How To Use Google Adword To Gauge Live Keyword Popularity

I’ve been using Google Adwords quite a bit recently and have realized just how good a tool it really is, and no I’m not rich(yet?;-), so I don’t spend allot on it, usually under $10 most of the time, but the reason I love using it is because it gives you instant access to your keyword market, you start a new niche, get the domain, then sign up to Adwords and your in front of your customers right away!, your probably saying…..”Yes we all know that…” are you???. oh ok, then this concludes my post, see you next time……..

Ok joking aside;)), with all my recent projects I’ve used this same plan, think of niche -> research it using my adopted pet Market Samurai -> GET KEYWORD -> Use Google Keyword Tool on Keyword to estimate traffic -> get affiliate/products -> get domain -> launch site -> Start Adwords. I do more than I’ve listed, but I just wanted to give you an overview of the process I do.

Now after using this method for the last couple of weeks, and having some success with some keywords, and not so much with others, I wondered if I could do this differently in the future, because even though your research could be great, great numbers, high searches, low competition, you just never know how it really is going to be when you go live!, and if that site fails, which a couple of mine have even though they had great numbers, what do you do, your left with a site with no traffic, no people, no love, a bit like the time I tried to sell lemonade in front of a bar, well I was 14!!.

Now you find yourself in that rut, so what do you do!, you begin that very same process all over again!, STOP!!!, rather than do it all over again try what I have started to do, do the research part as you would at any other time, get that keyword and stop, save that $10-$20 you would spend on the domain and try the next steps.

Step One:

Once you have your affiliate product, get the URL link they give you to promote that product, make sure it has your tracking id in that URL, you don’t need any of the other clutter, just the URL.

Step Two:

Go to Google Adwords and start a new campaign as you would if you had a site set up, enter your chosen keyword, make sure you use the broad/phrase/exact match too, after you have done this select your pay per click price and daily budget, (this is where you can use that saved domain money you would have spent anyway), I generally do only $5-$10, and most of the time never spend it;), also here you can again check the Traffic Estimate Tool right under the area where you enter your pricing numbers, this will give you a “rough guide” on traffic and cost.

(remember to only use Google Search to display your ads, turn of content and all the other checks)

Step Three:

Now the Ad itself, write it as you normally would for any product, enter keywords and all that jazz, the only difference this time is I want you to paste your affiliate product tracking URL into destination URL: in the ad box(whereas before you would have entered you own sites URL), this will make sure anyone who clicks it, will get taken right to your affiliate product. So basically you are all ready to go.

Step Four:

Now your campaign is launched, make sure its showing up for your keywords, and also on the first page!!!, it does not have to show at number one, just make sure its on that first page for your keyword!!, if so thats great all you need to do is wait a few minutes for some stats to show up. If your ad is not showing, you may have to adjust the cost per click?, but Adwords will let you know anyway, sometimes it does take a few minutes to show you that your ads are showing, so be patient, I find it useful to actually do a Google search for my keyword and look for my ads, this is a quicker way to check your placement.

Step Five:

Once you get stats back it can be very exciting!, but the most important part of these results returned to you is the “impr” or impressions column, this shows you how many times your ad showed when someone searched for your keywords, which means that if you are on the first page, this impr number shows you a live count on how many times that keyword is being searched for, LIVE!, right now!, here is an example of one of my recent results…

That chart represents the broad/phrase/excat matches for my keywords, as you can see this is such a great way to find out exactly how many searches really do happen for your keywords LIVE!!, plus you get to see the CTR and many other stats, even seeing if that market is full of buyers!, you cant lose doing it this way, the worst that can happen is you use your daily budget, but you might sell something, I try to let my campains run for at least a few hours, that’s really all you need, make sure its at the right time too, you dont want to do this when your target market countries are all asleep;).

This really does give you a great insight into your niche market, if there are lots of searches you know its popular, if you also sell something, then you know it has buyers ready, so now you can go ahead and form your business around your keyword, yes you still have to buy that domain, but at least you have numbers to back it up, and not have to waste hours writing posts and socially bookmarking a big huge DUDD!!;))

If you have any questions, please send me an email, ill be glad to help you out;).

Newbie Marketers Tip #1 – Site Overlay

Google Adwords/Analytics

Not wanting to put my latest Adwords Campaign research in the trash because it didnt do too well!, but im learning too right!;), I thought i’d share some information and tips along my way with you, at least that way I can get something out of it while I ride along on this “trial and error” train.

My first tip was discovered yesterday, I knew about it before but didnt know at the time what the hell to do with it, I thought it was just some analytics fodder to pimp out the application a bit more!?, but searching through my analytics yesterday I came across it once again, and I started to see what it can be used for, but first let me bore you with my story………….. here goes………

Two days ago I was playing around again with Market Samurai, Google Keyword Tool, and Google Insights, everytime I do this I tell myself its just helping me learn more, but I always come out of it with another niche idea, and thats excactly what I did!, Damn you GREAT TOOLS!, so a new domain/blog page later I had my 7th project in front of me, this is going to be a winner!, just like the 6 before!;)), anyway I made this new blog almost like a sales letter page, eye catching title, breif summery, whats in it for them and yardi…. yardi…. yarda……, then I embeded a YouTube video of a review of the product, I then hit em with the products themselves!!, “I’m going to make A killing”!!.

So I had domain/site/salesletter/video review/product, with me??……, I then turned to Adwords, but I wanted to try something new than the other projects before, so for this new campaign I turned off search related PPC results and went for content instead (tip: either do search campaign or content campaign, dont do them together, if you do you cant get acurate stats back because it bunches them alltogether), I wont go too much into what happend as its still a work in progress, all you need to know is I got 25clicks, but only had an 0.02% CTR, marketing guru ah!;).

Tip Number 1 – Site Overlay

Now my content campaign is over I always check Analytics to see what happend, and it was here that I discovered tip #1: Site Overlay its here that I discoverd what a great tool this can be, what it does is open up an overlay of your site, this means it shows you in a full size screen where the people that came to your site clicked the most, you see little box’s with numbers in them representing the amount of clicks percentage that link on your site got, buy doing this you can track where you customers/visitors are clicking the most, and if you use this right, you can pause your campaign, adjust your site a little, resume it again and see if that changed anything?.

When I did this I found the visitors were clicking in the strangest of places, I had 12 clicks alone on the wordpress.org link!!, and 7 more on the page title!!, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM!?, or maybe its what is wrong with me, maybe I have too many links to confuse them, or maybe my keywords were hitting the completly wrong mark, maybe my niche is a dud;)), but at least I have the site overlay to see whats going on.

If it was the fact that I have allot going on in that page, then you really get to see why a basic sales letter page could work so well!, give them tons of options and they could click anywhere, and they do, but give them a stream lined sales page with only a couple of options, either buy this or leave, it narrows down on maybe actually getting that click right where you need it!, of course targeting the right keyword to the right market might be good too!.;).

Heres what you need to do to see yours:).

Site Overlay Step-By-Step

Step One.

In Google Analytics -> View Report for your site with the campaign -> Dashboard -> Left Hand Column -> click CONTENT.

Step two.

Once content is clicked you get this drop down below. -> Click Site Overlay.

Step Three

Your browser will open up a new window, their you will see your site as normal, but what you also notice is small box’s above your clickable links, some of them will have numbers on them, if so, then that represents a percentage click on that link, see how its done?.

Obviously I could not show you the whole site, then you would just laugh at me;), but you can get the idea below;).

Play Around With It

What you do from here with it is up to you, I just wanted to show you the tool becuase I’ve not seen anyone really mention it yet, but any feedback would be great to hear.

Thanks again….