Let’s take the following example where there are 10 people bidding for a certain keyword phrase. (The Google system is much more complicated than the example shown below, however the example will give you a rough idea of how things work).

So there are 10 people bidding and there are their bids:

Person 1:   $8.50
Person 2:   $5.20
Person 3:   $3.10
Person 4:   $2.00
Person 5:   $1.20
Person 6:   $1.00
Person 7:   $0.60
Person 8:   $0.15
Person 9:   $0.06
Person 10: $0.05

Firstly it is important to know that the position that these people get depends upon the average click-through rate of their ads as well as the amount that they bid. For example, if the person 2 has a click-through rate that is 2 times higher than Person 1, then they will end up number one even though they are paying less money.

The amount that these people pay is one cent more than the person below them. So here is how much they would pay (remember this is not an exact example as the Google system is more complicated than this, but it gives you a good idea).

Person 1 pays:   $5.21
Person 2 pays:   $3.11
Person 3 pays:   $2.01
Person 4 pays:   $1.21
Person 5 pays:   $1.01
Person 6 pays:   $0.61
Person 7 pays:   $0.16
Person 8 pays:   $0.07
Person 9 pays:   Person 9 will not get placement or will only occasionally get placement
Person 10 pays: Person 10 will not get placement or will only occasionally get placement

What you can see from this example is that there is a huge difference in the amount that people pay for each bid. Person 8 is paying only 7 cents whilst person 1 is paying $5.21. Person one has the advantage of going first which means that they will get their ad clicked on more often, but do you really think it is worth paying so much more for this privilege? Unless you are a major player with big pockets it is unlikely to be worthwhile to go for the number one spot.

1. Maximize your click-through rate by writing ads that sell

Sometimes advertisers forget that Internet Advertising, especially search engine ad display, is hardly a visual medium. It is not like a television commercial where catchy phrases, celebrities or flashy and even shocking images are shown to promote the product. Most people come to search engines such as Google because they are tired of irrelevant information and unnecessary loudness as far as ads are concerned.

Google is extremely result oriented and its users know that very well. They expect consistent and non-pretentious service from Google. Irrelevant ads or showy catch phrases do not work on Google ads. Do not under-estimate your customers. They will not tolerate nonsense and superfluous information which simply wastes their time. If you do attempt to write something just for the sake of shock value, you might be wasting your money as your target customers will bypass your ads and those who might click on your ad are probably random surfers who out there just to kill some time.

Don’t attempt to use ‘hot’ words or jargon words which come across as a sales pitch and do not appeal to your customers. Technical jargon won’t even appeal to the techno geeks! If your company repairs hardware, say so. Simplicity is the key, don’t try to be unnecessarily cute or cool, it probably won’t work. Don’t use clichés and overly familiar phrases that ruin the uniqueness of your product/website. In any case you don’t have much space in your Search Engine ads, so you need to get straight to the point.

All the don’ts aside, there are also some do’s to follow. Be precise, and to the point. Target your customers and focus on what they are searching for.

Whenever practical, use the keywords (that you are targeting), in the ad. These are the keywords that the person is searching for, so if you use these keywords, you are much more likely to get higher click-through rates, because the searcher perceives that they have found what they are looking for.

Your ad is not your website or your product. It is, as they say, a means to an end! The end here being attracting the prospective buyer to your website and then let your website take over. Most users use search engines as a tool to search and do not specifically look at the ads displayed on the side on the results page. When they do glance at your ad, make sure you offer them the information they are looking for. Your customers are the money-spenders, NOT the casual surfer who is clicking on your ad for its shock value. Every time there is an unproductive click on your ad, you lose money and your revenue and also come down on the Google’s Click-through Ratings.

Understand your clients; if there is something that appeals to their self-interest, they are more likely to click on that. If your product helps your clients in relieving them of any of their problems such as:

• repairing their computer
• fixing the water leakage
• making profitable investments
• helping them or their kids’ pass their SATs with ease
• getting rid of nasty headaches or backaches; etc

Then use this to your advantage and cash in on it!

Focus on what your product will do to make your customer’s life better and easier and they are more likely to click on it. Also, there is competition which should not be under-estimated and one of the key things to make sure is that your ads look more appealing than theirs. Test-drive your ad and if it works, go ahead with the format. The rule of thumb to follow here is: if it works, don’t change it!

2. Research keywords very thoroughly

There is no limit to the number of keywords you can feed in your ad. But if you dump tens of thousands of keywords in your ad hoping that whoever searches for any of those keywords will probably click on your ad and maybe turn out to be a probable spender and will in turn bring big bucks to your company … sadly, this doesn’t happen. Your keywords must be highly targeted.

A single advertisement can hardly be relevant to those thousands of products that you claim to be associated with. And it is futile to compare yourself with big-wigs like EBay or Amazon who display their ads pretty much every time you search for something. They are mass-marketers and are actually selling all those things that they advertise. Remember that Search Engines like Google have a minimum requirement for a click-through rate of 0.5% for all ads. This is not always easy to achieve because the majority of searchers actually click on the main free listings and do not actually click on the ads.

The important thing here is to identify your target market and see what they are searching for. Make sure to include those specific keywords in your ad so that your ad reaches the right set of customers. If your ad has more targeted and more relevant information than the free listings on the main section of the page, then people will click on your ad. If not, then chances are you won’t get many clicks.

You will probably have to identify a number of keywords in order to identify just the right ones for your advertising campaign. However, because this is such a critical aspect of your success, it is definitely worth all the effort.

When researching keywords for your campaign you should be thinking of having hundreds, or preferably thousands of keyword phrases for each campaign. You should also be thinking of spending several hours … probably 6-8 hours researching keywords when you first start doing Google Adwords campaigns. Later you might be able to cut the time down to 2-3 hours when you become a bit more experienced.

3. Use singular keywords in [] to increase your click-trough rate for that keyword

Singular keywords on their own do not necessarily prove to be effective. They are not always cheap and don’t always guarantee high CTR. Plus, they are not that relevant either. Your keyword ‘cold’ can imply anything ranging from cough and cold to cold climates of Siberia and even cold behavior. The phrase ‘combating cold Alaskan winter’ will probably make more sense.

Another trick is to put your keyword in square brackets. What this means is that your ad will only show up when that exact keyword is searched for. which aids in increasing the click-through ratings for that keyword and consequently rising your ad to the top.

Large companies who have bigger budget for advertising can afford to spend more and waste some of their clicks, but for smaller companies, with a limited budget, they need to be very careful in choosing keywords. Hence, they can benefit greatly by using singular keyword in square brackets to boost their CTR.

4. Select your country (countries) wisely.

Google AdWords provides the option of displaying your ad in multiple countries and in multiple languages. However, one should not go overboard in displaying ads in different countries. It is advisable to restrict your target market to some of the prominently English-speaking countries like US, UK, Canada, Australia, and a few other countries if your product or service caters to those people.

Since the United States provides a rewarding market in terms of the size and depth of the market, a lot of businesses do their businesses just within the US and earn huge revenues. On the other hand in other countries there will probably be less competition, which means that the cost per click for advertising your product or service on Google will be lower.

When doing business with non-English speaking countries it is important that you understand the language of your target country and are offering relevant ads in response to the keywords entered.

Also, don’t be dogmatic and only have eyes for just one country. The Internet is vast and the WWW is accessible from almost anyplace on the globe. You might have customers at the most unexpected corner of the world. So, think wisely and invest in your ads accordingly.

5. Minimize your cost per click for each ad - bid the lowest you can, whilst staying in the top 3 ads (or the top 8 if you can’t afford the top 3)..

Most people like their ad to be in the top 3 positions as they assume that people will only look at the first 3 ads. However, if a customer is really looking for a product or service, they will often look down to number 5 or 6 also. Hence, top rating, though desirable, does not necessarily mean high CTR, and it may cost you too much to get into the top 3 positions.Bidding is a very crucial stage in your entire ad campaign process. Even if your campaign is optimized in other respects, with a great ad copy and a careful selection of keywords and keyphrases, it will all be worthless without a bidding strategy.

The best thing from your point of view is to pay the bare minimum of just 5 cents per click! If you do enough research, you are sure to come up with quite a few keywords which may not be highly searched for, but where there aren’t many or any advertisers vying for them. That way you can bid low for those keywords and curtail your cost per click. You can aim at probably the number 3 ad spot or even the number 7 or 8 spot by bidding strategically. Constantly aspiring for the number one spot might prove to be a poor bidding strategy.

One important thing to consider here is that the rank of your ad on the page is not just determined by the amount of your bid, but the amount of your bid multiplied by your click-through rate. Most advertisers discover that unless they bid really high, they cannot get their ads shown on the top 3 slot. What they don’t realize is that they need to bid on less popular keywords and also increase the click-through rate of their ads by making their ads more enticing to click on.

If you bid less than a certain minimum amount for each keyword, there is a chance that your ad might not show up at all for that keyword. Some advertisers want to be displayed on AOL, so if you want your ad to show up on AOL as well, then your ad must be among the top 3 ads. And if your ad is at number 9 position, you will hardly get any clicks. You will no doubt save money, but you won’t even get any business.

Make sure that your ad is relevant and that the ad copy is persuasive. This way, even if you pay a low cost per click, you will achieve higher CTR and a higher ranking, because the ranking of your ad is determined by the CTR as well as your bid amount.

6. Create separate ad-groups for different types of keywords

The main purpose of creating ad-groups is that different keywords are linked with different ads and consecutively you can place different bids for different groups of keywords.

It is better to have multiple ad-groups rather than having a single ad-group which increases the overall costs of your advertising campaign. Your maximum bid, i.e. the maximum amount that you are willing to pay for a click to your ad, will be applied to all the keywords in that ad-group. You can diversify your ad campaign with multiple ad-groups and also each ad-group is connected to its own ads. This is a very important cost-saving strategy.

It is difficult to put a price on each keyword or keyphrase used in your ad. Put a few of them in a group and place a maximum bid on them, which will be applied to all the words and phrases in that particular group. Make another group, and put some other words and phrases in that group, place a new maximum bid on them and so on. This way you can strategically decide which keyword or phrase should be placed in which group and can also lower your bidding costs.

You can set up different ads which can be displayed at different searches. This way you can ensure that your ad does appear no matter what the user preference is! For example, your website is about international cuisine and in one ad-group you have all the keywords related to Italian cookery, when a user searches for a pasta recipe, your ad will appear. Also, in another ad-group, you have a set of keywords describing Japanese recipes and food; hence a search for raw fish recipes will display your ad targeting the sushi lovers.

You can not only divide your keywords into different ad-groups by theme, but also by cost. The expensive keywords can be together in one group and you can allocate another group for less expensive keywords and so on.

It is important to remember that dumping all the keywords in just one group will not be effective. It is also important to match the keywords with the search phrases as explained later. Yes, this is a lot of work and effort and most people are not willing to do this in their campaigns. That’s why if you do it, you will be one step ahead.

7. Try to match search keywords with the same keyword phrase in your ads

Google AdWords offers three forms of syntaxes that we explained before which differ not just in the way they target your customers, but also in the cost per click of the ads. They are (1) Broad matching or wild-card matching, (2) Phrase matching and (3) Exact Matching.

In Broad matching or wild-card matching technique, it requires you to put a phrase in your ad which acts as a wild-card and is displayed in all the searches where that word is used in the search. This technique is not thoroughly targeted and is not as effective as targeted keyword technique.

On the other hand, it also enables your ad to show up on most searches with the least amount of effort. For example, if your wild-card keyword is "banana" (without any quotation marks), then it will show up on all searches like ‘banana republic store’, ‘banana pudding recipe’, ‘banana plantation’, ‘nutritional value of banana’ and so on. It can work but it can generate unnecessary costs for you. It all depends on how you choose the keywords. In particular, if you use a phrase or group of words instead of just that one word, like: banana recipe (without any quotes) you will probably reach a broader market which will eliminate unnecessary searches like the banana republic store or about banana plantation. And the moment someone searches for ‘recipe for banana cake using ripe banana’ or ‘recipe for banana cream cake’ your ad will be displayed.

Hence, broad matching is not recommended for most one-word keywords as it will invariably generate many irrelevant searches and will prove to be ineffective. However, if you are in a specialized industry like for example, manufacturing and selling a rare precious stone and you have the name of that stone as your wild-card keyword then every time someone searches for it, then you have generated a potential market for your product. The same is the case with the single word which means something specific like ‘acupuncture’ or ‘Nylon’.

Phrase matching is very effective if it is used wisely. The phrase should be in quotes so that every time a search is made which includes that phrase in that exact order, then your ad will be displayed. Hence, the ad with phrase ‘brass statues’ will capture search queries like ‘ancient brass statues’ or ‘brass statues found in Chile’. But the problem here is that only the exact phrase in that order will be effective. So, a search query like ‘statues of brass’ will not be caught by the ad. Even ‘brass statue’ will not work! This option can certainly save time and resources as these words on their own have a broad meaning and will show many irrelevant searches. ‘Brass’ or ‘statues’ on its own will catch searches like ‘brass pots’ or ‘wooden statues’.

Exact matching is the most targeted of them all. It is very precise in nature and can be used by putting your phrase in square brackets when placing your ad. Using the phrase [brass statues], your ad will appear only when the exact phrase is searched for. However, the user does not have to use square brackets or any such thing, just type in the exact phrase in order to land to your ad. This is often used by those advertisers who face heavy traffic load and are interested only in targeted customers.

8. Make as many combinations of 2 or 3 words as possible

One simple principle is that the more keywords you have the better. Come up with two or three keywords and put them together and you will often find some keyword combinations that are not only inexpensive but also effective. In competitive areas, there are often so many advertisers bidding for the same set of keywords as yours and this is increasing the cost of those keywords.

Hence, it is advisable to use effective combinations of two or three relevant keywords. Let’s say you are in the business of holiday home rentals. Evidently, you have got competition in this field and their advertising campaign is focusing on the same keywords as yours, which is probably ‘holiday home rentals’. Well, the option you can employ here is to use a variety of combination of these keywords so your ad will be displayed whenever a person is searching for something to do with your product or service. You have to understand that your customers are not only those people who search for the phrase ‘holiday home rentals’.

They may also be searching for vacation home rentals, holiday house rentals, renting holiday home, holiday retreat rentals, leasing holiday home, leasing vacation home, holidayhome rental, and so on. The choice is almost unlimited. So if you focus on just that one keyword, you might lose valuable business.

9. Consider putting your cost per click higher in the beginning, and then lowering it.

Your maximum bid is not your actual bid. Maximum bid is the maximum possible amount that you are willing to pay for every click on your ad. Actual bid is the amount finally set upon in conjunction with Google AdWords which determines your cost per click. Consider putting your cost per click higher in the beginning of your ad campaign. Then when you start to see a good click-through rate for your ad, then you can consider lowering the cost per click. But slashing it down completely will not give desirable results.

You will be able to lower your cost per click when you provide relevant results and achieve higher click through ratings. The more relevant your ad is, the higher are your chances of getting a benefit over your competitors.

10. Track your results very carefully

There are a lot of tools available to track your results. These sales conversion tracking tools can be employed to get an idea of how your ad is performing. These tools range from the most basic ones to the highly advanced software.

One way of tracking sales is to use separate URLs or domains from the rest of your website for your ad campaign to measure your ROI effectively. It is very simple as all you have to do is determine which page of your website generates the most sales. By using a different URL or domain for your AdWords ad you know that all the clicks that appear on your page are the result of your AdWords campaign. This is one of the simpler ways of tracking your results. Then there are some handy tools available that require you to insert a little bit of extra code into your target URL that makes it possible for you to determine the source of your sales.

If you have an affiliate program for your own product or service then you can create a separate affiliate account to track each advertising campaign. It acts as a numbering system and counts the number of clicks which are resulting from clicking on your ad. If you are promoting another person’s affiliate program then it is a little more difficult to track the sales generated by each Search Engine campaign. However there are some affiliate programs that allow you to create a separate tracking code for each advertisement, and this way you can work out exactly how many sales are generated from each advertisement that you do.

This information can be used to determine the quality and effectiveness of your ad. You can find out if your ad is powerful enough to deliver the required results. You can also find out if you are reaching your target customers or are piling up unnecessary advertising costs. You can eliminate entire ad-groups and re-structure your ad campaign based on these results.

11. Use phrase match keywords in ""

You can use certain phrases or keywords in quotes which act as a semi-wild card for your ad. Let’s say you want to your ad to capture all the queries about milk chocolate. When you use "milk chocolate" as your phrase match, then every query which has that phrase in that order will be caught by your ad. You can also use single word in quotes, but this is essentially the same as the broad matching of that keyword without quotes. The phrase matching technique is effective for phrases with more than one word as it searches for the same exact phrase and hence targets your searches.

12. Use negative keywords to eliminate phrases such as "free"

Google AdWords Select has a feature called negative keywords which enable advertisers to put a negative (minus) sign in front of some keywords. Lets say you put ‘-free’ as one of your keywords. This ensures that your ad will not be displayed to those people who are searching for anything that is available for free. This way you can avoid clicks by those random surfers who are definitely not money-spenders. You can consider filtering out a number of such words and phrases like ‘gratis’, ‘bargain’, ‘cheap’ and so on. It depends upon what type of buyer you are looking for.

Sometimes you will want people who are looking for "cheap widgets", but if you offer expensive widgets you are unlikely to sell to these people. Apart from these, you can insert a wide range of such negative keywords to eliminate non-buyers, casual surfers, inappropriate clients, etc. For example if you sell health insurance (for people!) you might want to eliminate anyone who is searching for health insurance for pets (yes there is such a thing). So you would use the negative keywords of ‘-pets’, ‘-dogs’, ‘-cats’ etc.

The more negative keywords you include in your keyword list the higher your click-through rate will be, because your ads will be more targeted. And, if the click-through rate is higher, the ad position will increase also, so negative keywords can have a lot of benefits.

13. Look at your competitor’s ads to see how you can stand out

In any business, it is always advisable to study your competitor’s strategies. Google Adwords is no different. Make sure that you don’t end up using your valuable words and phrases in your ads. There are bound to be a few good keywords and phrases which are not yet considered by your competitors. Explore those options and you will be able to outperform your competitors.

14. Make sure you put the daily budget at the maximum (unless you are really worried about going over budget).

The first part of any campaign that you do should be to work out your ROI. Once you have calculated your ROI you will know how much you make for every person who clicks on your Google Adwords ad. Let’s say you make on average 32 cents for every person who clicks on your ad, and lets say you have set your maximum cost per click at 10 cents. Now you know that you are making money for every person who clicks on your ad.

So you should make sure that you maximize your daily budget. Don’t keep it just above the amount that search engines such as Google suggests you will need … keep it 5-10 times the amount that they suggests. This way you will ensure that you get as many impressions and clicks as possible.

15. Consider whether to syndicate your ads

Google AdWords has a wide range of syndication partners. These include, Earthlink, Infospace, AskJeeves/Teoma, AOL, and Lycos. The list is definitely going to expand with time. There are two types of syndicated ads: Search sites and content sites. If your ads are syndicated for search sites then they will show up on parter search engines such as AOL. If they are syndicated for content sites then they will show up on hundreds of small websites.

If you have a fixed budget, submitting your ad to AdWords alone may get you a better ROI. The general belief is that syndicating your ad with smaller content sites is less likely to be effective than advertising on Google alone. However if you are getting great results on a search engine like Google, for example paying 8 cents per click and making 80 cents per click then it is probably worthwhile to include content sites. On the other hand if you are paying 70 cents per click and only making 90 cents per click you should consider eliminating content sites from your advertising.

16. Double check to make sure that everything is correct - the target URL etc

As you complete your ad campaign, make sure that every thing is in the right order before you go ahead with the campaign. Make sure your ad is relevant and is likely to entice the viewer to click. The URL which is targeted by your ad should be the correct one and it should not display any misleading information. Use tracking software or code to determine the sales conversion rate for your ad. Test it to make sure that it is working fine. Develop a reasonable bidding strategy. Do not give up if you don’t achieve the desired clicks in the first few days. Be patient and if required, change your advertising strategy.

Making sure that your ads get approved

Google reserves the right to accept or reject your Ad. Creating an AdWords account and setting a high CPC does not guarantee that your Ad will be listed. In order for your Ad to be approved by Google, it has to comply with their Editorial Guidelines. These guidelines are discussed in this section.

These guidelines not only help you to get approved but also help in improving the performance of your Ad and generate sales. The guidelines stress the importance of two principles:

 

• Ads should clearly and accurately describe your website
• Ads should put emphasis on highlighting the uniqueness of your product or service

If your ad gets rejected, a Search Engine specialist will mark out minor editing changes for your Ad to comply with the guidelines. Let’s take a look at these guidelines in detail.

Ad Style and Grammar

 

• Do not use repeated and unnecessary punctuation or symbols.
• Your title may not contain an exclamation point.
• Your ad text may only contain one exclamation point.

For instance, let us consider an Ad pertaining to an E-Learning website. This Ad would not be approved as it contains an exclamation mark in the title. Moreover, there are repeated punctuation marks (!!) in description line 2.

 

• Do not use excessive capitalization
• Capitalization of the first letter of each word within your displayed URL is permitted. However, capitalization of an entire word is not permitted.
• Words or phrases should not be repeated

In this Ad, description Line 1 is acceptable. Only the first letter is capital. However, description line 2 contains excessive capitalization which is not acceptable. Moreover, the Title is repeated again in description line 1, which is also not acceptable.

There are a few other guidelines pertaining to your Ad Style and Grammar. Ensure that there are no spelling mistakes in the Ad. Also there is a limit to the number of characters that can be used for each line in the Ad. Ad Titles cannot be more than 25 characters, whereas the description lines and the URL cannot be more than 35 characters.

 

Ad and Keyword relevance

Your Ads should use keywords that reflect your product or service and the landing page should be relevant to the Ad. It is recommended that you include the nature of your business, product or service in the Ad text. Location specific products should be clearly defined. For instance, if an Ad is only for a service available to New York residents, it should say so.

The Content of your Ad

 

• If you are an affiliate and the Ad is aimed at promoting an affiliate program, you must specify so in the Ad. Our testing of this shows that it does not substantially decrease the effectiveness of your ad. For example, Google will also usually let you use an abbreviation of the word "affiliate" such as "aff" if you are not able to fit the full word in the sentence.

 

• Superlative language should be avoided. This includes phrases such as "Greatest", "Best", "#1", and so on. However, if a third party rates your product as "Best" or "#1", then you may be able to use these phrases in your ad.
• Language that promotes offers should be avoided. This includes phrases such as ‘Sign up for a week and get a week’s subscription free’, or ‘Limited time offer only’. There is an exception to this rule. If you create an Ad that is specifically for promoting an offer on your landing page, your Ad may be approved. This is also true for product guarantee and warranty.

 

• If your ad text contains product endorsements or awards, support for this claim must be displayed clearly on your website.

 

• Your ad text and title cannot contain broad call-to-action phrases such as ‘click here’, ‘link here’, ‘visit this site’, or other similar phrases that could apply to any ad. Use of such language would be rejected. Call to action should be product specific. Something like ‘Save on Books’, or ‘Register now for 15% discount’ is acceptable. In fact, as discussed earlier, use of proper call-to-action can increase the effectiveness of your Ad.

 

• Your ad title must not contain ‘welcome to’, ‘online’, ‘website’, or ‘homepage’.

 

• Your ad should not contain offensive or inappropriate language.

 

• Adult Ads are generally accepted by Google AdWords. However, these ads should comply with the conditions for AdWords Adult advertising. In some cases, Adult ads may be rejected by AdWords if they are found to be extremely offensive and derogatory.

Links

The Display URL should be accurate and in working condition. It should not contain excessive capitals. The website which, the URL points to should also be working. URLs to Email Addresses and files are not allowed.

The Landing page should be working as well. If the page is under construction, the Ad should be discontinued or the landing page should be changed. Moreover, landing pages should not contain pop-ups of any kind. This is not acceptable to Search Engines. Finally, links to your website must allow users to return to the search results page or ad network by clicking once on the browser’s Back button.

What happens if my ad is rejected?

Having said all of this it is interesting that when you look at the Google AdWords ads that come up when you search for products or services, they do not all comply with the above rules. Sometimes they slip through the Search Engine editors.

Other times you will get an ad rejected for reasons not listed above. The editors are fairly consistent, but they are not 100% consistent. If you believe your ad was rejected unfairly you can either: Write to the editors and plead your case or, try submitting the ad again with some slight changes. It’s not a good idea to submit the same ad again as you will annoy the editors and your account may eventually be blacklisted.

Different options when selecting keywords for your ad

There are a number of different options you can use when placing keywords:

Broad matching or wild-card matching, (2) Phrase matching and (3) Exact Matching.

Exact Matching in square brackets [] - When you use brackets around a word or a phrase, your ad will show only when that exact word or exact phrase is typed into the Search Engine. For example, when you use the keyword [computer] your ad will only show up if a person types in the single word computer into the search engine. However if you use the keyword computer without brackets your ad will show up any time someone types in any phrase with the word computer in the phrase. For example, ‘How can I fix my computer’. You can also use square brackets for keyword phrases, for example [satellite tv] or [cable repairs].

Phrase matching in inverted commas ‘’ - When you use inverted commas, your ad will show up whenever someone types in that phrase in that exact order within the phrase that they type into the engine. This is normally used with keyword phrases that have two or more words. For example if you use the keyword phrase ‘satellite tv’ (with inverted commas around the phrase), then your ad will show up when someone types in the phrase ‘I hate satellite tv’, it will show up with the phrase ‘satellite tv’ or ‘my favourite satellite tv stations’, but it will not show up with the phrase ‘tv satellite stations’ because the order of satellite and tv is changed in the phrase.

Broad matching - This is where you just place the keyword or keyword phrase into your keyword list without anything around the keyword. This way your ad will show whenever someone types something into the search engine that has that word or words in the phrase. For example if you use the word television then your ad will show up if someone types: ‘my television is broken’ or ‘how can I get a new television’ or ‘television shows from the 1980’s’. You can see that using single words with Broad matching is usually not very targeted. It depends upon the words however, because if you use a word like: nokia3650 it is going to be a lot more targeted.

Negative keyword (a minus sign before the keyword) - When you put a minus sign before the keyword this will ensure that your ad will not show up when that keyword is contained within the keyword phrase. This is often very useful and we’ll talk about it a bit later in the membership site.