The A/B testing seems really simple on the surface, but there is actually a whole lot of science and art behind it (and we are not even talking about Taguchi method). I have been looking for a book that explains the most relevant A/B testing methods out there and finally the book is here: A/B Always Be Testing.

I like the book not because it’s the only real A/B testing book on the market but rather for how it teaches you to pay attention to details as a marketer. Whether its the colors, fonts, or the usability of your pages, this book has it all. It also covers accessibility, which is quickly becoming a must-test item for popular websites.

This book is not an advanced multivariate testing book, but rather an advanced A/B testing book, and it serves its purpose brilliantly. Definitely a must check out book.

Call to action is really underrated among newbie marketers. I know a lot of new marketers who feel shy about asking prospects to follow their instructions. But really when it comes down to it, you need to push your prospects hard for them to do what you need them to do. You can drive millions of eyeballs to your landing pages using Google Adwords or YSM, but if you are not specific enough about what you want them to do after reading your landing page, then there is a good chance you will not convert as high as you could have with proper call to action.

Let’s say you want to market a credit card to your audience. You start talking about the card, the benefits, and the features that make it unique. You pretty much explain to your audience why they should not go to work today without applying for that card. But if you forget to actually provide them with proper instructions, there is a good chance that you lose their sale. It’s very similar to having a shop with excellent items for sale, if you forget to unlock the door for your customers, then you are going to lose their business.

So when it comes down to it, you need to put call to action links (preferably Graphical Buttons), and ask your visitors to perform the action (whether it is signing up for your newsletter or just getting the product). It’s really a simple concept, but it’s amazing how many marketers miss it.

It’s amazing how many people just ignore Google Adwords tool just because it’s free. It’s one thing to use the Adwords tool to find a couple of keywords, but you should definitely be using the tool to analyze your pages and add LSI keywords to them as well. Remember that Google is paying more attention to LSI these days to determine relevancy on your pages, so you need to make sure you use the tools that Google provides you to optimize your landing pages for Google. Now I have explained on SEOABC how you can use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to optimize your pages for Google. But you can go even beyond that with your landing pages.

Unless you haven’t been paying attention, Google has slapped and double slapped a lot of folks recently. You get up one day and your minimum bid is $5! Why? Because Google doesn’t find your site relevant enough. So how do you go about fixing that? By figure out what is it that is making Google doubt your site. Use the Google Adwords Keyword tool and find out what keywords are deemed relevant to your site according to Google. If you are trying to optimize a page for the word “diamond” but the tool doesn’t seem to find your site relevant to that keyword, then you have some work to do. You may have to tweak your content, headers, and tags to get Google to find your page relevant for that keyword. In addition, you should definitely use the “related terms” part to add LSI keywords to your pages. For instance, if Google finds the word “earrings” relevant to your main keyword which is “diamond,” then make sure you include that word somehow to make your site look relevant to Google.

This stuff is really no rocket science but more about paying attention to smallest details. Google is providing you all the tools that you need to be successful. Sure, you can use paid services such as Wordze to conduct better keyword research, but you should be just fine without it. Sometimes having too many tools can decrease your productivity and affect your results negatively!

That’s one of the main questions that baffles newbies and experts alike. For newbies, it often comes down to their limited budget. You have only $200 in the bank, and you don’t want to burn it in 2 hours. That’s understandable. For the experts, you often don’t know where the sweet spot is that allows you the achieve the right CPA for the company that you are doing business with. Let’s say you are working with an insurance company and you have been asked to generate leads for them with Google Adwords. There are many insurance companies that overspend and waste money on Adwords. You can of course copy them, but if your company doesn’t have that kind of budget or CPA tolerance, then you need to find where that sweet spot is where you get the best CPA for your client/company.

The concept of budget is really flawed in the advertising world. It really should be about cost per lead or cost per acquisition. Tell me, if your customers bring you $300 life time value (LTV), and you are paying only $30 CPA for them, why would you want to have a budget? The more you spend, the more profit you get it seems. Of course, many companies don’t work like that, but even if your EPC is $100 and your cost per click is $0.5, then you are making half a dollar per click. Would you want to make $50 a month by spending less or maybe $50,000 by maxing out those credit cards.

Newbies often are afraid to put their feet in the water. Remember, when you were learning to swim. You were probably afraid to jump into the water too. But once you got in there, it became second nature to you. It’s OK to be conservative and avoid breaking the bank, but you shouldn’t be too conservative. You don’t get to make a million by spending $10 a day unless you are converting 10 people a day and get paid handsomely for them. But with the hight advertising costs these days, I would be surprise if you make it with that kind of a budget. My advice to you is to put your budget as high as you are possibly comfortable with. Don’t let the fear stop you from dominating your market. Remember, if people can’t see you, they are not going to buy from you.

This is a question that has probably been asked since Google introduced the feature. When you set up a campaign in Google Adwords, Google by default puts your campaign’s ad-serving to be optimized:

As you see in the above picture, by choosing the “Optimize” option, you allow Google to show your better-performing ads more often. So that’s a good thing right? After all, your better ads keep showing up, and you get better results. Add to that the fact that Google is out to take care of you, and you are golden, right? Wrong! The last time I checked Google was still a public company, out to maximize its advertising revenue. By choosing the optimize option you simply kill any chance that you have for conducting a true A/B testing on your ads. Don’t forget that Google chooses this option by default, so you need to pay extra attention every time  you set up a campaign. You don’t want to spend thousands of dollars and find out that your A/B testing never happened.

Now here is a general rule of thumb: love Google but never trust it. This pretty much applies to all Google dilemmas.

You have probably tried the StumbleUpon service by now. It’s a Web 2.0 service that allows you to stumble upon interesting sites. It’s a very addictive service and extremely useful in finding good authority sites. But did you know that you can advertise on StumbleUpon? In essence, StumbleUpon allows you to take advantage of their pay per view system to get visitors to your site through their service.

Unlike Google Adwords, StumbleUpon allows you to pay per visit and not per click per se. So your site will load and the visitor will have a glimpse before you are charged the whole $0.05 for it. Not only that, StumbleUpon doesn’t work with keywords but categories. So the traffic is targeted but not by keyword.

The downside to StumbleUpon is that the traffic is not highly convertible. The traffic that you get on StumbleUpon is more interested in doing research in surfing and less in buying. You can obviously optimize your landing pages to get higher conversions with StumbleUpon but the conversion will never reach the Adwords level.

So is the pay per view model here to stay? I think so. The PPV model is suitable for businesses that want to get eyeballs to their sites and not necessarily convert them. Besides there is no click fraud to deal with and the traffic can be cheap. I am sure at some point StumbleUpon will increase the cost per visit and make this system more complex but right now you would be out of your mind not to try StumbleUpon and their PPV model.

Google has a certification program, you might say. Yes! They do. Certifications are the best ways to get some quick cash in the computer industry. We have Microsoft, Sun, Adobe, and Cisco all offering certifications to those who are simple enough to think they can get jobs by only having those certificates. Google’s Adwords Professional is a little bit different than those other ones. For one, you don’t have to be a genius to pass the written test. But you will have to spend money (yours or your clients’) to prove to Google that Adwords is something you want to do (you will have to spend $1000 in 90 days).

Google’s certification really doesn’t tell anything about your ability as a marketer. Sure. You know the basics. You know how to create a local ad or a mobile ad but you don’t learn how to write a good copy just from the certificate program. In essence, it’s the opposite of what other certifications are all about. You see with MCSE, you get the certification you to prove you are an IT expert (you may or may not be). With Google Adwords Professional, you get the certification because you know the marketing science inside and out and just want to prove you have mastered Adwords and are ready to manage clients. In both cases, we are going to have people who have the certification but have no idea what they are talking about but at least Google Adwords you know what to expect.

Is it worth it? I would say yes. If you are a PPC marketer, it wouldn’t hurt to try the Adwords Professional Program. It’s only $50 for the exam, so it’s not that expensive. And if you are an experienced PPC, you are probably spending thousands of dollars a month on Adwords already, so the second requirement should be a piece of cake (if you are not a PPC marketer, the costs are significantly higher as you WILL have to spend $1000 in 90 days to get certified). Overall, it’s a good certification to show you are serious about pay per click marketing. But that’s about it.

Whether you are a master affiliate or just a PPC manager, Adwords can be tough to get right. Every little mistake that you make can make your competitors’ day especially if you are in a hyper competitive market. But usually the biggest happens when you are being lazy. Unfortunately, when you decide to slack off, you cut things off that seem unimportant on surface. Autopilot Adwords are one the examples here. I have seen numerous marketers who set up a daily budget and bids and then let their accounts go for weeks before checking on them again after a month or so. You can’t expect to improve your account’s performance by slacking off.

Split testing is another practice that doesn’t get enough attention from new and sometimes experienced PPC marketers. Basically, you creat two ads and compare their performance and choose a winner after a statistically significant number of clicks. But for some reason new marketers come to believe that once you create those two ads, job is done. It is not. You should absolutely use tools such as split tester to consistently test and improve your ads. Once you identify the losing ad, you remove it, and ad a new one and start the process over. I have heard people who have increased their CTR from 0.5% to 20% by changing their ads. It doesn’t happen all the time, but improving from 0.5% to 2% is a huge improvement, and you goal should be to make an improvement every time your run your split test. It’s not just about CTR. It’s about quality score too!