It has been revealed that Google is working on launching a new Quality Score Bot for Adwords. Shoemoney has just discussed the ramifications of the introduction of this new Quality Score Bot on his blog here. It seems that this new bot has been created in order to eliminate the Adsense Arbitragers abusing the Google network.

While it does seem these new changes at Adwords are purely targeted at the arbitragers, it should come as no shock that this will also affect Landing Pages for people linking directly to affiliate products also. Google believes linking directly like this lowers the the overall user experience and may eventually cause users to lose faith in its advertising network. So if you are running a landing page and directly linking with your affiliate link or running a site with nothing but Yahoo/Google ads on it, then the introduction of this new bot could directly affect your bottom line!

So, on to a solution. There seems only one way to overcome these new coming changes and that is… Cloak Your Links! If you have landing pages for products - do not link directly with the affiliate code provided to you! Make sure you have a redirect system in place which will mask or cloak your affiliate links.

For example, if you are were using Google Adwords to drive traffic to your website and on your website you have direct links to affiliate products such as;

http://productwebsite.com/product.php?a=1234&b=1234 (BAD)

While the following is an example of masking your affiliate link;

http://yourwebsite.com/link.php?go=1234 (GOOD)

Of course, with the bottom method you will have to disallow link.php in your robots.txt file for the bottom example to work. For a full explaination of cloaking and the methods involved, check out The Definitive Guide to Cloaking. Alternatively there is software applications that will do all this for you, such as the Affiliate Link Cloaker mentioned below.

Affiliate Link Cloaker is an easy to use and very sophisticated technology to actually encrypt your affiliate links, all you need to use
it is a PC and Web site.

No technical skills required!

If you’re looking for an easy and low risk way to increase your landing page conversion rates, then use the conversion rate optimization strategies outlined in this online guide.

About Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization is the continual process of making your Web Site and landing pages generate better results from your visitor traffic. For example, more leads, opt-ins, and more sales. Conversion Rate Optimization is also the fastest and easiest strategy to increase your sales without spending more money on increasing your traffic. In fact, the most successful companies test everything.

For example, GoToMyPC.com increased their conversion rates by 400% by testing the following;

• Headlines
• Call to Action
• Copy
• Images
• Graphics
• Button Look
• Button Text
• Button Location
• No Links
• Press Quotes
• Testimonials
• Pricing
• Flow Through Process
• And more

Optimizing Your Landing Pages ‘Conversion Funnel’

If you review your web site statistics (called ‘log files’) you’ll notice the following 4 things are happening on your landing pages…

1. The largest percentage of your visitors are bailing within 0-8 seconds after briefly viewing your landing page.
2. The second largest percentage of visitors bail when they decide your landing page does not prove compelling.
3. A small percentage of visitors attempt to convert (buy or use a contact form to become a lead) but fail. Many of these people will call.
4. A small percentage of visitors convert.

Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of optimizing your landing pages to minimize your ‘bail out rate’ and maximize your ‘conversion rate’ (CR).

The Top 6 Landing Page Components To Optimize for Maximizing Your Conversions

The following are the Top 6 conversion components that should be tested and improved to boost your conversion rates…

1. Headline - Since your headline is the first line that your visitors will read, the headline of your web page offers the biggest opportunity (about 80% of the opportunity) for improvements in conversion rate. Use headlines that clearly state the biggest benefit(s) that your product offers.
2. Offer - Since your offer is the ‘call to action’ that asks your visitors to act (purchase, sign up, opt-in), your offer accounts for the second the biggest opportunity for improvements in conversion rate.
3. Lead - The ‘lead’ or first paragraph is the third biggest opportunity for improvements in your conversion rate. Leads must be written with strong benefits that capture your visitors attention and make them want to read more.
4. Benefits - The ‘benefit bullets’ (bullet-point format) are the forth biggest opportunity for improvements in conversion rate. List your benefits in the order of your products ‘value hierarchy’ to your target market. In other words, state your products strongest benefit first, and its weakest benefit last.
5. Images - The images you use have a big impact on your conversion rates. The best practice is to use images that clearly portray the biggest benefit your product offers your customer (rather than generic ‘feel good’ stuff like unknown logos and clip art). Studies show that product images work best when placed to the left of your product description (or lead paragraph) since it makes it easier to read your copy from left to right. Plus, people like to reads ‘captions’ under your images almost as much as they read your headlines. So, add powerful captions and make your images clickable to the order/sign up page.
6. ‘Look & Feel’ - According to a recent study by Stanford University, 46% of Web sales are lost on web sites that lack the critical elements that build value and trust with website visitors. The number one reason the people indicated why they would’nt buy from a web site was because it had an unprofessional ‘look and feel’ that lacked credibility and did not ‘feel’ trustworthy. Having a professional look, and trust building tools (such as VeriSign and BBBOnline certifications) help convert significantly more of your web sites qualified visitors into new customers.

Other Important Conversion Elements to test:

• Buttons - Button text, color, look, etc.
• Pricing
• Formatting and placement of page elements, images and copy
• Navigation links versus no navigation links
• Press Quotes
• Testimonials

Other Conversion Best Practices and Tips:

• Reduce your ‘bail out rate’ by optimizing your web pages to download within 5 seconds on a 56k modem - Test your pages on Andy King’s ‘Web Page Analyzer’ at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
• Add a 1-800 Number and a Call to Action above the fold (top of the page)
• Add a Logo and a powerful ‘Value Proposition’ to the top left
• Instead of letting visitors click off your landing page, put all your information on one page (This tactic alone increased the conversions of a landing page by 55%)
• Use colors that fit your target customers personality

Conclusion:

When you use ‘Conversion Rate Optimization’ to test and improve your web pages and landing pages you can double your sales (possibly even quadruple) when you add up all the performance improvements. Of course, it takes time and work but its well worth the effort.

If you’re truly serious about maximizing your results, continuously test, track and improve the important elements of your web site, landing pages (and your marketing materials).

Matt Hockin is President of Interactive Marketing, Inc., an Internet marketing company specializing in helping businesses increase sales by maximizing website search engine visibility and website conversions through the process of web site optimization http://www.interactivemarketinginc.com

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Matt Levenhagen did a great post on his blog recently that discussed the whole Landing Page and Quality Score issue. Matt is a great guy and very generous in his Adwords and Internet marketing knowledge to many people, newbies included. I have witnessed his generousity on several forums, most recently on the Keywords Analyser forum.

On his blog, Matt touched on a great point and it got me thinking; Fear sells, and the latest Google Quality Score update in July of this year has got people running scared. The recent flurry of eBook releases pertaining to have ‘the solution‘ to the recent changes by Google is testament to this.

However, Matt’s Adwords campaigns haven’t been impacted much at all by the so-called Google Slap. The main reasons Matt believes is that the methods detailed in his Campaign Blasts product really do work!

Matt’s lists the Top 3 reasons why he wasn’t affected by the latest Landing Page and Quality Score update as being;

1. Merchant Quality - A merchants website must be well laid out with good sales copy.
2. Diversify - It is recommended to have a large portfolio of merchants and products/services to promote.
3. Relevant Results for Searchers - Ensuring your ads and ad groups direct searchers to the relevant products/services that they are searching for. Sounds simple, but you would be surprised at how many people do not do this.

Matt has written an entire guide regarding this update that is now included with the Campaign Blasts Package.

Campaign Blasts - Profit From Adwords!

Matt Levenhagen’s Affiliate Marketing Methods with Adwords, Adwords Basics and Landing Pages 101.

http://www.CampaignBlasts.com

Landing pages are the norm in PPC campaigns - but you should also consider using them for your Link Building SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaigns. After all, when seeking links to their sites, some webmasters make the mistake of thinking that everything has to point to their index page, or else that they need to spread a lot of links around a lot of different product pages. In such instances, these webmasters are overlooking the clear efficiencies of Landing Pages for their link building programs.

What Are ‘Landing Pages’?

Landing Pages are nothing more complicated than information rich pages. Each page can be as niche specific, or general, as required. And although it is common for Landing Pages to be set up as internal pages, sometimes it is simply more efficient to turn a site index page into a single landing page.

Do not think of landing pages as merely a short piece of text to rank with, Landing Pages are essentially the marriage of links and content into a truly fruitful working relationship.

How To Set Up Landing Pages

It is often a good idea to optimise for multiple keyphrases or topic areas - do so by providing a keyword-rich heading, accompanied by a few sentences of text relating to that keyword/keyphrase, and then accompany this with a keyworded link to your deeper content.

Do this for multiple variations of your most important keywords, and take into account issues such as keyword order (first keyword in a keyphrase/searchterm is determinative in Google, for example), and also plural and singular forms (for example, ‘insurances‘ is far less competitive than the singular form ‘insurance’.

Of course, also bear in mind geo-targeting and spelling errors, where you feel you can cleanly get away with them. However, remember that Landing Pages are essentially for humans as well as spiders, so the pages must look useful to both.

The Secret Of Landing Pages

Really, the principle of the Landing Page for link building purposes, is no different for general on-page SEO. The key point is examining what information you are providing, and providing it on a very selective basis. There is a very subtle difference in applying Landing Pages, than in general content SEO work because of the extremely selective and targeted manner in which Landing Pages are built.

And here is the secret of Landing Pages - when you set up your keyword anchor text to your Landing Pages, not only will you rank for the keywords in your anchor text, but your anchor text will also combine with your keyworded headings and keyworded on-page links to produce a wide range of secondary search terms you can rank much more easily for, yet still remain targeted and focused on your chosen subject area.

This is why Landing Pages have become a generally useful as part of Link Building SEO - because of the extremely controlled way that information can be delivered and targeted.

Are Landing Pages Dodgy?

As before, Landing Pages are nothing more than information-rich pages. They suit search engines by providing rich content, and they help human users, by providing clearly focussed pages to find information they need, and help direct them to specialist internal pages for further information as required. And it suits the webmaster, because it allows the traffic to be targeted in a much more precise manner.

Can I See An Example Of A Landing Page?

I won’t provide any commercial examples of a Landing Page, as that would be a little unfair in this environment. However, Roy Troxel at the Webserver Times recently complained that his most popular page was his privacy policy page. If you take a look at it, he has inadvertently produced a landing page, based on the keywords in the headings covered in the privacy policy.

Can I Get Legitimate Links To Landing Pages?

Absolutely, because Landing Pages provide rich information for humans, as well as search engine spiders, then you can easily have them listed at Directories that allow multiple pages to be listed from the same site, such as DMOZ, Sevenseek, and WowDirectory. Also, directories such as MSN bcentral, Jayde, and Webatlas also allow for multiple links to internal pages to accompany your entry.

Brian Turner is the director of Britecorp’s search engine strategy, and also runs free one-to-one workshops at SEO Lab and the Platinax SEO forums.

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You’ve researched your keywords, written great ads, set your budgets and bids, and have embarked on what promises to be a really butt-kicking PPC campaign. But wait, you’re not seeing the conversion numbers you expected. So you go into crisis mode, you check the conversion code, you test the campaign by actually clicking on your own sponsored search (or PPC) ad; and your results show that everything is right and perfectly implemented. So what is the problem?

Building your Landing Page

Before you throw more of your budget at the search engines, or spend needless time looking at keywords and what users are searching for, take a look at your landing page.

• Is it telling users what they need to know?
• Is it friendly and good looking?
• Or do you arrive at a page loaded with information in a font or format that is hard on the eye?
• Are you able to immediately see the relevance of the page to the information you searched for, or do you have to wade through screens worth of waffle with no way out, and no other navigation options?
• Can you request information from the site owner on this page or do you have to go elsewhere to do that?

These are serious concerns and my advice to you is;

When building landing pages for your PPC campaigns the best thing you can do is KISS! (Keep It Seriously Simple).

Cost Per Click Value

I firmly believe that if you have a PPC campaign showcasing various services your company offers; that you should have a landing page built specifically for each service. Don’t send users to a generic page that tells them what ‘Chantelle’s Holidays’ is all about, if they have searched for ‘things to see in cape town’. If you are going to use this as a keyword, get proper value from the cost of the click by giving the user the information they are looking for. The more relevant and fresh you make this page, the higher your chances of making that conversion or sale.

I recently worked on a campaign (in my capacity as PPC Campaign Manager for Quirk eMarketing) that hadn’t shown the results we’d expected over a period of time. By simply adding a few textlinks to the existing page, we started to see a considerable increase in the conversion rate. Another great idea is to use a very simple technology called a navigation panel.

Making Browsing Better

In fact, visit any good website that provides information and you’re likely to be greeted by options that allow you to navigate to other pages on the site - and other options that allow you to navigate the page you’re on. This is especially important if the information on the page extends below the fold. Instead of asking browsers to scroll down, you are giving them the ability to quickly find the information they are looking for; making the entire browsing experience easier and more efficient.

Once again, ‘keep it simple’. Give users what they are looking for in a way that is easy for them to access. Whether it’s a site aimed at business people or holiday makers, or the youth, or the general public - make visiting your pages a memorable experience. If people know they can get relevant information quickly by visiting you, not only will they keep coming back to your site, there will also be willingness and a certain trust when it comes to doing business with you.

Success Made Simple

Focus on one aspect of the business and build a PPC campaign around that one area. Start Small! Tweak that campaign until it is running the way you want it, and only then shift your focus to another area - slowly building pages and campaigns for each aspect of your business as you go. These simple baby-steps will ensure that you don’t waste any of your precious budget, and that each part of the campaign goes smoothly and operates at its peak; optimising your business performance. If all else fails, get an expert opinion!

Quirk eMarketing have many successful PPC campaigns under their belt. Submitting to the paid search engines is a process not an event. It is a chess game, and you need to manage every detail. ‘A true professional will not cost you money; they will make you money.’

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You probably have already heard about the new marketing tool from Google.com on the Internet. Their advertising service is called Adwords and allows you use Google.com for marketing. Your ads will be displayed on Google’s website when people initiate a search. Your ads can also be displayed very targeted among many thousand websites that partner with Google in a program called Google AdSense. Adwords is the Google.com version of a pay-per-click advertising model. That means users click on your ad and will be redirected to your website or a specific URL that you have selected when creating your ad campaign.

What do you need to know about Adwords? Adwords is a way to spend a lot of money on advertising very very fast. BUT - Adwords is also a way to spend marketing money very selective to a targeted audience. Adwords can be very expensive for the advertiser if not properly planned and tested.

When you setup a Google Adwords ad campaign, you choose certain keywords for which your ad will appear on search results on Google.com. You also specify the maximum amount of money that you are willing to pay for each click. Remember, the Google Adwords program is a PPC (Pay per Click) model and you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and hence visits your website.

It is very important to select the right keywords for your business ad. Going with too generic keywords that everyone will not be very effective and very expensive. Play a little bit with the Adwords keyword and campaign settings just to get a feeling how expensive the generic keywords for your business and industry are. You will realize soon that you need to be creative and careful with the usage of keywords.

Google recommends using different spelling variations and plural versions of your keywords to reach the best target audience. This is a good approach, as not every one of your potential new customers will search for a keyword in the same way as everyone else. Some people will use plural versions and others will use singular versions.

Exact matching of keywords in Google user queries requires you to place square brackets around your selected keywords. Example: [web hosting]. Your ad will now only show when users search exactly the phrase ‘web hosting’. Your ad will not show if other words are included in the search string or the words are entered in a different order.

Another keyword matching option is phrase matching. This is very similar to the exact matching of keywords in a search in the sense that the keywords must all be present and in the right order. However your ad will still show up in search results even if other words are present in the search. To make use of phrase matching you must include your keywords in quotes. Example: “web hosting”.

Negative matching is the final option available for your Adwords advertisement. This option allows you to block your ad being shown if a certain word is present in the search query of the Google user. This allows you to reduce the number of possible clicks on your ad in non-relevant searches and therefore to keep your cost low. It also helps you to make sure that your ad is not shown to users who will not be interested in your products. If your keyword is ‘web hosting’ but your web hosting is based on the Linux operating system and not based on a Windows Operating System then by using negative matching you can choose to have your ad not shown for search queries with ‘windows web hosting’. In this case ‘windows’ would be your negative keyword. You simply place a dash in front of your negative keyword to use this option. Example: -windows

Using these tips of selecting keywords will help you to be more successful with Google Adwords. Google also allows you be very specific for which geographic area your ads will be displayed. You go from global to country and even state or city specific settings. Especially local businesses now will have it much easier to use Google Adwords for their specific local markets.

Well, you got the idea how to be very specific how you select your keywords and combinations of keywords. But how do you actually select the right keywords? In order to get the most out of Adwords, you must have a list of great keyword and phrases. If your keyword list is not good enough, you will be punished with paying too much for your advertising. Write down the top search terms that you can think of. Ask friends and family how they would use Google to find your product (without searching for the business name itself).

A competitor of Google actually offers a free tool, which will allow you to find out how popular the keywords are that you selected. Find this free tool here and use it for your advantage:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Create a list of the most popular keywords. Now add words to the actual keywords. Use words that would describe your specific product or service. Now use these phrases or word combinations when setting up a Google Adwords campaign to find out how much you would have to pay per click to get your ad onto the first page on a Google search.

If the keywords selected by you are very expensive to use you should consider rewording or using different combinations. Maybe concentrate on a certain niche to find lower priced keyword options.

When testing new campaigns make sure that you limit your exposure by amount of money you want to spend per day as well as you should set a date/time limit. It’s easier to activate a campaign again if it works just fine for you. If you fail to set limits you might spend lots of money in a very short time - money you can’t get back. It is gone…

Another way to save money on your Adwords advertising campaign is to wait for the end of the month. It’s funny, but many folks follow a plain rule to start their advertising in the beginning of the month. By the time the 25th of a month is there they have spend most of their money on their campaigns already. For you this means that the prices for many popular keywords might be more affordable for you.

If you are advertising specific products with your ads, link to the specific product page and not to your homepage. 95% of the people who click through to your website will not really be willing to start another search on your website to find the product mentioned in your ad.

Conclusion

Frequently revisit your campaigns and compare prices and results. The Internet is a fast changing environment. What works one day, might not necessarily work the next day. Keep track of everything - maybe create a spreadsheet.

About the Author: Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author. Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com

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As competition within the online affiliate sales arena rises to a fierce boil, affiliate sellers expecting any degree of success must first find effective methods to set themselves apart from the crowd.

An uninitiated affiliate may expect to make sales simply by placing a referral link on his website, or by distributing the link in an email. On the other hand, a seasoned affiliate seller knows that a unique marketing twist of one sort or another must be built into the campaign for a satisfying profit to be realized.

One tested and proven method is to develop a unique landing webpage for each and every affiliate campaign engaged.

A Landing Page is nothing more than a proprietary webpage owned by the affiliate seller, hosted on his website, and and located at a URL within that domain. A well developed landing page will not only contain the actual affiliate referral link, but will also serve as an introduction to the product or service being offered, and will warm the customer prior to directing her to the main sales page.

Here we present three types of affiliate landing pages that have been proven effective in promoting a broad range of affiliate products and services.

However, the reader should note that no particular order of effectivenes is presented here. Determining the best type of landing page for a particular affiliate campaign will be a matter of careful consideration and diligent testing.

Landing Page No. 1

The Product Review

This style of page takes the form of a factual and objective report, and should be completely free of any wording that attempts to sell. Direct experience with the product is a must, as the writer will be providing her or his own first hand observations regarding the benefits and problems that arise while actually putting the product or service to use.

Typically, a single product is reviewed for the sake of simplicity. Yet some successful landing pages do feature reviews of multiple products within a given category. In this case, each individual product should be rated by means of an easy to understand system, ie. one to five “stars.”

For the sake of credibility, the product review must reveal both positive and negative product attributes. Still, the positive factors should firmly overshadow the negative in a realistic and honest sense. If not, look for a different affiliate product to promote.

Landing Page No. 2

The Pre-Sell

This tactic has also been referred to as the “soft sell“. The content here can borrow some of the effects of the product review method, but should be more directed overall toward defining a problem and offering the affiliate product or service as a solution.

It is advisable to carefully examine the main seller’s page to discover and capitalize on overlooked product benefits or hooks. It is also acceptable to use highlighted or bolded words and phrases to a degree, providing they will enhance the reader’s understanding.

A strong headline may be used, and bulleted lists may also be inserted to clearly illustrate product features and benefits. But keep in mind this is a “soft sell” page. The purpose is only to warm the reader. There should be no hard sell or call to action other than asking her to “Click This Link to Learn More.”

Landing Page No. 3

The Forced Opt-In

This type of page typically consists of nothing more than a strong headline, a problem reinforcement, an offer to solve the problem, and an autoresponder opt-in box. The prospect can be immediately redirected to the main salespage after she signs up.

Experienced affiliate marketers have varying opinions as to the effectiveness of this landing page, especially when used behind a paid advertising campaign. There is some conjecture that too many prospects are lost when they fail to opt-in.

Another viewpoint is that this tactic produces a high quality list of action-taking propects with a proven degree of interest. Given these two viewpoints, it may be wise to perform a split testing action, using the forced opt-in page and at least one other landing page configuration.

Regardless of either view, the forced opt-in tactic will enable the affiliate to capture a unique and highly targeted mailing list, a valuable asset in and of itself. No Hype - No Bull - No Pie In The Sky!

Dan B. Cauthron tells it like it really is, and shares 30+ years of direct marketing wisdom. Entrance to his member’s only website will never cost you a penny: http://www.DanBCauthron.Com

Google AdWords can be a great source of traffic. It can also be an expensive experiment gone wrong. When running a Google AdWords campaign it is important to do things the right way. This will help insure the profitability and success of your campaign.

The following is a list of best practices I call the 21 AdWords Power Points. Read them, print them out and keep them handy for future reference.

1. Be very targeted, not general, in every aspect of your campaign.
2. Always send the surfer to a targeted landing page.
3. Think like your potential customer. What’s in it for him/her?
4. Think like your potential customer. What would your customer search to find you?
5. A few good highly targeted keywords are worth more than a thousand general ones.
6. Use AdGroups to advertise in a very targeted way.
7. Always use negative keywords. Study the top 100 search results to find negative keywords.
8. Constantly manage your campaign. Don’t expect it to run itself.
9. Be flexible in your bidding. Top position doesn’t always mean best performance. Sometimes #3 or even #5 works best.
10. Focus on conversions. A lot of clicks doesn’t always mean a lot of sales. Don’t attract the wrong crowd.
11. Concentrate on CTR. When a campaign is new, establishing history is essential to the success of a campaign.
12. Use match types effectively. Exact match works better than broad match in some situations. Make sure you test often to know which match type works best for your campaigns.
13. Make sure your landing pages download fast and are usable.
14. Make sure the landing page sells. The user should find it immediately obvious why they were sent there. The landing page must convert for your campaign to succeed.
15. Always use a call to action in your ad and landing page.
16. If selling on price, include that in the copy.
17. Use a domain name that includes your most targeted keyword.
18. Analyze your competition. Study their strategies and bidding practices and find a way to differentiate your ad and compete more effectively.
19. Use keywords in your ads so that they are highlighted.
20. Run competing adgroups with different ad copy.
21. Constantly monitor your results and never stop testing.

George Kokolakis is a professional Internet marketer and pay per click advertising expert. Subscribe to his free Google AdWords course at: http://AdwordSchool.com