Every marketer knows that testing things out and optimizing landing pages is one of the best ways to secure higher conversion rates. Many newbies discount the effect that changing the smallest elements on a landing page can have on conversion rates, but even colors of your buttons can be a big difference maker. That’s why you should take the time to test every element on your page to find the page that converts the best. But should you try adding Adsense or social media buttons to your landing pages as well?

We have addressed the issue of Adsense on landing pages in the past. It’s really up to the marketer to test various units and compare conversion rates between pages that do have Adsense and those that do not. Most top marketers leave their Adsense units at the bottom of their landing pages. They figure if the visitors are going to leave, they may as well leave by clicking on an Adsense unit. Things are a bit more complicated if you think about social media buttons. Social media can be a bit distracting for your visitors, and you could lose the attention of your visitors when they are in the process of submitting your website to Facebook and other top sites. Besides, not all landing pages provide enough value for your visitors for them to take the time to share them on social networking sites such as Facebook. (more…)

Many online marketers make a living out of promoting other people’s products and reviewing them to save others time and provide them value in the process. This whole tactics has been around for years. It’s the oldest trick in the book. You want to promote a product, a comprehensive product review can help you increase your conversions and make some revenue in the process. The FTC is apparently aware of some of the issues that is going on in the affiliate marketing industry. PPC affiliates have been getting away with a lot in the past few years. When you do make a claim about a product or give it a rosy review, you better have purchased the product and put proper statements of disclosure on your landing pages. While the FTC won’t shut your business down with one violation, you certainly want to stay in the good graces of the FTC.

One way to make sure your disclosures are all in order is by using services such as CMP.ly. These services are designed specifically for anyone who is promoting and reviewing products online and want to have a way to differentiate between their relationships on their various landing pages. Sometimes you are promoting a product because you are an affiliate. Other times, you are getting freebies and other incentives to promote a product. Whatever the case, you are going to need to have proper disclosure lines on your website.

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Online marketing is a very competitive business. There are plenty of people who are doing it, but not too many are innovating and applying new techniques in their niches. That’s why those who take the time to learn new skills and apply them to their markets are in with a better chance to top their competitors. It’s one thing to know Google Adwords inside and out. It’s a whole other issue to know how to optimize a campaign, make changes that matter, and try new channels to bring high Adwords CPA’s down.

Online marketers today need to be more well-rounded than ever before. It’s not enough to be just good at one thing anymore. If you happen to be interested in expanding your horizon and mastering the art of search advertising from ground up, here are 3 books you should read to get you started:

Ultimate Guide to Google Ad Words: I don’t like giving people more credit than they are do, but you have to tip your hats to Perry Marshall. He comes up with some of the best training material we have seen on a consistent basis. His Adwords books are classics and keep getting better. If you want to learn Google Adwords once and for all, you should get this book.

Web Analytics 2.0: if you are not a data cruncher, you better start getting into the game. No matter how talented a marketer you are, there are things you can’t figure out without using your Analytics software to its fullest. Web Analytics 2.0 shows you how you can go about optimizing your campaigns and turning your data to actionable information. (more…)

Google Adwords is still the best way to drive traffic to any website. Sure. It has gotten expensive. Google is not exactly making life easy for its Adwords customers either by changing the rules around all the time and introducing strict policies from time to time. Google has been pretty clear about what it will and won’t allow to be advertised on its network. But a lot of people still get away with a lot of things on Google.

Let’s say you want to pick up an e-book reader and start your search on Google instead of Amazon or B&N. What would you do if you saw the following ads?

Essentially, some of these apps are promising you a lot off on Kindle. Some are comparing a device that is not available for sale with Kindle. Let’s not forget that Kindle and iPad are trademarked terms. And let’s not forget about Amazon Associates Program’s policy either. Use of:

any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, or any variation or misspelling of any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, in any domain name — for example, a domain name such as “amazon.mydomain.com”, “amaozn.com”, “amazonauctions.net”, “facebook.com/amazondealsgroup,” “endlessboots.com,” “endless.mydomain.com”, “endlss.com,” “kindlemagazines.mydomain.info,” or “kindlewirelessreader.co.uk” would be unsuitable (more…)

Google Adwords is the ultimate advertising venue for online marketers and businesses. It gives you access to one of the largest pools of websites around in addition to Google’s advertising listings. Marketers love Google advertising services as it comes bundled with a bunch of complementary services. One of those useful services is Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It’s a powerful tool if you want to get your keyword research done and create a powerful seed list for your campaigns. Best of all, it’s free. So there is no reason not to take advantage of it.

Unfortunately, many marketers assume that Google Adwords Keyword Tool is the be all end all of all keyword tools. Have you ever wondered why people pay for premium keyword tools when they can just use Google Adwords Keyword Tool? There is a reason for that. The tool does provide you with some decent information, but it doesn’t give you a complete list. I have also found the stats from WordTracker or Keyword Discovery to be more useful that numbers and stats provided by Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Premium keyword tools may cost you some decent amount of money, but when used in conjunction with Google’s tools, they can help you create a better, more comprehensive keyword list.

Keyword Discovery: one of the most powerful keyword tools on the market. While many prefer using Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery has its own advantages. It comes with a variety of features to help you slice and dice your keyword lists.

WordTracker: has been around for years. It’s used by many SEO and advertising professionals. If you are into digging and digging more, WordTracker is a reliable too to consider.

Wordze: has improved a lot in the past few months. For a long time, Wordze wasn’t considered as a true contender to WordTracker and Keyword Discovery. But now it is one of the best keyword tools on the market. Comes with a ton of features and can help you build great lists fast.

What’s your favorite keyword tool for online advertising?

If you have been in the business of online marketing for a while, you know the importance of tracking anything and everything. Marketers don’t like to fly blind, and that’s exactly what you would be doing if you didn’t track your advertising links. That includes your affiliate links as well. Many newbies just grab affiliate codes from their affiliate programs and post them on their blogs or websites. While you can track a lot of things with Google Analytics, it’s always nice to have a way to figure out how many times each link on your website has been clicked and by whom.

Think about it. Let’s say you have acquired a sponsored link on a top blog or website. You don’t want to just look at the number of people who have come to your website. You also want to know the referring URL for those links and maybe the number of impressions it has gotten as well. Besides, you want to make sure you can break-down your data all the way back to each individual link. (more…)

There are plenty of ways to make money online. In fact, a lot of people are doing it already. But online marketing is not a walk in the park career. There are many things that an online marketer or business owner has to take into account and master to maximize profits. You can always use services such as Google Adwords to drive traffic to your website, but that’s not where the story ends. You’ll also have to watch your analytics data to see how others are interacting with your website, and how you can get more out of your traffic.

Web Analytics is one of the most underrated aspects of making money online. Without it, you are essentially operating blind, and that is not the way to run a business. Before throwing money at your problems with your online business, you want to make sure you have all the data you need to figure out ways to improve your business’ online performance. That is precisely the reason the below 4 analytics books are must read:

Web Analytics 2.0: one of the most exciting web analytics books in years. It shows you how to conduct advanced analysis on the data you get from your analytics software. Best of all, it teaches you how to develop actionable strategy from that data.

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is being used by many bloggers and website owners these days. Even some of larger organizations rely on Google analytics to optimize their online campaigns. This book covers everything you need to know to get started with Google Analytics. (more…)

The art and science of landing page optimization is not something that you can master in a day or a year. No matter how optimized your landing pages are for conversion, there are plenty of ways to test things out and improve on your existing results. Whether it’s offering multiple choices on a landing page, optimizing your font, or adding conversion friendly images to your landing pages, you almost never run out of ways to optimize your landing page and improve your conversions.

One of the most popular ways to improve conversion rate on landing pages and web pages in general is by targeting your traffic based on the place from which they come to your website. Let’s say someone is searching for something on Google and just happens to land on one of your blog posts. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could reach out to them, give them an incentive to sign up for your newsletter, or share something exclusively with them?

There are obviously more ways to use this tactic to increase conversions. Many top affiliate marketers have struck deals with their affiliate programs to display a logo or brand on the top of the merchant’s landing page when people click on their landing pages. These marketers have spent time building a brand, and they want their visitors to go about completing landing page forms with more peace of mind. Implementation could always be an issue, but if you have a decent coder, it’s pretty easy to get it done with server-side scripting.

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You may have heard about Google cracking down on advertisers who are not using their “real” URLs in their display URL. A few years ago, Google was a bit lenient when it came to dealing with people who were using redirects or other addresses in their display URL section. But that would open Google to a lot of liabilities, which is why Google is tightening the rules and adding new guidelines for advertisers.

When it comes to choosing a URL for your business or landing page, you want to make sure it’s something that is brandable, catchy, and short (with emphasis on short). A domain name that is too long and contains too many words is just tough to remember and hard to push through Google Adwords and other advertising websites. I have found that many marketers just get too greedy when it comes to choosing their domain name. They not only go for longer URLs (with keywords), they don’t even register their own domain. Running a business using blogspot is not too ideal these days.

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If you thought Google was getting annoying with all its new policies, you are going to have to brace yourself for even more guidelines from Google. Google is trying awfully heart to cover itself against liabilities and protect consumers in the process. Whether that has helped small businesses that make money off of Google is another story. While I am not a big fan of a lot of policies that Google has adopted in the past, I actually agree with the latest move by Google to address issues caused by hosted domains (e.g. those on blogspot or Wordpress). There are plenty of people who are spamming on Google by using free hosting services or hosted portals such as Wordpress. The new URL policy addresses that.

Here is what Google is asking its advertisers to do: display the full URL of your website if you are on a domain that hosts multiple websites. Here are a few nuggets from the announcement:

all ads leading to sites on hosted domains will need to have display URLs that accurately reflect their destinations….

Incorrect:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: blogspot.com

Correct:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: adwords.blogspot.com

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