1. Having too many keywords in a single Ad Group.

Since an Ad Group is Google’s lowest level of segmentation, it should ideally be used to express a single idea or theme. Generally, I find that the more specific, the better. Typically, I find that any Ad Group with more than 50 keywords is probably too broad. The exception would be Ad Groups with a large number of misspellings.

More specific Ad Groups do mean more management — but it will also mean a much better ROI.

2. Using “Broad Match” without negative keywords.

The default setting for keywords in Google is Broad Match. That means that any search phrase that contains your keyword can trigger your ads, whether they are relevant or not. I recall working on a campaign for a printing company, and finding that its ads describing silk-screen t-shirt printing were showing up for the very popular search phrase — wet t-shirt. Setting “wet” as a negative phrase was a simple fix.

3. Not understanding the difference between “Search Match” and “Content Match” (and setting single campaigns for both).

Google does a nice job of allowing a site to determine where its ads will show. But many AdWords advertisers use these settings indiscriminately. I would suggest that campaigns be set to either “Search Match” or “Content Match” (but not both). The simple reason is the ads that will appeal to individuals actively searching on a phrase will be quite different from the types of ads that will appeal for browsers who see "Content Match" ads.

4. Bidding for Position No.1.

I often see new AdWords advertisers over paying for clicks because they are pursuing the No. 1 position. I think they assume that being in position No. 1 is always best‚, but I think when you consider the additional cost for position No.1, often times positions 2-5 are a much better value.

5. Not testing different ads.

I’m a huge fan of split testing — both on websites and for ads within Google AdWords. New advertisers should create two or three ads for each Ad Group, and after about a month, take a look which ad has the best cost-per-conversion. Ad split testing should be a continual process. One tip I like to use is to pause my old ads rather than delete them, that way I can see what ads I’ve already tested.

6. Not tracking conversions.

This might be the cardinal sin of Google AdWords. Conversion tracking might take a little bit of effort to set up, but it is a critical step in identifying which keywords create conversions, and which ones just create clicks.

Source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com

Google recently held a webinar for AdSense publishers. They gave out some adsense optimization tips that they have gathered over the past few years. The transcript is pretty lengthy, so here's the summary:

• Ad Location - "the middle, above the fold location perform best." Also "if you have an article page with a long body of text, the bottom of that article is actually pretty successful"
• Ad Formats - "the top three formats are the 336x280 that you see on the page; the 300x250 medium rectangle; and then the 160x600 wide skyscraper." Additionally "the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user."
• Ad Colors - Pick colors that blend well with the site. Matches the background color, and compliments the site. Make them feel like a part of the site. They give an example where a customer went from blended background to yellow, and clicks dropped 65%
• Ad Blindness - if the colors stick out too much, readers may immediatly identify them as ads and not even look at them. Also frequent readers may stop reading ads so you could alternate positioning and colors to get their attention. "The more you blend in with the site, the less chance that ad blindness will occur."
• Experiment - this was a big theme in the webinar echoed by all experts. Use channels to test different colors, positioning, and formats to find out what works best. They show that you can more than double your revenue just by finding the right color, position, format combo.
• Image Ads - If you want to maximize revenue they recommend turning them on. I personally disable them in my account, because I find them too distracting/annoying to the user. Yes you may increase your CPC, but you will probably decrease impressions over time.
• Link Units - Don't take up much space, and also "allows the user to refine what they're interested in. So if they may not be interested in specific ads on your page, they might be interested in a particular topic, and by clicking on a link unit and a link in the link unit, they'll be able to specify that they're interested in that specific topic and get a lot more options and variety on the ads that might appear." I also bet google remembers what they click on and then tries to generate better ads for the page... just my speculation.
• AdSense For Search - You can use this for your site search, and you get a percentage of ad clicks.
• Focus on Content - Duh!
• Don't click on your own ads - One of the callers asked the question "I was just noticing that someone asked about clicking on their own ads and it says you're not supposed to. And I don't remember reading that. And I occasionally do click on the ads... So is that detrimental in some way?" - I can't believe they said that to google. Google's response was: "Yes, that's sort of chief among the terms and conditions".
• Impression Counter - Google confirmed that Page Impressions are counted when a public service ad (or alternate ad url or color) is displayed.
• Your site is unique - all these things may not matter, the best location, format, and color is different for every site. So again, go experiment.

Source: http://www.petefreitag.com

Many Internet marketers like to use e-courses or email courses to help market their products or services. Online courses or email courses usually provide educational content and information on a specific niche topic. These e-courses typically offer in several, short segments so that the students can pick up and understand what the courses are teaching in a step-by step manner. The marketers will recommend their own or affiliate products or services that are relevant to the content in their courses. This technique is called 'teach and sell'.

For example, doing SEO work is time consuming and involving lot of hard effort. But using SEO software can save time and work. So people who sell SEO software will create free e-courses about how to do SEO the right way to effectively get a website ranked top in search engines. The SEO software sellers will take the opportunity to recommend their SEO software in several sections of their courses to encourage the students to buy the software. The students learned everything about how to do SEO properly and found a software that can cut down their own effort and time when working on SEO. So some of them will want to buy the software to make their SEO work easier and faster.

You Need a Good Idea for Your Online Course
To create an e-course or an email course, you need to have a solid idea for a series of informative articles which are related to your online business and will be of interest to your targeted buyers. You will use your online course as a marketing tool for your business. The course should be free of charge to your target prospects and anyone interested to participate so that you can get as many potential customers to sign up your course as possible and entice them to purchase your products or services.

Make Sure Your Target Prospects are Interested to Your Topic
The topic you decided to use for your e-course has to be directly relevant to your business or the products or services you are offering. Just like the example mentioned above, the SEO software sellers will create courses to help their target prospects to learn how to do SEO work and tell their students the can save their work and time using SEO software. Likewise, people who have weight problem would be interested to sign up courses such as how to reduce weight in short time period or the best ways to reduce weight. So the subject for your course must be of interest to your potential customers.

Create Content for Your E-Course
After determining the topic for your online or email course, it is time to write the content for your course. You can write the content by yourself. The content doesn’t have to be well written but they do need to be clear and easy to understand. Also review and check your content to make sure there is no grammar and spelling error. Alternatively, you may spend some money hiring a writer to create content for your e-course. Tell the writer exactly what you want and the writer will create a series of professional and well written content for you.

Once your content are ready, you can turn your e-course into a PDF e-book and let people download it on your website. Or you can break the e-course down into several segments or sections and send each section to your students every day until the course ends. This will help make learning easier and keep your student interested to your topic.

Distribute Your Online Course
create a sign up a form on your site and the form should be in the location of your site where it is easily noticed by your visitors. Any visitor that attracted by your e-course will sign up.

Other ways you can use to distribute your e-course are forum posting, participate in give way events and article marketing. Apply as many distributing methods you possibly can to get the maximum potential buyers to sign up for your e-course.

Source: moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com