13 Smokin Tips to Increase Adwords CTR

I’m slightly obsessed when it comes to CTR with my campaigns, I’ll always try to push things as hard as I can to get the best bang for my buck. These strategies can be used for established campaigns or new campaigns to get some quick results.

As you know, CTR is linked to your ad quality & also the price you end up paying.

AdRank = CTR x Maximum Bid

From my observations quality score merely dictates your minimum entry into the bidding. If you have a high quality score you can eventually bring you bids down to sub 5c, however if you have a low quality score then you might have to bid $5 just to show.

Two Examples of how CTR can Reduce Cost

Stuart is bidding on the same keyword & match type as Jenny. Jenny is bidding $10 with a CTR of 3.3%, Stuart’s maximum bid on the otherhand is $5 & his CTR is 10%. Who’s ad is showing the highest?

1. Jenny: $10 x 3.3 = AdRank of 33
2. Stuart: $5 x 10 = AdRank of 50

In this situation Stuart is bidding half of what Jenny is but his ad is much more relevant therefore he’ll end up appearing higher. This is the power of really tuning & testing to increase your CTR.

Tip 1 - Increase your Maximum Bid

Since we’ve already established that your maximum bid can have a huge effect on your positioning you can use this to you advantage. Simply increase your bid to position 1, watch your CTR build then slowly bring the bid back after a few days until your position starts to slide again. I’ve successfully used this method to stay in position 1 & ultimately pay much less than the person below me.

Tip 2 - Split test religiously

I always split test two ads at once, the reason behind this is if you test any more & 1 performs shockingly then it drags your overall performance down. There’s plenty of variations you can try, but simply start with 2 ads, then remove the underperforming one after a few days & rewrite it with your learnings from the previous test.

Tip 3 - Target your Headline

The headline is one of the most important parts of your ad, it’s probably what the user will see first. So try to make this as targeted as possible. i.e. if the user is searching for Health Affiliate Program then ideally that’s what you want as your title.

You can test with variations & also try adding calls to action in there like “Top Health Aff Program” (remember you can’t have more than 25 characters) etc. Quite often you can get away with abbreviations so don’t be afraid to try some.

Using official site in the headline also works well for increasing CTR:

Dell AU - Official Site
Latest Deals on Dell Computers
& Laptops. Buy Online Today!
www.dell.com/au

Tip 4 - Use Description to highlight your USP’s

Once your headline has grabbed their attention you really need to sell them with the description. Try to include the things that separate you from your competitors. This may be price, free shipping, money back guarantee or certain product features. Here’s an example of an ad that makes good use of the body text:

1/2 Price Broadband Sale
6GB for $19.50 for 1st 6 Months on
3’s $39 Mobile Broadband Plan!
www.Three.com.au/MobileBroadband

Tip 5 - The pyramid/arrow theory

You’ll notice that when you search for a keyword if it’s in your ad Google will highlight it. With the right positioning of keywords in your Headline, Description & Display URL it is possible to take advantage of this highlighting to create an arrow or pyramid that helps with drawing the users attention to it.

Instant Ringtones
Get Instant Ringtones
& Latest Rad Ringtones Online
www.Rebcell.com/Ringtones

When a user searches for Ringtones the ad above contains the keyword 4 times. Notice how when bolded the ad looks like a series of steps (or a pyramid), this is a proven method that subliminally attracts users towards your ad over all the others on the page.

Tip 6 - Test with the Search Network on & Off

The search network can have a positive or negative effect on your CTR, there’s really no way to tell how it will impact your overall campaign CTR. Make sure you test it on & off.

Tip 7 - Split out Broad, Phrase & Exact into their own Adgroups

I generally won’t do this for every single keyword in a campaign but for the high traffic / top converting words this really allows you to tweak your ads to best suit the match type. For example the ad that works for an exact match on the word “free ringtones” might not be as effective when you start broad or phrase matching because you’ll be triggering on keywords like “free ringtone downloads” which you’re not targeting in the Headline or Description.

Tip 8 - Test Keyword Insertion

I try to stay away from keyword insertion on the most part but it’s useful when you’re trying to get a campaign up & running quickly. It’s great for CTR since it’ll substitute the keyword into your ad.

Be careful though because keyword insertion can backfire (check out this search for “buy kids online” for example):

Online Kids Buy
Find Over 10,000 Offers From Major
Retailers Online Today With Lasoo!
www.Lasoo.com.au

Tip 9 - Run content campaigns separately

Whilst the content network doesn’t affect your overall search CTR it can confuse you when trying to evaluate your overall CTR for a campaign. I usually split them into two campaigns just so it’s easy to get an overview. I also find it easier to view & evaluate conversion data better by doing this.

Tip 10 - Curiosity killed the cat

People are curious creatures & you can play to this when writing your ad. This works incredibly well for product based searches. For this example lets use the term “arbitrage conspiracy”. Chances are that if you’re searching on this term you’re looking to buy the book.

Arbitrage Conspiracy Lie
Check Out This Shocking Truth About
The Flaw of Arbitrage Conspiracy!
ShockingReview.com/ArbitrageConspir

Tip 11 - Tweak your Display URL

There’s a few ways of tweaking the Display URL, this can have a moderate to large effect on CTR:

1. earnersblog.com
2. www.earnersblog.com
3. EarnersBlog.com
4. www.EarnersBlog.com
5. Keyword.EarnersBlog.com
6. EarnersBlog.com/Keyword
7. www.EarnersBlog.com/Keyword

I usually tend to go with option 6, but in some cases I’ve seen option 1 blow it out of the water. It pays to test the variations to get an idea of which display URL’s work best with your demographic.

Tip 12 - Play with Scheduling

I’ve seen scheduling used in some quite ingenious ways to build up history. For example initially only having your ads active for 1 hour during the day (around 8pm at night) to ease your way into a new market without your competitors spotting you & adjusting their bids up too quickly.

Scheduling for your industry may reveal that people are more click happy & night when at home or it may be the opposite, they may click less at home but more at work. You can use this to your advantage if you split test it.

Tip 13 - Use Trademark Symbols

Using trademark symbols for products can increase CTR by insane amounts, (something to do with people thinking that ad is the official site).

Conversions always rule over CTR

Just because an ad has a better CTR doesn’t mean it will convert better. I will always choose an ad that converts better or has a better ROI over one that has a better CTR.

So now you have 13 things that you can test, find the winning combination & take you Adwords Campaigns to the next level.

VPS Optimization Guide

When you get to the level where you start needing VPS’ (Virtual Private Servers) it’s important to understand how they work & how you can get the most out of them. Poorly set up servers can cause you all sorts of problems like Downtime, Slow MYSQL or not withstanding the force of something like Digg.

This article will cover everything you need to do to ensure that your VPS is performing as fast as possible, which mostly focuses on optimizing your memory usage. Please ensure you make backups of your existing my.cnf & httpd.conf we will not be held responsible for any problems.

What you will need to action this guide:

1. Your server specs (most importantly Guaranteed RAM & Burst RAM)
2. Access to your Web Host Support for installation of
3. Root access to your VPS via SSH
4. FTP Access to your server
5. A brief knowledge of an editior (i.e. VI) if not I’ll provide the commands you need to know
6. How to restart mysql & apache in your server operating environment
7. Access to WHM

Viewing your PHPinfo

Create a file called phpinfo.php & include the follow in it:

2. ?>

Navigate to that file on your server i.e. http://www.yourserver.com/phpinfo.php, you should see something like this:

What you need to ask your host to do:

1. Ensure that you have the latest PHP version (currently 5.28)
2. Make sure that PHP is compiled with the latest version of Zend Optimizer, Eaccelerator & Ioncube Accelerator.
3. Ensure that you have the latest apache version (currently 2.0.63)

Viewing your current resource usage

Log in via SSH, I normally use the Putty client for this.

Commands:

top: your current server load & resource usage.
ps aux: all your processes & which ones are using the most memory/cpu
free -m: allocated memory, usage & free memory

If you use the top command you can get an overview of the load on the server & memory usage. You can see in the screenshot above my VPS has a load of 0.02 during the last 1minute, 5 minutes & 10 minutes.

No-one really knows what the ideal “load average” should be but my general rule is that anything over below 1 is good & above 1 is average. Above 3 & you may start to notice performance issues.

With memory usage you should ideally have 100MB or so free (if not more), you really need that buffer for large traffic spikes. If you’re coming close to your allocated memory usage then any allocated burst ram will kick in. On my server I have no burst ram, just guaranteed which means I don’t have that buffer, but my system is more stable (as everyone on the VPS can make use of the burst ram).

Removing & Tweaking Unnecessary Services

There’s a number of services that you can remove or tweak to increase performance. To remove any of these services log into WHM & go to Service Configuration > Service Manager or Cpanel > Plugins in the left menu.

Clamd: This is a virus scanning service, it uses up a ton of memory do generally I’ll remove it.

Entropy Chat: Disable this.

Spamd: This uses a lot of processes & memory. You shouldn’t remove this, instead we can tweak it. Go to Cpanel > Plugins & install spamdconf, once done go to the bottom of WHM & click on Setup Spamd Startup Configuration. Change the maximum children to 1 or 2. This will stop spamd spawning too many child processes.

Cpanel Tweak Settings

In WHM under Server Configuration > Tweak Settings:

1. Make sure default catch-all mail address is set to FAIL, this will use the least CPU time.
2. Untick Mailman, this is a resource hog.
3. Change the number of minutes between mail server queues to 180
4. Uncheck Analog Stats, I also usually uncheck Webalizer.
5. Make sure you tick delete each domains access logs after run, otherwise you’ll start using heaps of Disk Space.

Mysql Optimisation

You can edit your mysql configuration (/etc/my.cnf) by typing vi /etc/my.cnf

In order to add something in vi you need to hit insert, once completed hit esc then :wq to save & quit. If you want to save without quitting type :q!

There’s a few important variables that we’re going to tweak:

1. max_connections
2. wait_timeout
3. thread_cache_size
4. table_cache
5. key_buffer_size
6. query_cache_size
7. tmp_table_size

Via ssh you can type ‘mysqladmin variables’ to see their current values & you can also see a refreshed processlist by using the command ‘mysqladmin –i10 processlist extended-status’.

The settings below should work well for a server with 512MB Guaranteed RAM (also leaving you enough free for traffic spikes), if you have burstable then you can probably look at increasing the number of max_connections to 400 & possibly the key_buffer to 64M:

1. [mysqld]
2. max_connections = 300
3. key_buffer = 32M
4. myisam_sort_buffer_size = 32M
5. join_buffer_size = 1M
6. read_buffer_size = 1M
7. sort_buffer_size = 2M
8. table_cache = 4000
9. thread_cache_size = 286
10. interactive_timeout = 25
11. wait_timeout = 7000
12. connect_timeout = 10
13. max_allowed_packet = 16M
14. max_connect_errors = 10
15. query_cache_limit = 2M
16. query_cache_size = 12M
17. query_cache_type = 1
18. tmp_table_size = 16M
19. skip-innodb
20. [mysqld_safe]
21. open_files_limit = 8192
22. [mysqldump]
23. quick
24. max_allowed_packet = 16M
25. [myisamchk]
26. key_buffer = 64M
27. sort_buffer = 64M
28. read_buffer = 16M
29. write_buffer = 16M
30. [mysqlhotcopy]
31. interactive-timeout

Apache Optimisation

Apache settings are located in httpd.conf, you can use ‘locate httpd.conf’ or ‘whereis httpd.conf’ to find it.

Optimal settings for apache should look something like this, I like to keep the min & start servers slightly lower to stop too many child processes spawning & using memory:

1. KeepAlive On
2. MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
3. KeepAliveTimeout 1
4. MinSpareServers 5
5. MaxSpareServers 10
6. StartServers 5
7. MaxClients 150
8. MaxRequestsPerChild 1000

Restarting Mysql & Apache

Once you’re done you’ll want to restart mysql & apache. You can do this via the command line or via WHM.

Restart Mysql: /etc/init.d/mysql restart (if mysql doesn’t restart consider commenting out skip-innodb in my.cnf)
Restart Apache: /etc/init.d/httpd restart

These commands may vary depending on what your server is running.

Monitoring Changes

Use the ‘top’ command, ‘free - m’ & ‘ps aux’ to get an idea of how the server is responding. Pay attention to how much RAM you have left & also how much CPU Mysql & Apache is using. You may need to leave Mysql running for 24-48 hours to get a true picture here.

Thinking about upgrading to a VPS but not sure who to choose, let us help you with our VPS Web Hosting Reviews, tailored specifically for Affiliate Marketers.

Checking Your SEO Grade

As you know, Search Engine Optimizations (SEO) is important for make our blog/website indexed on search engine. But how we know that our SEO technique is already success?

BDH senpai told me about this site few days ago.

http://website.grader.com/

It is quite nice SEO analysis site. For dial up user, it rather took long time to load. But I think it worth.

You can check you rank compared with another blog/website. What is your score. They give 0-100. A website grade of 91/100 means that of the hundreds of thousands of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 91% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.

You can check another competitor and check their grade at same time here.

They also analyzed your Page Rank, Alexa, technocraty rank etc. Ah.. I lost my page Rank again. Ahahahha Oh well.

So.. how about Ur site test result?

The Money Problem

You need it more than it needs you

There are serious problems with money, and if you don't know the main one, try doing without it for a while.

Money makes the world go round - but only when it does. It's just as true to say when money isn't moving, it stops the world. Things don't happen until money gives its permission. No money, no go.

Worse, it's also true that money sets the patterns through which human economic activity is organised, and those patterns are clearly destructive - of society, of human health and dignity, and indeed of the planet - our very ground of being.

These problems exist because of a simple misconception deeply embedded in the way money is taken to exist - indeed from the very idea that it does in fact exist, that it is some sort of real thing.

Things that exist do so in particular quantities; things that don't exist have no such limitations.

The money we commonly use was never designed. It just happened.

The origins lie in barter, when items of comparable value were exchanged, one for another. Nobody gave up something of value without getting value. Wine for grain, fruit for fish, clothing for sheep.

The inconvenience of such arrangments leads naturally to a preference for exchanging goods in general for particular small and convenient amounts of "precious" things - metals, gemstones - things that could in turn be predictably exchanged with others for other things.

But this wasn't yet money - just another level form of barter, thing for thing exchange.

The next step was to coining the precious metals in denominations, to stabilise peoples' dealing - and that too is still in effect barter, since the coins were considered to have value from the value of the metal in them.

Money - as a really imaginary thing, a promise - began to come about when political powers gradually reduced precious metal contents, and stamped coins from base metals, declaring their value to lie in the fact that they were issued by, and acceptable to, authority.

It had value because it had the "right" marks on it. A purely imaginary, social valuation. A promise by the issuer - usually that it was acceptable in payment for taxes.

The form has become progressively more abstract, from coins to notes, notes to cheques, cheques to plastic, and plastic to the electronic.

Money itself has no longer any vestige of inherent value. Coins can be melted for the metal, paper can be burned for heat, but digitally stored accounts have no possible purpose beyond their accounting.

Money is merely a promise, a ticket that provides its carrier with the expectation of something real.

But yet it still is thought of as real - by economists and bankers, by adults and children. We think it real, because of our experience that it's scarce, that only so much of it exists. It has at least that attribute of reality.

As Soddy said - money is the nothing you get for something so that you can get something else. And he won a Nobel prize (NOT in economics, of course!)

Money only works if it moves - if it can be exchanged for something of "real" value. Bread, a haircut, an idea.

If no one will take it, it isn't good money.

Given that condition, it is generally assumed that the best money is the money that goes furthest, that is accepted by everyone. Governments and nations, and banks strive to make their money as good as they can, which means they seek to ensure that -

it moves everywhere and anywhere
not only within a nation, but across borders

which it will only do if it is scarce
because the more plentiful the money, the less it is accepted

and that requires that only a few can create it
it comes from "them", as far as we are concerned

These are three self-consistent elements and to this point in history ALL currencies that have mattered - all national currencies for example - have had to follow these rules, that they move anywhere, are kept scarce, and come from "them".

This is NOT a function of any design, nobody planned it this way, nobody even thought about it that much at all. Money just was what it was until it became what it now is. It was an inevitable evolution that needed no help, and could in any case scarcely have been avoided.

The consequence for a community is predictable and observable.

All around the world, through no fault of their own, cities, regions, villages periodically find their money supply has dried up. The money that was coming in, isn't, and the money that was already here, left.

Is this familiar ? If it isn't you are living in a strange and unusual part of the world. It's happening everywhere, all the time.

That's the first of the evident failures of conventional money -

it leaves things undone that need doing

paradoxically, it's the actual quality of money's existence that is the problem - given that it is supposed to exist, why can't it exist where and when it is needed?

there's no point in cavalry that doesn't arrive - where's a policeman when you really want one ?

The second failure is probably more dangerous

it gets things done that shouldn't be done
the pattern of everyday social actions derives from the ways in which money flows through the community

the money comes into the community, it goes around maybe once, and then it leaves. In, round and out - that's the way it is

The consequence of these conditions is a economic context in which strategies of competition dominate.

Game theory shows us how context determines the players' best strategy.

If you have to have money to live, and money is short so everyone competes for what little there is, then you too have to compete to get what you need, you have to compete to live.

And it's the same at every level - nation shall compete with nation, region with region and community with community. The rhetoric of the marketplace, the political slogans, the cynical self interest all seem to make perfect sense, to reflect an apparently inescapable logic, that of the survival of the fittest - by which is meant the fittest fighters with the least scruples.

But this "perfect" sense rests on very imperfect assumptions - that it's all due to human nature, or it's just the way society works.

There is no recognition that the context in which the social behaviour arises is set by the nature of the money that drives it, not even that the money has indeed any nature. It isn't seen that the money we use is only one particular form amongst several different possible forms.

We think that money is just is what it is and couldn't really be any different; and that it always was, and always will be, something scarce, and will be valuable just because of that scarcity, and something for which we will always have to compete.

But this way of working is NOT in any sense an efficient use of human or economic resources. We don't get good results in any organisation by coercing, bullying and belittling those within it. People don't respond well to such pressures. They may work, but they don't work willingly, and they don't work well.

And if to maintain this pressure it is necessary that large numbers of our community are kept idle, unvalued and alienated, then surely there is something fundamentally wrong about the whole arrangement.

But yet, within that context, there is virtually nothing that can be done to change matters.

While we only use the old familiar conventional money, there are no real alternatives. The way the game is played is written in the rules.

THERE IS NO SOLUTION

Check Einstein on that, or any good systems analyst. Albert observed
"The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done so far
creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level we created them at."

.... the tools that broke it, won't fix it.

The good news is this,
that when you see what the problem is,

you also see that it's really no problem at all.

Two Differing Views on How to Solve Global Financial Crisis

PUTRAJAYA: Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the 2003 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Dr Robert F. Engle, have espoused different methods to solve the current global financial crisis.

Dr Mahathir said he was for a return to the gold standard to stabilise financial markets while Engle proposed a “counter cyclical regulatory system” at the Bridges – Dialogues Towards a Culture of Peace conference yesterday.

“In the past, the money we used was based on something that had value, now we are using pieces of paper where the value is dependent on what people say it is,” Dr Mahathir said, referring to the Bretton Woods system, set up in 1944, when fixed exchange rates were tied to gold reserves and the US dollar.

The Bretton Woods system broke down in the 1970s as industrialised countries moved to floating currencies and the influence of capital markets grew.

“Today, they say the ringgit is worth so much. Tomorrow they say it is lower some more,” Malaysia’s fourth prime minister said, referring to the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Engle said the current crisis was not a result of foreign exchange volatility but due to the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market and the subsequent credit crunch that brought down US banking giants.

“I think we should look at a policy to tighten regulation when banks are doing well and to give more flexibility when the banking system is going through problems,” he said, referring to his “counter cyclical regulatory” approach.

In the run-up to the current crisis, Western banks had been given mo

Terbitkan Entri

re flexibility during the boom period to create debt instruments as they saw fit, Engle noted.

Dr Mahathir agreed that governments needed to regulate the markets or businesses would “do whatever they think will bring them profit and not worry about the welfare of the people”.

“It is the government that has been entrusted by the people to look after their welfare, and not businesses,” he said, but acknowledged that “the government must be business friendly”.

He also said the possibility that Islamic banking could solve some of the problems of the current global crisis should not be dismissed.