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You spend the time to develop the right keyword list and write very targeted ads to help increase your traffic, click through rate and ultimately quality score. But that is only one piece of the equation – where are you sending those visitors once they click? Your landing page is the first visual introduction to your brand and it should bring a positive experience to the user. To help make sure you are getting the most out of your landing pages, I have put together a list of best practices.

Before optimizing your page, it is important to understand how users see your page. People read a landing page similar to how they would a book or magazine – they scan from left to right, then diagonally across and down the page and then finally back up to the top. That means you need to put your message across the top and the next most important piece on the right. Keeping this basic pattern in mind will help while you take a look at your copy, images and conversion form to help improve your landing page performance.

While these are a list of best practices, there isn’t a sure fire formula that works for everyone. As with all things in PPC, it is important to test variations until you find the right combination that works for you. The Google Website Optimizer tool is a great way to test different pages to see which elements perform best and are contributing to a higher conversion rate.

Make sure your headline is visible and relevant. Headlines should be relevant to the user, convey your key benefit and be located at the top where the user is going to look first. Try to work in your keyword into the headline to help a visitor confirm they clicked on the correct ad and improve your PPC quality score. Ask yourself if the headline reinstates the users potential problem or gives a brief definition of the service/product offering. If yes, then you are on the right track.

People don’t actually read landing pages, they scan. Think about it, when was the last time you read an entire landing page top to bottom? Keep your copy short, sweet and to the point. Give the important facts and experiment with using paragraph form versus a bulleted list of short statements. You might find that a bulleted list performs much better.

Design a clean, simple and visually appealing landing page. A few images can help bring a page to life, but keep images to a minimum. A landing page should lend itself to a quick and simple recognition of the ‘key message’ and should not be confusing. Too many images, callouts or messages create clutter and confuse a user. Keep in mind that visitors have likely been searching through several ads and landing pages before getting to yours, if they don’t quickly see what they are looking for, they are gone. You have 3-6 seconds to get your message across, make sure your visitors doesn’t spend that time trying to focus their eyes.

Strategically position your conversion form on the right. Going back to how people read landing pages, after scanning the headline, a visitor’s eyes are going to move to the right. If you have a conversion form, place it on the right-hand side to follow the behavior. If you have a shopping cart button instead, follow the same logic. Make sure any required fields are marked with an asterisk or similar notation. If you have a phone number field that won’t accept dashes or dots between numbers, explain this and provide an example so people aren’t discouraged if it doesn’t work correctly. They will not try to submit multiple times, so make sure it is as straightforward as possible.

Simplify your conversion form. Cut down the conversion or contact form to as few fields as possible to help minimize the visitor’s perceived risk of submitting information. Do you ever use the telephone number to follow up with customers? If not, don’t make it a required field as you may be funneling out valuable leads by requiring the information. Users consider what information is being requested and how long is it going to take to fill out the form before deciding which action to take next. If users feel you are asking too much based on what they are getting in return, they are gone. Sometimes it is better to get more conversions with less information than to get very few conversions but a complete history and profile on a person. Make sure you weigh what is important for your business strategy and adjust accordingly.

Keep the important stuff above the fold. Headlines, forms, and call to action should all be on the top third of the page in order to help guarantee a visitor sees it. Make sure you prioritize the elements on your page along with your content – if you don’t prioritize it for your user, they will on their own and may take away the wrong message or action.

Tell people what they are getting, in plain English. No one wants to submit personal information unless they are sure they know what they are getting. No matter what you are offering, whether it is a PDF whitepaper download, catalog in the mail or simply a request for a follow-up call, make sure you spell out everything a user is getting prior to them filling out the form. They want to know what the reward is before they hand over their contact info.

Keep quality score in mind along with user experience. Make sure you include keywords on your page to help improve your PPC quality score but also consider load time. Page load time is also a factor in quality score, and you have roughly 3 seconds – any longer and your quality score is likely being impacted. Avoid using flash animation, which can increase your load time and result in usability issues for some users.

Allow people another place to go from there. Include a logo that links to your homepage or other deep links within your site. A visitor may not be ready to commit yet but are still interested – give them an option to learn more about your products or company.

Try different messages, images, layouts and colors to find a combination that gives you the highest conversion rate. You may be surprised what a few simple adjustments can do for the performance of your PPC campaign.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

If you’ve read the Google blog recently you’ll see that there are quite a few new tools being introduced to help us do our jobs better, and work more efficiently. So how can you tell which tools will help the most, and how do you find the time to learn about them all? While I can’t help you learn about everything right now, I can share some insight into a few of the tools we use most for our clients.

Google Website Optimizer

What is our motto? TEST! And how do we do it? With the Google Website Optimizer tool, that’s of course free, and very easy to use (typical for Google, I know).

What it does: Google Website Optimizer (GWO) allows you to test different versions of a page and select the elements/design that persuades more of your visitors to convert (or complete your goal whatever it is).

Types of testing:

• A/B: this allows you to test two entirely different pages (or more) against each other.
• Multivariate: this allows you to test multiple elements of a page at the same time. You are then able to distinguish which combination of elements worked best.

Tips for using it effectively:

1. Think through your test before starting – the more thought you put into it, the better off you will be. Think about the following:
   • What are the business goals you are trying to achieve?
   • What is the best strategy to test that goal?
   • What page(s) are you going to test and where should you start?
2. Determine which type of test (A/B or Multivariate)
   • A/B tests are a little easier, require less time and are used to test major design decisions.
   • Multivariate tests are more complex and will take long to come to a conclusion. If you choose multivariate – make sure you have enough traffic to the page to support it.
3. What elements do you think are impacting visitors who are converting?
   • Images
   • Copy
   • Offer
   • Headline
   • Layout
   • Call to action/buttons
4. Choose your pages:
   • Choose the page you will be optimizing.
   • Choose your conversion page.
5. Plan on taking more than 5 minutes to set it up correctly – especially the first time. Set aside an hour or so to go through the steps and make sure everything is correct.
6. You will need to install tags on the pages, so make sure you or your programmer know how to properly install code snippets. Don’t worry, the tracking code will be given to you as you set up the test.
7. Don’t run tests that will take several months to complete – there are other factors that go into play, seasonality, major news, competitor sales, etc. Aim for no longer than 4-6 weeks.
8. The key is in analyzing the data, and moving forward. Anyone can set up a test, but interpreting it is more important. From there you may need to do additional tests, but you first need to get some data to decide where to go next

Ideas of what to test:

1. Call to Action -
   • Language
   • Button vs. hyperlink
   • Button colors & shapes
2. Fonts
   • Choice of font
   • Readability
   • Color, treatment (bold, etc.)
3. Headlines
   • Different language
   • Formatting: bold, color, etc.
   • Number of words
   • Quote vs. question
4. Page copy
   • One vs. three column layouts
   • Actual copy on pages
5. Images
6. Forms
   • Long form vs. short
   • Drop downs vs. fill in
   • Language around form
   • Placement/language of call to action button
7. Shopping cart
   • Process/pages
8. Incentives/offers
9. Site wide test
   • Navigation
   • Shopping cart button
   • Tagline
   • Search box
   • Location of authority & trust seals
10. Home page
    • Main image
    • Flash vs. images
    • Headlines
    • Best sellers, featured products, new arrivals (placement as well as adding these in)
    • Copy
    • Product displays
11. Ecommerce
    • Shopping funnel
    • Check out page
    • Image of product on product page
    • Product descriptions
    • Reviews
    • Add to cart buttons
    • Cross sells

Day Parts Report

The day parts report is a new analytics report, and it is found in Analytics under Traffic Sources > Ad Words > Day Parts. This report is used to find out what time of day your campaigns are most effective, but right now it is only for Adwords campaigns. From here you can see your ad performance broken down by day of the week and by hour of the day. The Day Parts report can help you find the most profitable times of day for your ads. Then pair it with the Ad Scheduling feature in AdWords to automatically adjust your bids to capture the right traffic at the right time.

Looking at the Data:

You can view your data in the table, or by time of day. The table lists each hour of the day. Click an hour to drill down and compare each day of the week for that hour of day. Clicking an hour in the resulting report takes you to the detail report for that day and hour (for example, Saturday 10:00).

You can also replace the ‘None’ dimension on the detail report with another selection such as Keywords so you can compare keyword performance for that day and hour.

By graphing visits against transactions you are able to see how transactions increase or decrease relative to visits. To access this information, click the tab at top left of the graph to select up to two metrics at a time. View the data hourly, so you can determine the best time to increase or decrease your bids.

Important Notes:

1. You must have enabled Destination URL auto-tagging in your AdWords account in order to see data in this report.
2. The above information is applicable for ecommerce sites. If you don’t have an ecommerce site, you will need to set up lead goals in Analytics. Once you have your leads goal running, you will be able to assess the days and times that your campaigns convert the best, and make day parting decisions based on that information.

Using the Data:

Once you know the days and times that your account converts the best, or when revenue and visits increase together, you can adjust your Adwords account accordingly.

Google Conversion Optimizer

The goal of the Google Conversion Optimizer is to increase conversions, decrease CPA (Cost per Action) and improve ROI.

How it works:

Your conversion tracking data is complied, and a prediction model is generated based on that data. From there your bids are optimized, and it selects the best auction scenario based on targeting. Your bids are also adjusted to a price that will put your ad in the best situation to convert.

In order to implement conversion optimizer you need to have a minimum of 15 conversions in the past 30 days, and the conversion level needs to be consistent over recent days. Google recommends having conversion tracking running for 2 weeks or more, and from our experience, the more data you have, the better, so don’t skimp here. When setting up the optimizer functionality you will set either a max CPA or target CPA (target is the average you want to pay per conversion).

Best practices:

1. Use the optimizer with existing campaigns
2. Leave it running. The longer you have been running conversion tracking the better it’ll work.
3. Don’t make large changes when it’s running (deleting or creating ad groups). Make small adjustments only (changes in keywords, creative, or landing pages).
4. Don’t move or remove the Google tracking codes.

Advantages:

1. It will automatically adjust your bids in real time for each auction.
2. Your click value will be determined based on specific criteria (user location, user query, content site, etc.).
3. It can be a great tool for managing cost within a campaign.
4. It has the ability to improve campaigns with minimal management.

Disadvantages:

1. Some control is taken from the user.
2. Tracking needs time to adjust to major changes.
3. It could create complacency on the part of the account manager.

Recommendations:

1. Try it on seasoned campaigns that are already performing well
2. Enable tracking for a minimum of 1 month for a better performance snapshot.
3. Do not try it with campaigns that are still a heavy work in progress.
4. Make adjustments to your CPA to find where the campaign will ideally perform.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

If you haven’t already filled out our PPC Hero Readership Survey, please, please, please take a few minutes and do so now.

We are continuously working to improve the blog and need your help in order to do so. Plus, you can be entered to win a free landing page review from the Hanapin Marketing team! If you’d like a shot at winning the review, be sure to fill in the last box of the survey which asks for your email. If you’re the lucky winner, the PPC Hero team will provide an analysis of the well-formatted elements of your landing page, as well as some ideas which could be tested to continually improve PPC conversion rates. Thanks for your participation and as always, thanks for stopping by!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

PPC Hero Readers – We need your help! In a continuous effort to improve our blog we’d liked to update our Readership Stats. We’ve created a short survey that we’d love for you to help us with. Our goal is two-fold: first off, we would like to learn specific details about our readers which will help to write tailor-made content for the blog, and secondly we would like to collect, process and share this important data with the pay-per-click industry at large.

As an incentive for your participation, we’re offering the chance to win a landing page review from our PPC Hero Team. Please take a few minutes to share a little bit about yourself and how you fit into the PPC industry. Once we have collected and processed your responses, we will share all of this data on the blog! If you’d like a shot at winning the review, be sure to fill in the last box of the survey which asks for your email. If you’re the lucky winner, the PPC Hero team will provide an analysis of the well-formatted elements of your landing page, as well as some ideas which could be tested to continually improve PPC conversion rates.

Thanks for your participation!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Testing your ad copy and your landing pages can significantly improve your paid search efforts. Of course, building a solid keyword base, creating an optimized account structure, and executing a well-planned bid management strategy are also crucial. However, testing allows you to understand how to optimize and improve your communication with your target audience. Conducting thorough tests on your landing pages can deepen your audience interaction and increase your conversion rate.

If you’re like a lot of companies, running tests on your landing pages used to involve numerous meetings with your IT department, development hours in order to get everything designed and launched, as well as additional time to analyze the active tests. Your life as a search engine marketer got easier when Google launched Website Optimizer. If you have access to your landing page code, and you have some basic coding skills (or someone in close proximity does), then you can quickly launch tests, analyze the results and adjust accordingly.

With Website Optimizer you can run all of your testing in one location. (And no, this isn’t a paid plug for for this tool. We just think it’s extremely helpful!) You can monitor your tests, make adjustments as needed and improve your conversion rate. As far specific technical requirements are concerned to launch tests with Website Optimizer, I’ll leave that to the help section of the official website.

However, once you have your account open and your ready to start improving your landing page performance, what exactly should you be testing? Here is a list of landing page/website elements that you can test in order to learn what appeals best to your audience.

Headline: Your headline, along with almost every other element on our landing page, needs to be relevant, timely and appropriate for your audience. First, your headline has to assure the user that they’ve landed (pun intended) in the right place. In this vein, your headline needs address the core concern of someone who arrives on your page. From the first second of a user’s arrival, you need to tell them that you have the answer to their search.

There are numerous ways to write and test great headlines. Here are just a few ideas for testing new headlines:

• Try using emotional copy that will appeal to the user’s hopes, dreams, fears, aspirations.
• Test customer-focused vs. company focused headline (example: We can make your lead prospecting easier vs. You can make your lead prospecting easier).
• Split test using questions against declarative sentences.
• Try using longer headlines that are loaded with benefits against shorter headlines that focus solely on setting up the conversion.
• If you have headline copy that works well, then you can test the different font sizes and color.

Body copy: This is where you back-up the claims made in your headline or PPC ad. If your PPC ad inspired the user to click and the headline has convinced them to read further down the page, then your copy needs to do the heavy lifting.

Your body copy also needs to be relevant to a user’s search, benefit-driven, and written in the manner in which your audience expects. By this last point I mean that you need to know how colloquial, formal or technical the language on your landing page should be.

For the purpose of improving conversion rate, here a few body copy elements to test:

• Try using short text against longer text.
• Test copy that is more emotionally driven, rather than technical or feature driven.
• Your copy should always be relevant, but you can test inserting more of your high-traffic keywords into your copy.
• See if a list of benefits helps increase your performance.

Call-to-action: By this I could mean a few different things: the phrase that you use on your landing page for the desired action, or perhaps the button that users click on to go to the next step in your conversion funnel. Either way, you need to test it.

In regards to actual text, you should test a few different phrases to see which appeals to users best. Does a shorter call-to-action such as, “Sign Up’ work better than a more detailed one such as, “Get Your Free Guide Now.”

Also, you can test the color of your call-to-action buttons. Usually when there is an article written about landing page testing, someone mentions the button color. But it works and it’s worth testing.

Contact form: In the past, I have found that the next two are the hardest to test. The difficulty lies in the fact that the contact form is usually tied to a database. And if the contact form is damaged in anyway, then the leads will not populate correctly. However, if you can adapt, then this can be a quick win for testing.

For contact form testing, you should try out:

• Different lengths of your form. Try to using a longer form, and then try a version that is short enough to get above the fold.
• Ask fewer questions. How much information does your sales team need to follow up with a lead?
• How many required fields do you have? Can you make some of them optional?
• In regards to contact information; do you display your phone number on the landing page? How many calls do you receive from your landing page? Try removing the phone number to see if this inspires people to fill out the form.

Trust/Credibility symbols: Does your industry have certain certifications that will display your level of expertise and help build trust with your audience? If you don’t have them on your landing page, you should test this out. Also, if you’re accepting any type of payment, displaying safe-purchasing symbols can help improve your conversion rate.

Try out different offers: This is a quick one: you can highlight seasonal or time-sensitive offers on your landing page. This is pretty straight forward. See which offer generates the best response and use it again at the same time the following year or even the next month.

Mini-site vs. Landing page: Once you have conducted a series of tests on your landing page and you feel that it’s as good as it’s going to get and you’ve hit the point of diminishing returns, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board. By this I mean you may need to completely re-think how you use landing pages. However, at least when you start this process, you’ll have a control landing page that you can test against.

With this tactic, you may to test out a mini-site or a multiple-step conversion process. Or if you’re using one of these longer forms, you may want to go the opposite direction and use a shorter landing page.

If you want more ideas on how to optimize landing pages for higher conversion rates, you can check out our podcast series, PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast.

For more in-depth information on landing page testing, I highly recommend Tim Ash’s book, Landing Page Optimization. And I also recommend Always Be Testing by Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar for additional information on Website Optimizer. Very helpful resources!

Keep in mind that there is a cost to landing page testing. Some of your tests are not going to be successful, but your results should improve over time. Optimizing your landing page is a continuous process that will lead to enhanced results when executed properly and with care.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Search engines find keywords in different elements of a page and use them to determine whether or not the page should be ranked in certain results. Proper use of keywords will get your page indexed for specific searches but does not guarantee placement or rank within that search. The popularity/authority of your site is what helps with ranking.

Each page should target a tight collection of keywords. In my opinion, you should not have a page that targets more than 3 to 5 and those should be related to one another. So “mailing list” and “direct marketing list” are related to one another subject-wise and could be used in coordination with one another on the page.

Your page should focus on great content that drives conversions, not concentrate on stuffing keywords throughout that content. Natural use of the keywords is most important – so that search engines see the keywords but visitors don’t necessarily see them. Content drives conversions (sales)… so write well!

How to Use Keywords Effectively on your site for SEO

1. Domain – if your domain name has keywords, it’s great. If not, that’s alright as well. Be sure you’ve registered the domain for 10 years so Google recognizes that it’s not a spam site and is viable.
2. Home Page Title Tag – be sure your home page title tag has a few of the terms that you’re after and places them before your company name.
3. Title Tag – each independent page should have the keywords that the content of that page focuses on.
4. Heading Tags – in HTML, there are headings and subheadings. These are specifically <h1>, <h2>, <h3>… tags in that order of importance. Search engines pay attention to these tags and it’s important that you pay attention to them as well as you create pages and utilize keywords. For blog posts, utilize keywords in your blog post titles. Avoid using <h1>, <h2>, or <h3> tags in your sidebar.
5. Bold – bold your keywords on the page so that they stand out.
6. Image Alt and Description – when you utilize an image (recommended) within your site pages or posts, be sure to utilize keywords effectively in the image alt or description tags. Your content management system should allow for this.
7. Internal Links – if you make mention of other posts or pages within your site, be sure to utilize keyword effectively in the anchor text of the link to that content and in the title tag of the anchor tag.

   <a href=”domain.com/myotherpage.html” title=”The KEYWORD”>More keywords</a>

   Avoid using generic terms like “read more” or “click here”.

8. First Words of Content – the first words on your page or post should include keywords relevant to the content within that page.
9. Top of Page – Search engines view a page and analyze the content from top to bottom, the top of the page is the most important content and the bottom of the page is least important. If you have a columnar layout, check with your company that designed your theme and ensure that columns are lower in your HTML than the body of your content (many themes put the sidebar first!).
10. Repeated Usage – within your content (also known as keyword density), it’s important to utilize keywords naturally within your content. I would make an effort to use keywords 4 to 5 times in a given post of 250+ words.

Your feedback is welcome on this post and I realize that search engine algorithms have changed over time. However, utilizing these rules won’t hurt your site and page optimization, they’ll only help it! Don’t stuff, though! You’ll lose visitors, lose conversions and may very well lose your search engine ranking.

If you can get external links with keywords back to your site, even better! This post was simply about on-site keyword usage, though.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization.

You might also find these posts interesting:

• What’s your Organic Search Potential? (5)
• How to Check Your Domain’s Rank by Keyword (1)
• RefreshWeb SEO Dashboard (5)
• Modifying Post Slugs in WordPress for SEO (3)
• Increase Blog Traffic by Reviving Old Blog Posts (4)

Today’s PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast will focus on the KidsCoats.com PPC landing page, submitted by Alan. Alan submitted the page because he’s looking for ideas to increase his conversion rates.

The PPC Hero team has provided an analysis of the well-formatted elements of the landing page, as well as some ideas which could be tested to continually improve PPC conversion rates. Our discussion focuses on the following areas:

• PPC ads/keywords – Branded terms are pretty much always going to convert at a higher rate than most other keywords, but using longer-tail keywords or more descriptive keywords may help with conversion rates as well. We also discuss how specialized ad text gains search volume and lowers your cost-per-conversion because these keywords are likely to have a higher conversion rate than the generic “girl’s coats”.

• Landing Page Graphics – The design of the page matches the content: fun kids coats. However, we do suggest testing a plain background. The brightly spotted background distracts from the design and color in the coats, so a plain background will help the products pop more. Also, the logo at the top is slightly pixelated and might look more sleek if it were cleaned up a little bit.

• Landing Page Navigation – The links at the top of the page should be the most important – if the mailing list sign up and size charts are not your most important links, move these down and replace them with higher priority links. On the landing page itself, you could test having each of the photos lead to product categories, not individual products, as another way for people to easily navigate to what they want. A third point on navigation we mention here is the mailing list signup. If you want people to sign up for your mailing list, you might want to put a box where they can submit their address directly next to the call at out the top of the homepage. People are more likely to fill it out if they can do it without having to navigate to a different page – there’s more immediacy.

• Landing Page Trust building – We mentioned a few things that you can highlight to build credibility with users including: About Us, Returns Policy and Secure Ordering Symbols. These should all be at the top of the page. You could also highlight benefits of the products’ quality like: machine washable, superior workmanship, or special orders available.

Visit the www.KidsCoats.com site and follow along with the PPC Hero team’s suggestions for various elements of the landing page!

or if you want to use another podcasting service, just use this link to add the feed.
PPC Hero Podcast Feed

Download MP3 podcast files:
1. PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast – KidsCoats.com (13.3 MB, .mp3)

You will need the Adobe Flash Player to listen to the podcasts.

Here is a quick snapshot of KidsCoats Landing Page:

Are you interested in having your landing page critiqued by the PPC Hero team? Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you. Check out our submission guidelines and send us your information!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Today’s PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast will focus on the first4lawyers.com PPC landing page, submitted by Lee. Lee submitted the page because he’s looking for ideas to increase his conversion rates, and specifically for thoughts about the website’s overall appearance and calls to action. We don’t have a sampling of the ads and PPC keywords First4Lawyers uses for this landing page, so this podcast is focused on on-page conversion optimization.

The PPC Hero team has provided an analysis of the well-formatted elements of the landing page, as well as some ideas which could be tested to continually improve PPC conversion rates. Our discussion focuses on the following areas:

• Page aesthetics & trust- a clean site design establishes credibility & encourages user engagement, but reducing clutter and adding trust symbols such as association & certification logos can convey trustworthiness to website visitors.

• Conversion methods- multiple, prominently visible conversion methods on the page give users many opportunities to convert. Language changes could improve calls to action and color changes could draw more attention to some of the conversion methods offered.

• Website and landing page content- the site offers a plethora of useful information for potential clients and answers questions clearly. Testing some navigational changes on the landing page for important site content could help users find the information they’re looking for more quickly.

Visit the www.first4lawyers.com site and follow along with the PPC Hero team’s suggestions for various elements of the landing page!

or if you want to use another podcasting service, just use this link to add the feed.
PPC Hero Podcast Feed

Download MP3 podcast files:
1. PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast – First4Lawyers.com (7.8 MB, .mp3)

You will need the Adobe Flash Player to listen to the podcasts.

Here is a quick snapshot of First4Lawyers Landing Page:

Are you interested in having your landing page critiqued by the PPC Hero team? Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you. Check out our submission guidelines and send us your information!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

As I completed yesterday’s post on Social Media ROI, I wanted to send a preview of it to Dotster CEO Clint Page. When I printed to a PDF, though, the page was a mess!

There are still many folks out there that like to print off copies of a website to share, reference later, or just file with some notes. I decided I wanted to make my blog printer-friendly. It was much easier than I thought it would be.

How to Make Your WordPress Blog Printer-Friendly:

1. Upload an additional stylesheet to your theme directory. I found it easier to upload a blank file (print.css) and make edits through the WordPress theme editor as I discovered additional elements I wanted to hide or adjust.
2. Add a reference to the new stylesheet in your header. I put it directly below my stylesheet. Here’s the line of code I added:

   <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />

3. Print a single post page to a PDF file. This will provide you with how your page prints in all it’s terrible glory. Headers, sidebars, widgets, videos, footers… they’ll all be there!
4. Utilizing a tool like Firebug for Firefox, you can narrow down the div id’s and classes that you wish to hide from printing. Methodically go through your entire theme and modify each CSS element until you’re left with what you want!
5. As a last step, make adjustments to your CSS so that the page prints nicely, too. I’ve added an auto margin and 70% width so folks can print and write notes.

Here’s a video that explains the process of making WordPress Printer Friendly using CSS:

There is so much going on within any PPC campaign that it can be difficult to keep track of all the moving pieces. You can be a proactive PPC manager but there could be elements of your account that may be quietly hindering your performance. Actually, when an account is performing well, this is when you need to be most vigilant in searching for these “quiet killers” because they may be harder to notice blatantly.

Incorrect campaign settings

When you create a new campaign, I am sure you check all of your settings to make sure they’re correct. However, if you launch numerous campaigns at once or if you add campaigns frequently, something may get missed. This doesn’t mean the campaign is broken but it may not reaching its full potential. As a proactive step, you should make sure that these settings have the correct information for your campaign’s goals:

• Location targeting
• Networks, devices and extensions
• Bidding and budget
• Position preference, delivery method
• Ad delivery: ad rotation, frequency capping

Just do a quick review all of your campaigns just to make sure everything is correct. If you no errors, great! However, if you do find a setting that is incorrect, you can make great progress with just a few clicks.

Neglected ad text split tests

Continually testing your PPC ad texts is the key to click-through success. However, you may have launched a test, or perhaps a few tests, that you have not recently checked in on. If your account is performing well, then you may over look following up on a split test. It happens. Now is a good time to run an ad text report to see if there any ads that are under performing. You should make sure that each ad group has a statistically valid sample size in order to determine the clear winners and losers.

Under performing keywords that hide in good ad groups

If your account is performing well overall, that’s great. And you may not even have any ad groups that stick out like a sore thumb due to poor performance. However, this doesn’t mean that there are no rouge keywords that are generating traffic but few conversions. You should run a keyword report to hunt down those terms that are not performing well and adjust accordingly.

Irrelevant search queries are not always obvious

If you are utilizing broad match or phrase, when was the last time you ran a search query performance report? This report is easy to run and can help you hone your campaign by building your negative keyword list. In fact, you should make it a point to run a search query report at least once a month in order to monitor which queries are matching to your keywords.

Poor converting sites on the content network

The content network may be working great for your account but I bet if you looked closer, you would find a handful of sites that have a higher-than-average cost-per-conversion. Similar to poor performing keywords, the content network as a whole may be doing great but I’m sure there are a few sites that are quietly hindering your campaign. And these sites can get away with this when everything is going well in an account.

There are numerous other elements that can negatively and quietly effect your campaign’s performance, but this is a quick check list for you. Remember, if your account is generating great results – it can always do better!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.