The British like to do things the british way. And so they writie bBritisch too. There are a lot of words that are written differently in England, than they are internationally, and when you target THESE keywords, you can often get a lot cheaper PPC costs when targeting the British market – specially if you have a .co.uk domain.

Here’s a good overview of different spellings between the US+the rest of the world and the British:

http://www.tysto.com/articles05/q1/20050324uk-us.shtml

Go through the list and see if there are keywords that are worth setting up own ads & maybe even landing pages for. Despite being such a small country in size, the British still spend a lot of money online.

Ian Howie published 7 good tips to get more out of your AdWords campaigns.

Here the main takeaway points:

• If a keyword gets a less than 1% CTR after you tried to optimize it… delete it
• bid for each keyword 3 times – 1x broad match, 1x phrase match, 1x exact match. Pay the most (100%) for exact match, then phrase match (75%), and the least (25%)for broad match. Why? Because when you bid exact match, it’s hypertargeted and you know exactly what you are bidding for
• constantly test your ads & your landing pages (usind ad variables and split tests for your landing page)
• after 200 ad impressions, and 200 clicks, it’s time to evaluate the worth of an ad. If you have a less than 1% CTR, and a less than 1% conversion on your landing page, then either improve or delete
• local targeting trick: now this is actually really cool, and I never thought about it. yes, you can do local targeting to be a lot more relevant via your campaign settings. But this is all based on IP adresses. And sometimes it’s not 100% correct. Some people have IPs that are not related to their actual local connection, so when they search you, they won’t find you even though they might be in the same town you are. So what do you do to solve that problem? You create another campaign that has the whole country as location, but then use keywords that match your specific location only. For example: “homemade cakes london”.
• check the search terms to see which keywords users used to find you. You will often get new keyword ideas there, or ideas for negative keywords (which can save you a lot of money)
• schedule campaigns so that your ads get displayed more when people are most responsive

You can read the whole post yourself here, it’s good stuff.

I love the new AdWords interface.

Before, you couldn`t really see where your content network ads showed up, how many impressions and how many clicks. Now, it’s all there.

Not every page where your ads show up will be displayed (there’s still quiet a large number in that final row called “others”), but a lot will. This is a real goldmine. Because you can then create highly-targeted ads for each site that is worth your time. You’ll be able to get dramatic increases in CTRs that way.

You know that AdWords doesn’t like superlatives and have very tight guidelines on those. The word “best” is one of those.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t use it.

AdWords tells – in their own training center, that if the claim is confirmed by a third-party, and the confirmation is displayed on the landing page of the ad, then it’s fine.

Now what exactly is a third-party confirmation? Well, if your site got picked as “best of the web” by Forbes.com.

But what if your site got picked by Schmorbes.com? [or maybe - pick a domain name that has a bit more of a "reputable" and trustworthy touch to it...]

If Schmorbes.com is a site that is giving out web-awards to different sites, not just your own… and it looks good… and you are not associated with it. Then this might very well be a third-party confirmation.

But apart of that – ask yourself first: why would you want to have the word “best” in your ad? Because in most cases, it does NOT increase conversions or CTRs… because in the minds of the prospect, it’s one of those overhyped claims that every company makes about themselves, because they can’t come up with something better.

There are a few exceptions to these, but in most cases, it’s not worth trying to be “best” on AdWords.

What could you possibly learn from Ted Turner about pay-per-click advertising, you ask?

After all, that’s the guy who lost literally billions of dollars when his CNN Time-Warner thing merged with AOL. And he never even used computers.

Doesn’t mind.

See, with AdWords (and other PPC networks), it’s still about BIDDING. Whoever bids the highest amount for some keyword or virtual piece of real estate get`s the eyeballs.

How Ted Turner got a billboard company for dirt cheap

Back in the days when Ted Turner was just a young and upcoming guy, there was a local billboard company that was up for sale at an auction.

There was one guy in town who owned the other billboard company, and he thought nobody would be interested in that auction. So, at the day of the auction, he went there – and he was right. Nobody was there.

But then, just half an hour before the auction ended, some guy in a worn out suit with an old briefcase came by, and gave an envelope to the auctioneer.

This was not one of those open bidding things, where people are raising hands and the new price is proclaimed. This was a silent auction. You make your bid in a concealed envelope, and whoever bids most, wins. But you can’t know how much the other guys are bidding.

So, the local billboard company owner was took by surprise – but given the appearance of the guy in the worn-out suit, he didn’t feel he’d have much to feer. So, just 10 minutes short of the end of the auction, he made his bid too. 50,000 USD. He knew that the billboard company he was about to aquire was worth multiple times that amount. It was almost a free gift for 50k.
What he didn’t know was that the guy in the worn-out suit was a lawyer who was instructed by Ted Turner not to shower that day and go to the auction with a lousy suit and lousy shoes, and make his bid.

The auctioneer then proclaimed: the company goes to the winning bidder for an amount of…

fiftythousand and onehundred dollars.

That’s right. 50,100 USD. To Ted Turner. Turner figured that the guy would probably bid 50,000, so he went for 50,100. And got the company.

Ebayers know it

On ebay auctions you know it too. Many “advanced bidders” never bid in round amounts (they don’t bid $10, or $10,50). Instead, they bid $10,01, or $10,51. And they’re all happy about it, because they think they’re smarter than the other guys. And most of the time they are.

But then there’s the guy that knows that trick too, and he bids $10,02 and $10,52… and he gets the item.

AdWords positions

When it comes to AdWords, you know that (in most cases), the higher your ad appears, the better you are off.

Now, where your ad appears is to a large amount determined by the amount of money you are willing to spend. (Quality score comes into play too).

Most advertisers are bidding round numbers… like $0.50 per click, or $0.95 per click. Then there are some that bid $0.51. But with $0.52, you often times get the top spot for a cent more. That’s sweet.

So go into your AdWords campaigns and make those adjustments.

If you have a landing page that you’re sending AdWords traffic to, you should include relevant (and even better: relevant & unique) images with relevant captions to your landing page.

Google likes that and it will be a plus for your quality score. You also want to give these images relevant filenames. So if you are selling wooden toys, then you want to have images of wooden toys and name them accordingly.

Now, this one is important: do not name unrelevant images with relevant names. Sooner or later Google will figure that out and it will punish you with high click prices and low quality score!

In the end, it’s about providing Google’s users with the best experience – and it’s a fact that people like pictures, not long blocks of text. So, whatever Google tells you to do, do it their way if you want to get a piece of the online pie, because Google is the ultimate 800 pound gorilla online, and nothings gonna change that in the near future.

It’s something that I heard so often, from so many different people, that I never really questioned it.

“Google hates if you drive AdWords traffic to a squeeze page.”

“Squeeze pages will destroy your quality score.”

“Squeezepages from AdWrods? You’ll pay through your nose!”

That kind of stuff.

And in fact – I heard it from many people who I usually tend to trust. Even friends.

But finally, when working for one of my clients who insisted on using a squeeze page, I figured it out…

Google doesn’t hate squeeze pages IF you are honest & upfront about it.

If you tell people in your AdWords ad: “Download your free Report” and then people click and they have to put in their name and email first, then Google thinks you’re messing with their users.

And if you know Google, you know that they don’t like messing with their users.

It’s like, Google is tipping on your shoulder and saying: “Hey… that one’s with me… you mess with him… you mess with me…”

So if you tell people they’ll get a free report if they click the ad, then give them the free report right upfront.

If you want them to opt-in, then make that clear in the ad.

It takes a bit of thinking around two corners to find the right words – and I’m not gonna expose what’s working best for me here – but if you put the mental effort in, you’ll come up with your own wording that’ll be fine with Google. No penalty.

If you send people to your website via pay-per-click advertising, you know that it’s all about quality. Google want’s to see that your sites are relevant, thus matching the title with the searchphrase is often a good idea, and so is having the searchphrase in the body text of the website.

But you can in fact get a better quality score (and thus cheaper clicks) without having to change one word of copy – just make your site look neat and professional.

Every website that you send traffic to, a Google editor will stop by and look at the page. They won’t read every word on they page, but they will look at the page – and if it looks like a professional site rather than a flimsy one you’ll get a much better quality score.

So, graphics and layout are becoming more important these days too.

Usually in Google ads there’s the green web-address at the bottom. But recently there seem to be more ads showing up that have a call to action there instead of a link. Just look at the picture of the two ads on the left. The first one has the standard web-address there, whereas the second one has a call to action “Learn More Now”.

This is something that you might want to split-run for your campaigns and see how it affects CTR.

Headlines are probably the most important element of any ad that you want to test against another headline.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to headlines. Just copy your way to success.

Cosmopolitan magazine! They have some of the best copywriters in the world writing for them and their headlines are worth gold! Just check out their headlines and find ways to use their headlines for your products. And you don’t even need to buy the magazine. Just head over to Magazines.com, search for “cosmopolitan”, click on the cover and will show a large image of the full cover with all the top-headlines!

Resources: www.magazines.com