PPC Ads & Keywords

[private].[/private]As we’ve probably covered at least a dozen times by now, when your affiliates are starting a new campaign to promote one of your products, you need to help them every step of the way! The search engines can be an outstanding source of well targeted traffic, whether it comes via a high-ranking site on the organic search or via a PPC (pay-per-click) ad.

The search engine is driven by keywords.

Keywords, or keyword phrases, are those words you punch in when you are looking for a specific item or information on a certain topic. If you are thinking about going on a cruise, you might type in “cruises” or “cruise lines”. If you are looking to purchase a spinning wheel, you might type in “spinning wheels”. If you are looking for cat grooming information, you might type in, as you may have guessed, “cat grooming”.

Since the search engines are run by keyword searches, you have to structure your advertising campaign around the right keywords for your product or service. By creating keyword-rich content, your site will do better in the rankings, but what we are really focusing upon here is how to help your AFFILIATES with PPC (this is the “Affiliates & JV’s” section after all).

Remember, you want to minimize the amount of effort your affiliates need to put into their campaign. This means you want to give them as many tools as possible so that they can send targeted traffic by any means necessary.

The first part of your job as a vendor/product owner is to give your affiliates the tools they need to get that traffic to your site. The second part of your job is to optimize your website for high conversions so that the money affiliates spend sending you traffic pays off for them in the form of commissions.

When your affiliates are setting up their first PPC campaign for your product, they will need to identify the keywords they want their ad to show up for. DO NOT leave them on their own for this! Granted, the best affiliates are intimately familiar with how to setup a highly successful PPC campaign. BUT, by giving them something to start with in the form of a keyword list and a few text advertisements you are making their job much easier.

You’re making their job easier because it will be very simple for them to refine the keyword lists and text ads you provide. The task of refining the existing materials you give them is much simpler than creating a new capmaign from scratch.

In this endeavor, it is wise to provide each affiliate with a list of the best keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to the product or service they are promoting. Of course, first you must know what these keywords are.

How do you know what keywords to recommend to your affiliates (or to use yourself for that matter)? You have to do your research! Yes, keyword research is necessary, even crucial, you your success.

There are a number of great keyword research tools and programs available out there and many of them are free or have free versions. The best of these is:

WordTracker: www.wordtracker.com

Here are a few others that are worthy of being mentioned:

Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Good Keywords: http://www.goodkeywords.com/

NicheBot: http://www.nichebot.com/

Keyword Discovery: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

WordZe: http://www.wordze.com/

SEO Digger: http://seodigger.com/

Overture Keyword Selector: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

SEO Book: http://www.SEOBook.com (This is one of my favorites!)

Think about it this way. You really aren’t doing any extra work. After all, you have to do this research so you can promote your own products as well. All you have to do is pass this information on to your affiliates so that they can easily set up their own campaign.

What might happen if you don’t give them the proper keywords? Here are a few possibilities:

** They run out of steam because they don’t want to do the research required to find them

** They never get started because they don’t know how to do the research

** They use inferior research tools to find keywords

** They do not find all the potentially good keywords and all the variations

** The do not find the most frequently used keywords

** THIS IS THE WORST ONE: They just make them up or use the search terms they would type in themselves

Yea sure, they’ll get some traffic to the site by stumbling through their own homemade campaign. Unfortunately, they are not likely to get good “commission-earning” results in this manner. When an affiliate doesn’t get results they get frustrated and as you can imagine, they stop promoting your product!

Since you don’t really have to do any extra work and you want your affiliates to be using the proper keywords when setting up their PPC campaign, you need to supply them with a list of keywords to use. Then you know they are promoting your product the right way!

By using the tools and resources mentioned on this page you’ll be well on your way to creating a great targeted keyword list for your specific niche/product.

The more successful your affiliates are the more successful YOU will be! Provide them top notch promotional tools and you’ll reap the rewards.