Market your business on the internet

If you are not already marketing your business on the web, then you really need to start. Just about every business out there could benefit from internet marketing. It is very affordable to advertise your company on the internet, and it gives you the the chance to reach a much broader audience.The value of online marketing is just one of many reasons why lots of business owners are moving their advertising efforts online. Advertising online is extremely affordable, especially when you think of how many potential clients a business can reach with a good online advertising campaign. Most methods of online promotion are very affordable and a lot of them are totally free. One excellent way to advertise your company online for free, is to participate in forums related to your business, and having a link to your site in your signature that is displayed below your posts. Just be sure to be respectful and post informative posts so you earn the respect of the other forum users.The sheer size of the potential target audience is an excellent reason for any company to start marketing online. Chances are, you have a good idea of what your target audience is, and when advertising offline, you are forced to focus on these people. However, there may be many other groups of people who would be interested in your service or product, who would never find you offline. By advertising on the internet, you are able to reach a much larger audience, potentially open your business up to new markets.In addition, there may be members of your core target audience from around the world who would not have found your business off line. By moving online, you are no longer a local company, but a worldwide enterprise!Not only does the internet drastically broaden your reach, but it also increases your effective business hours. While your company might only be open Monday through Friday from 9 to 5, your website is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. Your business hours are now more than quadrupled, but without paying additional employees.If you run a business, and do not have a strong online presence, then you really need to begin learning more about online marketing. It is vital in this age of technology, and if your competitors are advertising on the internet, they are gaining a distinct advantage over you, and are becoming more appealing to potential customers. Before they dominate your market, it's time to market your business on the internet so you can keep up with the competition.

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that relies on individuals rather than traditional campaigns to pass along a message to others. It usually refers to marketing on the Internet. Viral marketing is so named because of the tendency for messages to use "hosts" to spread themselves rapidly, like a biological virus.

The term "viral marketing" first became prominent when used to describe a marketing campaign for the e-mail service Hotmail.com. When the company launched, every outgoing message contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As people e-mailed their friends and colleagues, they were also advertising the service. Recipients could simply click on the link and sign themselves up, and as they e-mailed friends from their new account, the message spread within existing social networks and was passed along with little effort from the company.

This example demonstrates all the key elements of viral marketing. Its cost to the advertiser is minimal. Instead, it takes advantage of existing resources by making everyone who uses the product an involuntary spokesperson. It exploits common behaviors, such as sending an e-mail.

Viral marketing uses communications networks that are already in place. In the case of Hotmail, it implies endorsement from a friend. People who received an e-mail from a friend using the service learned that the product works and that their friends use it. And most importantly, viral marketing offers the ability to spread a message exponentially faster and to more people than conventional third-party ad campaigns.

There are different types of viral marketing, all using the same fundamental principles. Pass-along messages encourage users to send them along to others, such as e-mails with instructions to forward at the bottom or humorous video clips. Incentive-driven messages offer rewards in exchange for providing e-mail addresses. Undercover viral marketing presents messages in an unusual page or false news item without any direct incitement to pass it along, in the hopes that word-of-mouth will spread the message. Gossip or buzz marketing seeks to get people talking about something by creating controversy.

Viral marketing has come under criticism from consumers, privacy advocates, and marketing pundits because of concern over unsolicited e-mails. The best campaigns, however, use the principles of viral marketing tactfully to avoid negative reactions and ensure a high pass-along rate - the number of recipients that will pass the message to others. Much like the common cold, effective viral marketing uses people to unwittingly transmit a message within their social network. It takes the concept of word-of-mouth and enhances it with the instant global communication afforded by the Internet.

PPC beat Long tail keywords

After most years of selling upon a internet, we have come to comprehend which a most creative selling plan is PPC advertising. Adwords Pay Per Click however has it’s drawbacks. If you have been new marketing with really small believe of keywords, you mount a possibility of losing a lot of money. It is utterly a plea perplexing to contest for same keywords with a some-more knowledge marketers who have a income to outbid their competitors. That is a reason we indicate expanding your horizons by regulating prolonged tail keywords for improved formula with PPC.

Long tail keywords have been shady treasures which most home commercial operation entrepreneurs mostly fail to notice. A lengthened tail keyword is a password as against to a singular word. Instead of regulating a keyword related to topic, you can put together to have a prolonged tail keyword such as how to get topic. Long tail keywords have been really in effect since not all people simply dig for a singular word, in actuality most internet searches will be a mixed word search.

Living in renouned make make use of of prolonged tail keyword word in your PPC ad campaign, regulating keyword collection such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool and SEO Book. These supports have been now used for working out a volume of a competitors to a stream buzzword. You will additionally be means to find out how most searches per month for any keyword word is created. In further to assisting you win a Keyword Tool PPC promotion costs for a due series of keyword phrases to urge your campaign.

Using prolonged tail keyword not usually assistance me to beat a price of PPC promotion though it additionally assistance me to get front page chain with my blogs and articles. Long tail keywords has been obliged for branch my PPC campaigns in to an online income creation machine. Before you give up upon regulating Pay Per Click promotion we indicate you cruise regulating prolonged tail keywords in your campaign.

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like SEO for Xmas Time

While the weather outside may be frightful, launching new SEO campaigns for the Holidays can be incredibly delightful. And like any other marketing campaigns, competition for keywords can be fierce. Here are a few tips on how to get your site ready for the Holidays.

Cater Campaigns around Special Offers

Speak to your affiliate manager to find out about the Holiday promotions they have going on. Once you know what you have that you can market that is going to be competitive, you can begin to research keywords to use and create content around those things.

Do Your Research

It should come as no surprise that Holiday search terms are very competitive. Competition for phrases like “Christmas gifts” is high, and with some terms, getting even more generic ups the ante just that much more. So, how does one beat those Christmas keyword blues? Specialize your keyword phrases, but be very specialized. Phrases like “unique Christmas gifts” face even tougher competition, but if you were to get even more specialized, then the competition is lessened. The bottom line here is that the research is key to your Holiday campaigns. Find out where you can compete, and go for it.

Embrace the Seasonal Flu Virus and Get Viral

Not every video will, or even can go viral. If you can get your video to do so, you have staged a major coup. And even if you can’t, people love helpful videos. Product reviews and helpful tips will help you create buzz, and if you have these videos embedded on your site, you have a chance to engage your audience for a little while longer than you would with text.

Provide Value

The name of the game, no matter what time of year it is, is still relevance and uniqueness. Provide surfers with something that they’re not going to find somewhere else. Give them a really good reason to read your content. A really big reason for people to read content during the Holidays is savings. Use terms like discount, sale, or savings in your copy along with the keywords that you are optimizing for. You should, however, never forget that content is king, and always will be.

Get Meta

If you are using Meta Keywords, all you are doing is telling your competition what keywords you are after. It has been quite a while since search engines have looked at this at all. What they do look for, and what your potential visitors will see, is the Meta Description. This gives you 150 characters to reach your audience. Use the keywords you have optimized the page for in this description, and make sure that you are using copy that convinces people to click. This is your first introduction to surfers, and first impressions are everything. Make sure you’re giving the searchers what the searchers want.

Get Social

If you’re not using social media as a way to reach out to your potential customers, the only question at this point is, why not? This is an excellent way to grab your customers’ attention and keep them engaged. And if you can provide special sales or incentives for people to follow you via social media venues, then you are sure to find that people will be even more likely to sign up.

Google Ad Planner

A new free tool called Google Ad Planner to potentially increase its already widespread influence.

It’s a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. When using Google Ad Planner, simply enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit. You can drill down further to get more detail like demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites you’ve added to your media plan. Using Google Ad Planner, you can quickly create media plans and export to a .csv file, which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications.

So, with Google Ad Planner, you can:

• Define audiences by demographics and interests.
• Search for websites relevant to your audience.
• Access aggregated statistics on the number of unique visitors, page views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries.
• Create lists of websites where you’d like to advertise and store them in a media plan.
• Generate aggregated website statistics for your media plan.

The Google Ad Planner account interface consists of:

• An audience definition tool, where you define your audience by language, age, and other criteria.
• A list of sites matching your criteria. The site list includes traffic, reach, and other key data for each site to help you make informed decisions about where you might advertise. To make your research more efficient, Google Ad Planner automatically refreshes the site list when you enter, remove, or edit audience definition criteria.

With Google Ad Planner, you can choose to research sites only or create a media plan to save a list of your desired sites and placements for future use.

How does Google Ad Planner work with Google AdWords?

Google Ad Planner can help you identify appropriate sites to target through Google AdWords. First, filter your Google Ad Planner results to display sites in the Google content network and export the appropriate list of sites to a .csv file.

You can then take any of the following actions in your AdWords account:

• Create a Google AdWords placement-targeted campaign: Be sure to select the List URLs option, and copy and paste your sites from column A of your .csv file into your campaign when prompted.
• Edit an existing Google AdWords placement-targeted campaign: Be sure to select the List URLs option, and copy and paste your sites from column A of your .csv file into your campaign when prompted.
• Use Google AdWords Editor to add placements to your ad groups: You won’t need to create a new spreadsheet, because Google Ad Planner has already done it for you. Simply copy sites from your .csv file directly into AdWords Editor.

Excellent Firefox Plugins/ Add-one for SEO

Which browser do you use? Which is the best browser? These are some of the common question which many people asked me.

Well as a SEO specialist my answer is very obvious…”FIREFOX” , though all browsers are important for graphic & web designers as they have to check their design, work & functionality on each & every browser. They have to check the compatibility of the site on each.

Anyways..I really like FireFox because it has many great Plugings that makes my work easy & helps in quick SEO analysis.
If you are an expert or just starting to learn SEO, these Firefox plugins are great. I use the majority of these SEO Firefox plugins on a daily basis, if not more often.
Here’s a listing of the best plugins available for SEO work:

Mahalo Share: Share and recommend Web pages across many different services; recommend a link once and have it automatically posted to any of Twitter, del.icio.us, MySpace, Ma.gnolia, Jaiku, your Tumblr blog, Facebook, Pownce, StumbleUpon, Mahalo, Faves, or Google Bookmarks.

Clipmarks: Your clips are saved on clipmarks.com and can easily be syndicated to FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook or other sites. You can also post anything you clip directly to your blog (supports WordPress, Blogger, Typepad and more) or send it directly to friends or co-workers via email. Your clip collection is accessible from any computer with an internet connection, including your iPhone, Blackberry, or other mobile device.

SeoQuake: Seoquake is a Mozilla Firefox extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. General set of parameters consists of such parameters as:

Google PR (Google PageRank of current page)

Google Index (Number of indexed pages. Google version)

Google link (Number of links, pointed to the current page. Google version (Except links from concerned domain))

And similar parameters for many other search engines (Yahoo, MNS, Yandex, Rambler, Baidu) and some other miscellaneous parameters.

LinkChecker: Check the validity of links on any webpage.

SEOpen 0.8: Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization, including Google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using the included toolbar.

Search Synchronizer 1.3.0.3: Synchronizes the firefox searchbox 16 default search engines, and the ability for you to add more!
So when you search for something from the google website, for example, the firefox searchbox shall automatically show that search. Works with:
-Google
-Yahoo
-MSN
-Ask.com
-and 12 others!

SearchStatus 1.25: Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and more.

RankQuest SEO Toolbar 3.9.2: RankQuest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensure the popularity of the site. Once you download and install the SEO Toolbar you are only one or two clicks away from carrying out most of your day to day SEO operations.

FireFTP 0.99.1: FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

About This Site 1.1: One-click access to web site metadata – traffic, related and linked pages, and more – added to the Tools menu and context menu.

Page validator 0.3.3: Validates a page using the W3C Markup Validation Service. This is a simple extension that will work only for online pages.

SEO Link Analysis 1.0.3: Adds display of PageRank, linktext and nofollow links to external links in Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Microsoft Webmaster Portal

Google Global 2.0.1: Google Global allows users to see organic and paid Google search results as they appear in different countries, cities, regions, ZIP codes and IP addresses.

Google Pagerank Status 0.9.3: Display the google pagerank in your browser’s status bar.

Web Developer 1.1.6: Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

StumbleUpon 3.23: With StumbleUpon you can also connect with friends and share your discoveries, meet people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering.

Bookmark Duplicate Detector 0.6.4: Detects Duplicate Bookmarks when bookmarks are added and specify where the previous URL is. You can also search and delete duplicates URL already in your Bookmarks.

del.icio.us Complete 1.3: del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

This extension is not only a sidebar it provides an excellent post dialog as well.
Social Media for Firefox : A submission on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or Delicious is sometimes a good candidate for submission to the others. This add-on makes saves you the time of checking if an item has already been submitted by showing vote counts right on the home pages of these social bookmarking sites.

In addition, vote counts are shown in the Firefox status bar as you move from page to page again saving you the trouble of going through the bookmarking process if someone has beat you to it.

Compete.com: The Compete Toolbar automatically creates three alerts for every web site you visit:

Trust Scores: help you experience a safer web by warning you of potentially malicious (spyware, phishing) web sites

Site Profiles: tell you how popular the web site is, its rank, and how fast it is growing

Deal Light: automatically lights up if there are any special promotions or coupons that can save you money on the web site.

I am sure these plugins will increase your SEO efficiency.

Improve Alexa Ranking of Your Website

Alexa provides traffic statistics for the websites. You can measure the number of visitors on your website using this ranking tool but to track the count of visitors using this tool, it is essential that this tool should be already installed on the visitors' browser. Unluckily, most of the visitors don't have this toolbar pre-installed on their browsers. Due to which we can't say that Alexa Rank is a true indicator of visitors count on your website, it's just a subset of your visitors.Looking at this, Alexa addresses some of these concerns as:• Traffic rankings of one lac and above should not be regarded as authentic one.• The closer a site gets to #1, the more trustful its traffic ranking becomes.So we cant say that Alexa ranking is an accurate ranking system, it is important only if you plan to monetize your website. Instead, you may use some way outs to improve the Alexa rank of your website.Append An Alexa Rank Widget To Your WebsiteSetting up this widget on your website will help in increasing its rank. Using this widget, all the visitors of your website could be tracked. If, sometimes, loading of a page takes time with a widget added on that page, to still retain its benefits preferably place it at the very bottom of your website, or at the end of your source code.Install Alexa Toolbar in Your Browser tooJust set your website as your homepage. Doing this way, you can increase the rank of website's traffic rank because your visits to your website will also be reflected in your rank.Spread the word to Install the Alexa ToolbarTry to make aware everybody, your visitors as well as your friends, that installing Alexa toolbar helps to give correct number of visitors to any website.Use Alexa Auto-Surfing WebsitesThis approach is workable only if your Alexa rank is too poor, but these websites sends visitors to your website that have this toolbar installed for sure.Look for WebmastersGenerally, web developers and tech-savvy people have installed the Alexa toolbar in their browsers. So, if you visit discussion groups, or forums, you may ask for feedback on your website, thereby increasing website visits.Therefore, it's crystal clear that Alexa traffic rank is not a true indicator of your website's visitors. It can count near to real visitors, only if considered along with other performance metrics. Hitherto, using above mentioned tips, you can improve Alexa rank of your website, thence the value of your website could be enhanced in front of potential consumers.

Worried About why Google is not showing ads on Google Search results

Many people have this common query that “why Google is not showing our ads on Google Search or content results, though we are running Ad-words Ad Campaign”….

Here, I am listing out the most common or possible reasons:

No Billing Information:

Your Ad-words ads can’t begin running until you enter valid billing information in your account. If you pay with credit card or other post pay option, your account will be activated once you submit billing information. Depending on the processing time associated with your payment option, your ads may begin showing and accruing costs immediately. If you pay with bank transfer or another form of prepayment, your ads won’t run until we receive and process your first payment. This can take 8-10 days (and occasionally more) after you’ve submitted your billing information and made your first payment. To enter your billing information, sign in to your AdWords account and click the My Account tab. Then click the Billing Preferences link and enter your billing information.

Campaign Daily Budget:

If your daily budget is lower than the system’s recommended amount, Google will show your ad when it has the highest demand, depending on traffic patterns. For example, Google might show 70 percent of your daily budget in the morning if the demand is higher at this time, and 30 percent in the afternoon if demand is lower at this time. This way, you’ll have a better chance of reaching advertisers when they’re searching for you. To make sure your ad shows for all relevant searches, you can increase your daily budget to the recommended amount.

Campaign settings:

Check your campaign settings also. You might have running Ad Scheduling for your campaign & stopped your ad for a particular time period.

Also, take care of your Ad Delivery method under “Budget Options” of campaign setting tab.

If your daily budget is lower than the system’s recommended amount & you have chosen the “Accelerated: Show ads as quickly as possible”, option then Google will show your ad continuously until your budget will not consumed completely for that day. In that case your ad will not run throughout the day.

So please make sure about your campaign settings!!

No ad/ Inactive Ads:

Make sure that there is an active ad in your Ad Group. If you have not created any ad for your ad group or if all ads within your Ad Group are currently paused or deleted, this means there are no ads running for your keywords.

Ad disapproved:

Make sure that all of your ads are following the Google’s guidelines. If an ad doesn’t meet Google’s Editorial Guidelines, Google will stop your ad from running, and you’ll see the word “Disapproved” listed below that ad in your account. Once you’ve made the appropriate edits, simply save your changes to automatically resubmit your ad for review.

Maximum CPC exceeds daily budget:

If you’re running a keyword-targeted campaign, your ad won’t show if your maximum CPC for an Ad Group is higher than your campaign’s daily budget. Because your daily budget could be exceeded in one click, Google recommend that you lower your maximum CPC or raise your daily budget, so that your daily budget is more than your maximum CPC.

Ad Rank:

Your ad might not appear on the first page if your Ad Rank isn’t high enough to place it in one of the top slots. Google don’t show the same ads on each page, so your ad might be appearing on one of the next pages. To see additional pages of ads, click ‘Next’ at the bottom of the page, or click the ‘More Sponsored Links’ link below the column of ads.
If you’d like your ad to appear on the first page, you can increase your CPC and/or refine your ad text and keywords to help increase your Quality Score.

Keyword Performance:

If a keyword underperforms, it may become inactive for search and stop triggering ads on the search network. Keywords typically become inactive when they are very general and therefore do not perform very well. Your ads may also only be showing on certain variations of your broad or phrase matches due to a low Quality Score. To monitor your keyword’s performance, check the keyword status column on the ‘Keywords’ tab of your Ad Group Details page. Or, to get a detailed view of performance and Quality Score, visit the Keyword Analysis page by clicking the magnifying glass icon beside the keyword you’re interested in.

Geo-Targeting:

You can target your campaign to specific languages, countries and territories, regions, and cities. If you don’t target your own geographical area and the language of your Google interface, you won’t be able to see your ad. (For instance, if you’re in London and you’ve targeted your ads to Tokyo only, you won’t see your ad when you search for it in London.) If you’re targeting a region or city, Google shows ads based on a user’s internet protocol (IP) address. Sometimes Google is unable to obtain IP information. In this case, Google would be unable to identify the user’s location and therefore wouldn’t recognize which regional ads to deliver. If Google can’t determine the user’s location, it will show nationally-targeted ads instead of regionally-targeted ads.

Language Targeting:

You can view your Google interface language setting by clicking the ‘Preferences’ link to the right of the Search Box on the Google homepage. If your Google interface language isn’t included in your campaign language targeting selection, you may want to edit your campaign language targeting in order to see your ad. You can also edit your Google interface language setting by selecting the appropriate language from the dropdown menu and clicking ‘Save Preferences.’

Google Network:

Your ad will not show on sites and products in the content and search networks until it has been reviewed and approved according to our advertising policies. Therefore, image ads, video ads, and other multimedia ads won’t begin running until after review and approval. Your ad may not appear on Google Network sites if its Ad Rank is too low. In this case, improving your Quality Score through optimization, or raising your CPC or CPM bids, can help increase your Ad Rank. In addition, some sites in Google network may restrict advertising or keywords based on their own policies regarding content and editorial standards. In this case, your ad may not appear on a content or search site even if you have chosen keywords which seem to match it.

Image Ad:

Image ads will only run on content network sites, and must be reviewed and approved before they will appear. The format of the ad you’re running must match the size and format accepted by each website. For example, if you’ve uploaded a 160×600 wide skyscraper ad, make sure the site you’re looking for your ad on runs ads in that format.

Placements:

If you are targeting placements in your campaign, and your campaign setting is ‘Relevant pages only on the placements I target’, your ad will appear only on the websites you specify. Those websites must be part of the Google Network. Make sure you’re looking for your ad on one of the sites you selected. In addition, your bid may be too low to win impressions on the site or sites you have chosen. This is especially likely if you have targeted popular sites that many other advertisers may also have targeted. Raising your bids may help your ad appear more often. It’s also possible that your ad simply isn’t showing at the moment you view the page.

You can use the Ads Diagnostic Tool to learn the exact reason why you can’t see your ads.

City of PPC never sleeps

What can we expect to happen with the quantity and quality of PPC traffic in the not-so-distant future? Has the genesis of the machinery that creates, controls, and disperses traffic reached its plateau, and everything that can be invented has already been invented? It may appear so on the surface.

Consider Overture. The company currently has the widest reach, extending to 80 percent of Internet users, 67,000 active advertisers, and last quarter revenues of $152M. "Key factors that will ensure our continuing leadership position are our long-term contracts with distribution partners, state-of-the art proprietary technology that allows us to operate the business on this scale, and having a very strong international element," said Overture's Wax.

Have the industry leaders become complacent? Make no mistake. "We not only believe that someone smaller than us, or someone currently not in our space, can come up with a great idea that could change our industry and FindWhat.com's standing within the industry," said Thune. "We assume it will happen. And it has recently, with Google's entrance into pay-per-click paid listings."

Currently, the large and small PPC players alike rely on anecdotal evidence of their traffic effectiveness, as provided from time to time by cooperating advertisers - though many advertisers themselves rely on quite unscientific traffic-to-sales conversion information.

To address these issues, 7Search has recently introduced a feature that in the long run can produce a huge impact on the whole traffic industry. The company created an "ROI feedback tool" that sends information on advertisers' sales back to the search engine, where it is used to gauge the quality of affiliate traffic.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of 7Search's approach. Just think, for example, what it can do to the Google's Ad Words program relevancy and rankings algorithms?

"There's targeted traffic, and there's more targeted traffic," said Prestipino. 7Search is also implementing a patent-pending technology dubbed "predictive search" to increase relevancy of advertisers listings appearing as a result of the search.

Search123 works along similar lines, integrating the technology that will assist in matching keyword-based search queries and phrases with users' intentions. "Understanding the dynamics between the buyer and the seller", explains Beriker, "is what it will take to be the leader in this industry."

Search123's website sums it up best: "We're obsessed with traffic quality."

And so are all of us in the business of buying and selling, measuring and analyzing, loving and hating, going broke and making a killing on Internet traffic.

Common PPC Mistakes

As I manage quite a few PPC campaigns I always notice the silly and sometimes not so silly mistakes that advertisers make with their PPC programs.

Mistakes when creating PPC ads, click fraud detection, and lack of testing are just a few of them. Fixing each of these mistakes could mean an extra 70% of revenue or a savings of thousands of dollars every month.

Below is a list (we all love those lists don't we?) of the most common mistakes marketers make with their paid search (PPC) advertising campaigns.

1. Bidding Broad - It's important to not be lazy when setting up that campaign of yours. Every industry has their giant keywords that bring the most traffic but there are many more variation of keywords that are being searched. The more you focus on the "long tail keywords", the less you're going to pay per click. Furthermore, your ads will be ranked higher if the keyword is closer matched. Take your 100 keywords and make them into 200 by just looking at your own web statistics for exact keyword variations people use to search for your product.

2. Fighting for #1 Spot - Most of the time (from my experience), being #1 ad in paid search results is not the brightest strategy, especially if you're paying a lot per click and the keyword is broad. I found that one of THE best ranks in paid search is being #3 (top left side for Google). Look, most people do research before they buy online. Being #1 could mean that you'll attract visitors who might have not used the right keyword for their search or ones that are just starting their research and thus you'll be remembered last when they are ready to buy.

3. Avoiding Geo-targeting - Even if what you sell works all over US or world, people are still more keen on using a local provider or at least a company that recognizes "their state". It's just a psychological thing. Google and other search engines allow you to geo-target your PPC ads by state. Create 50 ads and drop in the state name inside the ad. You will surely get a higher click through rate (CTR) and thus a lower CPC. Furthermore right from the start, your visitor will know that you "recognize" their location.

4. Losing Relevance on Landing Page - Whatever you say in your ad repeat it on the landing page where you're taking the visitor! If you are advertising an 80% sale in your ad, you can be sure that people are looking for it when they land on your landing page. If they don't see it they leave. It's kind of like a scent they pick up on when they read your PPC ad and look for when they land on a page you take them to.

5. Getting Rid of Fraud Networks - Every paid search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, has a network to which they distribute your ads. Unfortunately, many of these networks are fraudulent and do not refer quality traffic. Look into your web statistics and find domain names that bring you traffic with a high bounce rate. Usually it will be around 90%. Google allows you to drop these domains into a "negative excluded sites" folder while Yahoo and others make you call them to address the problem. Doing this will prevent you from paying for garbage traffic.

6. Being Boring - I still see marketers go online, search for a keyword, look at the advertisers (competition) and create ads to fit in with the "community". Silly right? Unfortunately, very true. Anytime you create a paid ad you MUST look at what is already being said by the advertisers and come up with something unique and yet relevant. It's a tough one but you have to identify what is unique about you and why people should buy from you. Just make sure that it's what your target market wants and cares about.

7. Using Telephone Numbers - Using a telephone number within your PPC ad is an eye catcher that's all. Not many people will pick up their phone and dial your number if they see your ad. So what you're doing is just wasting space that can be used for a good message. Tests have been done and this was proven quite a few times get rid of that phone number in the ad.

8. Not Bidding for Your Name - If your competition is targeting your company name as a keyword I'd suggest taking legal actions (if applicable). In our company we send out those legal letters at least every other month to a competitor. If you're in a different situation bidding for your keywords will mean more traffic and another real estate space devoted to you on that search results page. I'd even bid for the company name if there were no competitors at all. You will pay around 0.05 to 0.10 cents per click and see the amount of searches (impressions) that are done for your brand name. A little of extra statistics that shows you the possible growth of your company.

9. Lack of Affiliate Control - The company name is usually the highest converting keyword. Your affiliates know this and advertise under your company's name in paid search. What happens is that not only do you now have to pay your affiliate for the sale "they" brought in, but you've already paid your due with your own advertising methods for that customer to know your name before the search. Be sure to prevent your affiliates advertising in paid search for your company's name. All they are doing there is collecting the cash from your own advertising.

10. Not Separating Content Match from Search Results - This is a mistake 101. Yes it takes time, but any campaign should separate their regular search advertising from content match. This will allow you to get better reporting, set different cost per click, different budget and overall have a cleaner look at both of these campaigns. Just separate into 2 campaigns. Both will have same keywords but one campaign will be created only for "search" and the other one for "content match".

11. Ignoring the Seasonal Copy - It works. Including a seasonal discount or a "holiday special" in your ad copy is a great way to increase your CTR and get more sales. Furthermore, your ad will clearly stand out from the rest. Make it a Christmas special, Spring special, Summer blow out, etc. Make it relevant to "today".

12. Lack of "Exact Tracking" - You must be able to track every visit to your site from PPC advertising by the exact keyword, campaign and ad group used. To do so you can set variables (yourcompany.com/?keyword) or integrate your PPC campaigns with your website analytics software. This is the only way you can really calculate the effectiveness of every keyword you use to get traffic.

13. Paying for Negative Keywords - Google and other search engines allow you to report keywords for which your ads should not be shown. If you're paying for "broad match" keywords, you'll see a lot of visits from people who've typed your keyword with a word "free" or "stock" or "jobs". Do you want to pay money for visitors who're looking to pay $0 for what you sell? Do you want to pay money for visitors who are researching stock info on what you sell? Be sure to use that "negative keyword folder" to get rid of these worthless clicks.

14. Mistaking CTR with conversion rate when testing ads - We love to test and that's great, but what should marketers look for when choosing which ads to keep and which to delete? Looking only at the CTR (click through rate) is a false indication of a better performing ad. If you add a word "FREE" to your ad, you'll see a jump in your CTR but what good will it do?

15. Not Using Keywords in Ad Copy - This is a simple one. Put keywords into your ad copy for which you are serving the ad. Not only will your ad be more relevant but the keywords in it are going to be bold.

16. Not Calling Google - Ok, I am not a fan of being a "rat" or telling on someone, but my friend when it comes to business and playing fair, you have every right to raise a flag when you see a competitor engaging in bad techniques. You'll notice some of your competitors creating multiple accounts and having 2 ads simultaneously on the Google PPC results page. Google has a policy against this. Call Google and let them know if your competitor is doing anything that's against the rules of the search engine. You'll be amazed how quickly they take care of the problem.

17. Avoiding Brand Name Keywords - It is unfortunate, but many companies do not take advantage of their competitors. How do you do this? Bid on their brand / company name. Think about it anyone searching for your competitor could easily be your customer instead. Why not have your ad show up under that keywords? What if they are still shopping around? What if they are searching for your competitor's name because they saw their TV or radio ad. Bottom line is, bid on your competitor's brand names. Most of the time the ROI on those keywords is excellent. If you get a "legal letter" from the competitors and it holds water, I'd suggest comply with it.