Epicenter Network Blog

Using ppc marketing is the best way to reach a targeted audience and drive more potential buyers to your sales page. If you are using Google AdWords to manage your campaigns, one of your biggest focuses should be on relevancy and creating the most targeted ads possible.

Here are 5 tips to help you succeed in AdWords and create the most relevant ads for the search engine and your customers.

#1 – Don’t group all keywords into one campaign and one ad group. Instead, split up your campaigns according to base keywords and split up your ad groups to have variations on your base keyword. The more your separate and micro-organize, the easier you can view the performance of different terms and help you to create more targeted, specific ads.

#2 – Make your ads as targeted as possible. Not only does this make your ad more relevant to a search term, but it also makes it more relevant to the user and will encourage more people to click on your ad.

#3 – Incorporate your keyword into your ad. This plays into tip #2 and helps get Google’s attention and the user’s attention. When you include a specific keyword in your ad and that keyword matches the search term of the user, it appears bolded on the search results page. You can see this if you type in “shoes” or “backpacks” into Google.

#4 – Create multiple ads and run tests. Create three or four good ads for each ad group and let them rotate through. Keep an eye on the stats for each one and you will probably start to notice that one or more of them will outshine the rest. This will help you to further optimize your ads and make them even more targeted.

#5 – Keep up with Google. It seems like Google is always evolving, adding new features, changing up algorithms or creating new policies. Use this to your advantage by staying up-to-date on their newest tools and announcements and periodically check out their Help Center and Learning Center.

More than two billion people are roaming the internet at any given time. They are on social networking sites, checking email, searching the web for some kind of answer or solution, etc. And even though they haven’t all logged on to shop, they can all be considered potential customers.

When it comes to attracting someone’s attention online there are many options – banners, emails, text ads, paid search, pop-ups and so on. However, without proper placement and utilization, your efforts can be fruitless; just as placing a banner for baby food coupons on a car parts website isn’t going to make you rich.

A good place to start is by finding out where people are going online. Compete.com is a good resource for locating top visited sites and you can also search for traffic by industry and behavioral trends. This is good if you are focusing on a particular niche and want to get a feel for the competition and your users’ online trends. Similar resources include Quantcast and Alexa.

Next, check out the current online trends. You can check out what people are searching for by using Google Trends, Yahoo! Buzz, Bing’s xRank or trendy!bing. Another good place to check out trends is on Twitter where you can view the top trends of the minute, day or week.

Blogs are another good indicator of what people are interested in. Check out the blogosphere for a particular niche you are interested in and see what people are talking about. Try using Technorati.com or Google Blog Search.

Once you find where people are going online and what they are interested in, you can start incorporating new ideas or offers into your marketing campaigns. This kind of search also helps with locating a new niche or expanding upon and updating your current projects.

Selecting a good domain name for your website or online business is an important part of building up your brand and improving your online presence, along with improving your online ranking. Owning your own domain name adds credibility to your site and adds mobility so that you can take your name with you if you transfer Web hosts.

So when it comes time to create a domain name, here are some tips to keep in mind:

• The shorter, the better
Short and sweet is definitely the way to go. If your domain name is too long, it will be harder for people to remember and therefore harder for them to recommend to others.

• Always try to get the .com version
This will help you improve your odds of being found organically online. If a user types “shoes” into a search engine, they will typically locate the .com versions before moving on to the .net, .org, etc. extensions.

• Think of odd, one-word domain names
Think Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia, Bing or eBay. These sites have seemingly strange domain names but they are easy to remember but they are short and stand out from the norm. Try Wordoid.com for ideas.

• Incorporate the keyword(s) you are trying to rank for
Make a list of all the keywords you are trying to rank for, then separate them into primary and secondary lists. Next, try various combinations of these keywords and see what you can come up with.

• To hyphenate, or not to hyphenate
There is some debate as to whether hyphenating a domain name is a good idea or not. This domain is hyphenated, so I guess I think it is ok at times. Some people use them when the unhyphenated domain name is already taken or to break up a string of keywords.

• Protect your name by registering multiple extensions
If you really like a selected domain name and plan on building out your site and pushing your brand, it may be a good idea to buy all the extensions of your domain name. This deters people from copying your name.

Over the last month or so I have suffered pretty bad writer’s block. I’ll sit down with my topic and draw a complete blank.

This isn’t good when it comes to blogging, as inconsistent posting usually results in less visitors and a lower page ranking. It’s also bad for business if you are an article marketer and can lower your overall quality of writing.

So how do you overcome this obstacle of brain freeze as an article marketer or blogger? Here are a few tricks to help you overcome writer’s block and be more productive.

Stop writing
This seems like an odd solution, but sometimes taking a walk or doing something unrelated is a great way to refocus yourself. Writers block is usually from over thinking and over complicating something and in turn psyching yourself out.

Read something
The best way to get into writing mode can be through reading. It’s a good habit to start out your day by reading blogs or articles related to your niche or posts on your favorite blogs. If you haven’t already bookmarked it, add affbuzz.com to your list of sites to visit, as it consolidates all the major affiliate blogs.

Write whatever comes to mind
Don’t worry about what you write; just write whatever comes to mind. Don’t use the backspace button, just let it all out. You don’t have to use anything that you write, it just helps you get warmed up.

Give yourself a timeline
I am a procrastinator. I work much better when I wait until the last minute to do something. This probably isn’t the best strategy, but it works for you, then it’s worth giving yourself a deadline on writing projects.

Write when you are tired
When you are tired you are less concerned with perfection and your mind is more at ease. Your writing will be more natural, but will probably also have some typing and spelling errors, so it’s important to edit it the next day or after a nap before you post it.

Clean your workspace
Clutter can equal distractions, so clean up your workspace. Set your messaging accounts to “away” and close any additional windows on your screen.

Trash the idea
If you already have a topic selected and just can’t get yourself to write anything, it may be because you just don’t care about it. If you aren’t interested in what you are working on, it will show in your writing and other people won’t be interested either. Instead, write about topics that appeal to you and you’ll get more value out of your writing.

I’ve always been a fan of the phrase “content is king” and believe that good content can truly help you make it or break when it comes to running a business online.

In an article written by Epicenter’s own Dylan McDanniel, he provides a brief outline of what is needed to create high quality content that satisfies the online consumer’s need for information. Here are the six elements he touched upon in his article:

• Satisfying a niche
The more targeted your content is on one topic, the more useful it is to the reader. Furthermore, the more in-depth and detailed the content is, the more you gain the readers trust and they will be more likely to make a purchase.

• Originality
Fresh and useful content creates repeat visitors and repeat visitors can lead to repeat sales.

• Get to the point
It like the game Catch Phrase – deliver your message as clearly and quickly as possible. This is when editing comes into play. Revise your content and eliminate all unnecessary words.

• Avoid flowery language
You are writing content, not prose. Limit your adjectives and focus more on your targeted keywords.

• Update regularly
Updating and adding new content regularly will keep your web site higher in searches and keep your readers coming back for more.

To read the full article, click here.

I took a little hiatus from blogging for the last week and wanted to return with a post on review sites and how to turn a visitor into a customer. I like review sites because they are a good way to promote your niche offers all in one place and build your visitor’s trust by providing them with product reviews and/or testimonials.

Last week I came across a study that reported 90% of consumers trust the opinions of their friends and make purchasing decisions based on their recommendations. This isn’t groundbreaking data by any means, but it does reinforce the fact that building brand trust is directly linked to increasing your sales.

Sites like steepandcheap.com are a good example of combining user product reviews and recommendations to get people to buy their products. They also claim to have limited inventory and only offer one product at a time for a limited timeframe. This creates a sense of urgency and can help get the user through the purchasing path quicker, since it gives them less time to shop around for a better deal.

Similar techniques work well for weight loss and health and beauty product review sites too, for example. Up-selling and product pairings work well with weight loss and skincare offers, as they cater to the same demographic and someone who is trying to lose weight may also be looking to reduce the appearance of wrinkles or cellulite.

Review sites also work well because of the amount of content involved and the ability to add product facts/ingredients. Original content can help you rank higher organically and if it is written well, can be compelling enough to get people to click on your links.

If you haven’t tried pushing offers through a review site, it’s definitely worth a try. If you want to quickly through up a site to test, try using DM2 and you can get a page up and running in less than 40 minutes. (Shameless plug, yes, but it really is one of the easiest ways to build a site and it’s free.)

As an affiliate marketer it is important to keep a constant eye on your traffic and to be on the lookout for ways to improve and optimize it. If you are running search campaigns, the same attention and up-keep is required in order to improve your profits and return on investments.

To help your sites and search campaigns be the best they can be, there are several online tools to help improve SEO so you can rank higher organically and others to help with finding new keywords and to gain better link love.

If you’re a seasoned search marketing affiliate, these tools and applications may be nothing new. However, if you are new to the game, be sure to give them a try and see what they can do for your page rankings and affiliate profits.

Link Voodoo – This is a free tool that includes a suite of SEO tools including a TrustRank Score Calculator (See video for details) and a Backlink Analyzer (reports a sites backlinks with Alexa Ranking and PageRank).

Lipperhey – This one is good if you are building out sites for affiliate offers. It analyzes your website on overall quality and searchability and provides you with an improvement report to help increase your traffic and, ultimately, your sales.

SERPrush – This is a free SERP checker that shows what your search engine position in Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

SEOrush – This is a free SEO tool that provides information not only on your On Page and Off Page SEO, but also on your social presence, meta information, validation, indexed pages, ranks and domain info. You can also check your competitor’s URLs.

InstantRankmeter – Find out for free how your website is ranking in Google, Bing and Yahoo!. You can get stats on your website and compare it to your competitors. It is a little slow, but a helpful tool.

SEO Drop – Another SEO tool to help improve your organic search and ranking. It allows you to check your standing on social networks and also has a tool to help you monitor your longtail traffic.

Keywordle – A free keyword suggestion tool. Not the best out there, but it can be helpful.

Struggling to get your website looking professional? A good looking, properly functioning website plays a vital role in your success as an online marketer, but often the task of building a website can be pretty intimidating, especially without a background in web design.

Don’t let this be a roadblock. There are lots of free resources online, one of the best being DM2.

DM2 is a free online tool that helps you build professional looking websites and provides free hosting. The best part is that you don’t need a background in web design to produce a good looking site and after you publish it, you don’t have to worry about hosting.

Apart from design templates and hosting, DM2 also offer integrated advertising where all you have to do is drag and drop ads without any coding. You will also have access to listing services to help get your site noticed and start driving traffic.

Another cool feature this tool provides is the ability to easily add new content and media to your site and experiment with new templates without having to rebuild your entire site. This is helpful since adding fresh content is vital to creating and maintaining a successful site.

DM2 is a good go-to tool for building out offer landing pages and microsites for ppc campaigns; it pretty much takes care of all the work for you.

You can learn more about DM2 here, see sample sites or schedule a free demo.

Here in Seattle it feels like summer has finally started. Today temperatures are supposed to get into the mid-80s and it has been sunny for the last two weeks. (Hopefully it won’t start raining by the time I post this.)

So because I have deemed today the official start of summer, it’s time to start marketing with summer in mind. Here are some things to consider while deciding which offers to run, how to run them and when to run them.

• Good weather = less people at their computer
  If you are running search ads, you may want to consider dayparting. My guess is that less people will be surfing the web from the time they leave work to the time the sun goes down. In general, be sure check out when your highs and lows are during the summer months.

• Kids are out of school
  This means that kids are home during the day and when they aren’t at camp or staying busy, parents have to find something to do with them. This is where a parenting site would work well. Provide parents with ideas on how to entertain their kids and throw in some summer offers.

• Swimsuit season
  The return of summer means the return of the bikini. This is a good time to build or promote diet and weight loss sites or healthy eating sites.

• Summer getaways
  Summer is a good time to travel and people are always looking for cheap vacations. You may also want to consider to those looking for staycations and cater to local searches.

• Summer reading
  People like to read at the beach, by the pool or on vacation, so provide them with book reviews and offers for book clubs.

• Bar-B-Ques
  Everyone loves to bar-b-que when the weather gets nice, so they may be looking for new recipes or new summer cocktails. This is also a good time to offer them some coupons and other ways to save money while entertaining.

There is no set formula or algorithm that guarantees you success in affiliate marketing. What works wonders for one person may sink your budget and produce no conversions. Just because one offer is working well for one affiliate, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work well for all affiliates.

Your success in affiliate marketing can depend on how you drive traffic, the size of your marketing budget, the time you put in, your experience and some creativity and maybe even luck. However, there are some basic guidelines you can follow to help set you on the path toward profits and achieving success in affiliate marketing.

Here are five of them.

1. Differentiate the Offer
Always remember you are not the only one running an offer – there are tons of other affiliates in your network and other networks trying to capitalize on the same thing. The trick is to promote your offer in a way that gives it a unique angle.

       • Speak from experience       
       • Share success stories
       • Compare it to other products

2. Find your niche, but don’t get trapped there
If you have an awesome site on riding lawnmowers with tons of visitors, don’t advertise for the Strap Perfect or a wrinkle cream – your audience doesn’t care. Find a network that has offers that cater to your niche. At the same time, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. There might be another niche out there that you are even better at and it’s always a good idea to diversify your offerings.

3. Build a good relationship with your affiliate manager
Your affiliate manager can play an important role in your success. Making them your bff isn’t necessary, but being chummy will help you stay on top of new offers, get better payouts and help you save money if a campaign needs to be paused due to bad leads, etc.

4. Deep Link
Deep link and improve your conversions. Don’t ever make your customer search for information or for the order form – take them to it directly.

5. Think of affiliate marketing as a business
To keep a business successful you need to take care of your customers, follow some kind of business plan, build partnerships and work on budgeting and accounting. Work with your mailing list; treat your subscribers like actual people and make it personable. Also remember that time is money, so if something isn’t producing results, switch it up.