Today you will begin sending traffic to your affiliate lead capture page using Google Adwords. This is the quickest and best method of generating highly qualified and targeted traffic there is, so don't discount it.

It’s time to kick start the affiliate money machine…

You Will Use The Keyword List You Have Generated In Step #1 To Populate Your Ad Groups.

In order to maximize targeting, you must group your keywords together by similarity and create unique ads for each group. (Note: The following is derived from a training report I created for members of Secret Affiliate Weapon)

Let’s break this down with a simple case study:

Imagine for a moment that you’ve chosen “web design” as your affiliate niche market and plan on targeting newbies. You’ve generated a list of phrases the average neophyte designer might type into the search engines, such as:

Easy web page design
Easy web page creation
Learn to create web site
Simple HTML tutorial
Create easy web page
Create web site

How would you divide these phrases? We would divide them this way:

Ad Group 1: All keywords containing easy, design and web page
Ad Group 2: All keywords containing easy, design and web site
Ad Group 3: All keywords containing create and web page
Ad Group 4: All keywords containing create and web site

We would continue this process with all permutations where the searcher’s intent hinges on key adjectives, verbs and nouns (web page vs. web site, for example).

Why do things this way? Is it really that important?

In a word, yes.

Although it may not be as obvious in the example above, it is important to create separate Ad Groups and separate ad copy for the different ways that searchers phrase their requests.

It doesn’t matter if any given terms seem to be saying the same thing, albeit in a different way. Your copy needs to match as closely as possible to what prospects searched for.

The reasons for this are manifold. One primary reason is psychological.

People are simply more likely to click on an ad with words matching their search query. In fact, Google highlights any matching keywords in your ad title in bold, which further draws the prospect’s attention.

Secondly, when you have a large arsenal of keywords at your disposal, you do not want to dump all of them into one Ad Group or trigger only one ad for the lot of them. Otherwise, you’ll be left with a large amount of unorganized data to wade through when you check your campaign for click through rates and overall spend.

Adwords Guidelines and Tips:

What’s your daily budget and how much can you afford to spend?

1. Pull together what you think are your most highly targeted keywords.

2. Use a spreadsheet or pen and paper to record the estimated traffic and cost per click of each keyword.

3. Multiply cost per click by estimated traffic

This will give you a general idea of the overall costs for your campaign, as well as what you can afford to spend per day on each Ad Group. Most experts recommend setting your daily budget as low as possible to start off.

However, there is one factor you need to check in order maximize your traffic:

How much does it cost per day to have your ad displayed every time someone searches on your keyword?

This is important because Google implements a rotating display process based on your budget. If you set your daily spend too low, your ad will not be displayed for every search, and you won’t receive the amount of impressions you
expected.

Let’s say you have a keyword that receives approximately 100 searches per day, representing a potential 100 clicks per day on your ad.

If your minimum bid on the keyword is .05 cents per click, then your daily spend limit should be set to at least .05X100, or $5 per day.

Secondary Impressions and CTR:

Google monitors the ratio of your ad impressions versus your ad click through and calculates what is known as the Click Through Rate, or CTR. If your CTR drops too low, Google will suspend your ad campaign and may disable your keywords, preventing you from bidding on them in the future.

The easiest way to avoid this is to turn off content matching for each campaign.

Content matching is different from search impressions. A search impression occurs when a user types in a query into Google. A content match occurs on any one of hundreds of Adsense partner sites where your ad is triggered contextually due to matching keywords within the content on a partner site.

For most advertisers, this amounts to hundreds of wasted impressions and negatively impacts on CTR. So, turn off content matching and focus only on real search results based on real queries by real prospects.

A Behind the Scenes Look at An AdWords Creation:

STEP 1

Adwords Setup 1

STEP 2

Adwords Setup 2

STEP 3

Adwords Setup 3

STEP 4

Adwords Setup 4

STEP 5

Adwords Setup 5

Adwords Do’s and Don’ts:

Do:

  • Organize keywords into logical groups based on similarity
  • Calculate all costs and set a reasonable daily spend to ensure your ad receives maximum exposure
  • Use utilize Google’s online faq’a and other help documents if needed. Take a test run through the “sign up demo”.

Don’t:

  • Use content matching. It will negatively impact your CTR
  • Don’t forget to check your ads for spelling and punctuation. Avoid calls to action like “click here now”. Any of these will cause your ad to be disabled and require editing before your campaign can continue.

Other Traffic Sources:

Pay-per-click traffic from Google Adwords should be your primary focus during the initial roll out of your system. However once you’ve established some traffic and collected leads to your autoresponder, you can begin building other sources of traffic.

For example from:

  • Newsgroups and Message Boards: Join discussions lists centered around your niche. Contribute helpful posts and include the link to your site in signature line. This will generate traffic from discussion group members as well as the search engines which spider those groups.
  • Write and distribute your own articles: Having your articles distributed can generate traffic from the search engines if you optimize your articles for target keywords. You should also see traffic from e-zines and newsletters when your article is picked up and distributed. Remember to place your byline and the link to your site at the end of each article.
  • Co-Registration, Content Swaps and Link Swaps with Complementary Sites: Find a site with a complementary focus and approach the site owner for a joint venture. This can be anything from a reciprocal link trade, an e-zine ad swap, an article swap or cross-promotion of products among respective lists.

Plus see many more traffic tactics here. You will also want to implement a method of testing and tracking as soon as possible. Ideally, you would implement this right off the bat. However, if you’re new to internet marketing, it’s a good idea to just get your site up and running.

You can add in a tracking mechanism once you get comfortable working with the technical aspects of site design and Adwords set up.

Important Reasons For Testing And Tracking:

  • Determine which keywords and which ads bring you the most traffic
  • Determine which keywords convert to leads and customers, regardless of the amount of traffic they generate
  • Eliminate under performing keywords
  • Test your ad copy, your direct response copy and your sales copy
  • Know where your traffic comes from – PPC? Message boards? Articles?
  • Quality autoresponders typically have a tracking function built in. Keep this feature in mind when shopping around.

So begin your first push with Google Adwords and then make a plan for long term traffic using other methods. Remember to track your progress and optimize your campaigns.

When you’re dealing with pay-per-click, do not be tempted to purchase traffic from any other source except a respected and well run pay per click service.

Similarly you shouldn’t judge results too quickly, allow a minimum of at least 100 click through on any given ad. If it is underperforming, try re-writing your ad copy before dumping that keyword.