September 05, 2011 
Gordon 
We’ve just finished producing a handy little payday loan comparison feature for one of our clients. The page uses simple jQuery and Javascript functions to workout the results instantly for each payday loan provider.
Take a look!
Turning Google Adwords Into Sales
If you’re trying to turn Google Adwords into sales or enquiries then you’ve come to the right place! In this post we’re going to explore how to turn more Google Adwords clicks into Sales and also some little tips to try and maximise the Google Adwords return on investment. Lets jump in! Are the wrong
Turning Google Adwords Into Sales
If you’re trying to turn Google Adwords into sales or enquiries then you’ve come to the right place! In this post we’re going to explore how to turn more Google Adwords clicks into Sales and also some little tips to try and maximise the Google Adwords return on investment. Lets jump in!
Are the wrong people viewing and clicking your ads?
The BIGGEST waste of money you can ever do in Google Adwords is allowing the wrong people to view and click your ads. I see this on a daily basis with my clients and it’s one of the first things I do to help them. Read the following points…
Are your keywords too general?
In my opinion, broad matched keywords are mostly the devil! They allow too many possibilities to be specific enough to determine which keywords are actually accounting to hard sales and leads. If you’re using broad match for your keywords then I hope you’ve got a very long list of negative keywords.
Are you using negative keywords?
Negative keywords are there to ensure you’re ads DON’T appear if they are present in the search term they put into Google. Generally speaking, this list should contain words such as “free” etc. There is much more detail in the quick guide to negative keywords. In my opinion, negative keywords should ALWAYS be present in any Google Adwords Campaign.
Negative Keywords – A Quick Guide
In this quick guide you’re going to learn what negative keywords are, why they are so important, how to add negative keywords to your Adwords campaign and some tips on how to find them.
What are negative keywords?
In a nutshell, negative keywords are the keywords that you don’t want your ads to show if present in the users search term! Let’s cover this in an example…
Say we are selling “yellow pipes” (exciting I know!). We sell lots of yellow pipes but we don’t sell a certain type of pipe called “small yellow pipes”. Because we are targeting the term “yellow pipes” in our keywords we want our ad to appear each time a user searches for this term EXCEPT when they are looking for “small” yellow pipes. So, you guessed it, we add a negative keyword called “small” to our negative keywords list. The yellow pipes ad will now display for everyone looking for all variety of pipes EXCEPT when they include the term “small” in their search term.
So, in a nutshell, you put the negative keywords in place so your ads don’t appear if they are present in the search term. Got it? Good!
Why are negative keywords so important?
Let’s look at it this way…
You display your ads hoping that customers will click on your ads and always convert to a sale (aren’t we all!). Obviously this doesn’t happen all the time in real life, so you try and maximise the likelihood of success. You only want to show your ads to the people who are “qualified” to make the purchase. This is why negative keywords are so important! They remove the unqualified searchers out of the equation so they don’t get chance to click on your ads, not convert to sales and lower your ROI.
Negative keywords are there to narrow down your search results so there is less wasted money when people do click.
What’s the best way to find possible negative keywords?
There is a fantastic little method that I tell all my clients if they want to f
ind negative keywords.
There is a small section under the ‘Keywords’ tab called ‘See search term…’, Click this button and select the ‘All’ option (if you don’t see anything once clicked make sure you widen the date range at the top right). This action will allow you see what keywords have triggered your ads and received clicks. This tool is very useful because it quickly assists you in picking which keywords you don’t wish your ads to be shown for if present with your normal keywords. You’ll probably see words in their search terms which are unrelated for what you wish to be found for. If you feel this will more than likely not turn into a sale you’re best adding them to the negative keywords list.
How do you add negative keywords?
You can manually add the negative keywords using your normal keywords tab located right at the bottom under ‘Negative keywords’, or, you can tick them in the ‘See search terms’ screen and then click the ‘Add as negative keyword’.
You can also add them to your normal keywords list but start the negative keyword with a “-” (no quotes, just a hyphen) and then directly follow with your negative keyword. Adwords will notice you’ve started the keyword with a hyphen and add to your negative keywords list accordingly.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading this article and please add your comments below with any suggestions etc. Here are some more resources for negative keywords.
Negative Keywords – Google Adwords Help
Negative Keywords Tactic – Search Engine Land
Negative Keywords Guide – Google Adwords Help
Negative Keywords and how they can become positive! – Adwords Help Experts
Stop targeting browsers and start targeting buyers in your Google Adwords!
If you’re new to Google Adwords then you’re probably doing this mistake in this article. I’m going to go over this with you now so you can stop wasting money with Google Adwords! Let’s begin.
“Browsing” & “Buying” Key phrases
You probably know the difference between “browsing” keywords and “buying” keywords right? No? Well this is a very important lesson!
Browsing keywords are the keywords that people put into Google hoping to find more information on the subject. They are hoping to find articles, blogs, free pieces of information that will help and assist them on their journey. These people tend to be “tire kickers” and will not hesitate too much to click on your expensive Google Adwords ad if they think they will gain something from it.
Buying keywords are totally different. They are more likely to be longer in nature and more detailed. The person using these keywords are often looking for a product or service (which they suspect will have to pay for) and are also in the position to buy right away. Here are some examples of the different types of keywords you will come across for a link building service.
Browsing keywords: “link building”, “how to get links”, “link building blog”, “link building forum”.
Buying keywords: “link building company”, “link building service”, “low cost link building service”, “best link building company”.
As you can see in the list above, the “browsing” keywords are what the people are putting into Google to find information. The “buying” keywords are what people are entering into Google to find a company/service to do this for them!
Can you see now why simply entering “link building” on it’s own into your Google Adwords keywords list is such a bad idea?
If you’re not offering free information to your visitors and not getting them to sign-up for future marketing messages then I would avoid these selection of keywords and key phrases like the plague!
Another key aspect of ensuring you’re not targeting the “browsing” users is to enter negative keywords along with the Google Adwords campaign. Negative keywords are a list of carefully selected keywords that, when present with your normal keyword list, you don’t want your ad to appear. A good example of a negative keyword would be the “free” keyword as you don’t want to be showing your ad to people looking for totally free information. I normally have a list of about 10 – 30 negative keywords in any Adwords campaign that I have – this will ensure that my ad will only appear for the most targeted keyword terms, and thereby bringing me better profits.
Always do your research when it comes to choosing the keywords you wish to use, it will save you a lot of money in all the future Google Adwords campaigns you setup. Using the wrong keywords will simply cost you a lot of time and money. Don’t ever fall in the trap of thinking they MAY be interested in your services, most often they will click your ad and not convert.
Remember, think from the customers point of view who you think will be looking for your service.
Split Testing Guide For Your Google Adwords Ads
In this article I’m going to introduce split testing for Google Adwords ads and go into detail on how you can do this process yourself and increase click through rates (CTR). So let’s begin!
So what is split testing?
Split testing, in a nutshell, is the splitting of something into two or more versions and making one version different from the other, running a scenario and comparing the results. Ok, but what does this mean in Google Adwords?
Split testing, in a Google Adwords nutshell, often involves copying an ad, making a subtle change to the ad and running them both side by side to see which is more effective over a given time period. And by more effective this could mean increasing the click through rate (CTR), increasing the conversions, etc.
Below is a quick diagram of a typical split test…
Why is split testing important for my Google Adwords ads?
Split testing is vitally important to your Google Adwords campaign because it’s the constant effort of making your ads better, which in turn, increases clicks and quality score and then lowers your cost per click (CPC). It’s showing Google Adwords that you mean business and are trying to improve the relevancy (very important to Google) and profit margins of your advertising. Google will reward your efforts with a better quality score and CPC. This means lower costs, higher ad positions and hopefully, more sales!
Split testing is one of the best ways to increase your click through rate, and you guessed it, increased profit margins and lower Adwords spend.
What do I need to consider in order to perform a successful split test?
Now, there are certain conditions you need to ensure are present in order to run a succesfull split test for a Google Adwords ad. They are:
- That all ads in the test get an equal amount of views.
- That the difference between each ad (the change you are testing) is relatively small and the other elements stay the same.
Let’s look at these in more detail.
That all ads in the test get an equal amount of views. In order to get a fair test and accurate results you need to ensure that the ads get shown equally in the campaign. More often then not Google has enabled the “Optimise: Display better performing ads more often” – we don’t want this! This option picks a winning ad and shows it more often and thus gives the favourite more impressions.
To show ads evenly go to: Campaign Settings -> Advanced settings -> Ad Delivery -> Rotate: Show ads more evenly (make sure this is selected).
That the difference between each ad (the change you are testing) is relatively small and the other elements stay the same. In order to optimise and split test the ad, we need to test which elements perform better compared to another in the same ad. By elements we are talking ad titles, first lines, last lines, special offers, call to action, display URL. The list goes on. The trick is to change one of these elements and run the split test to see which is the winner in a given time period.
Ok, have you got an example of a Google Adwords ads split test?
I sure have! Lets consider the ad below…
Now, I wanted to split test the ad and compare the display URL (in green) to see if I could improve the effectiveness of the ad. So, I thought I would copy the ad and make a change to the display URL…
Notice how the display URL includes “Special-Offer” while the rest of the ad stays the same? You do? Great!
I ran both of these ads together in the same campaign and after four days I compared the results. I was pleasantly surprised! Long story short, the second version of the same ad increased Click Through Rate (CTR) in this instance by 1.1%! Considering it’s such a small change it’s a really big deal! This brought my average CTR for this campaign from 2.8% to a steady 3.95%. Not half bad if you ask me. Little changes can make a big difference to your Adwords ads!
What’s the easiest way to do a split test?
This is the easy bit! Simply go to your Adgroup tab, tick the tick box next to the ad and click the “New Ad” button. Your new ad should be automatically filled-in with the details of the ad you wish to split test. Simply make the subtle change and click the save button. Your ad will then go live once approved. Easy!
How long shall I let the split test run?
The best idea is to test the ads over the period of a week and then compare the results at the end. I say a week because different ads will get different exposures on different days and we want to make this as fair as possible. Over a week the ads should get plenty of clicks to determine which is the clear winner. Stick with it, it’s worth it!
What shall I do now?
Once you’re comfortable with split testing I say take the winning version of the Google Adwords ad and split further! Go wild – split test, pick winning ad and split test again and again, changing a small but key detail each time.
Remember, don’t go too far – only split the ad into two versions for a split test. Don’t try and split test into 3 or more as this only gets complicated and you’ll have mixed results. It’s the ad as a whole that makes users want to click them so best keep it simple!
Summary
So, to summarise:
- Ensure you copy the existing ad and make a subtle change to any part of the ad you think will improve it. Don’t try and split this into more than two!
- Make sure they get equal amount of views so it’s a fair test.
- Run the ad for at least a week and see which is the winner.
- Once a winner is found either remove the least effective ad or pause it.
- Split test further to see how high you can take this!
Thanks for reading and hope this helps you raise your profit margins. Please link to this article and post any comments/question below.
The Top 5 Ways To WASTE Money In Google Adwords
Today I’m going to share with you the top 5 Google Adwords mistakes I look for while taking on a new client. So let’s get this party started shall we!
Targeting the wrong keywords
Don’t be fooled, the name of the game is to get clicks and to turn these clicks into sales & leads. It’s not to target as many semi-relevant keywords as possible and to get your ad shown everywhere!
You know the difference between browsing keywords and buying keywords don’t you? No? Well. I’ll briefly go over these now.
Browsing keywords are the keywords people use to generally look for information on certain things. They are often short and generic in nature. These keywords are “research keywords” because they are generally interested in more information about the process but are not really in the “buying” frame of mind just yet. These tend to attract the “tire kickers” who will happily click on your ad in the aim to find more information they require.
Buying keywords are completely different. More often than not the search term is longer in nature and more detailed to exactly what they are looking for. Buying keywords are much more likely to convert into a lead/sale because the user knows what they want and are in the buying stage of the process. They know what product and service they require for the task at hand and are looking for the best company to get the job done for a certain price.
Here’s an example of people requiring information on link building and a link building service…
| Browsing keywords
“link building” “how to get links” “link building guide” “link building book” |
Buying keywords
“link building service” “link building company” “low cost link building service” “best link building company” |
As you can see above, the browsing keywords are people looking for information and the buying keywords are people looking for a company and service to do this for them.
Can you see now why just adding “link building” to your keyword list is such a bad idea?
If you’re not offering free information and looking to market to the “browsers” over time then I would avoid these search terms at all costs.
Remember, do your research and think from a buying perspective. It will save you thousands.
Using your budget too quickly
Why? Because you’re probably going to make a loss at first and I’m truly sorry about that.
Many times my clients try to get started themselves with little or no information of how Google Adwords works. They signup, create their first ad, add very generic keywords, set a high, or worse no daily budget, logout and expect lots of leads the next day. Sadly, they get no leads but they do get a very nasty surprise when they find out their bill is very large!
You can get started yourself but please, and I do mean this, set a low daily budget!
Having a low daily budget ensures you can learn before you spend a lot of money and you say to yourself “Adwords cost me a lot of money and just doesn’t work”. Stick with it and keep your budget low.
Not split testing your adds
One of the BIGGEST mistakes you can make in marketing is assuming you know exactly what your target market wants and desires. You assume you’ve create the perfect Adwords ad to attract the attention for your product or service so why would you create another one, right? WRONG! Why put all your eggs (and money) in one basket and give your Adwords campaign a bigger chance to fail?
Split testing not only lets the users vote for which one is better (with their clicks) but it also allows you to see which ads convert more and this means lower costs and more profit!
So, what’s the best way to split test I hear you ask? Well, that’s another huge area of Adwords Optimisation so I’ve covered that in another article called split testing and Google Adwords.
Ineffective Landing Pages
So you’ve created the perfect ad copy around the perfect buying keywords for your customers, right? So why are you directing your traffic towards either to a very generic page on the subject, or even worse, your homepage?
The ads landing page (also known as the squeeze page) should be tailored entirely around each campaign, or ad, that you’ve created. Yes it’s a lot more work but it will greatly increase the ROI for your Google Adwords.
Your landing page should be based entirely around why the visitor clicked your ad in the first place. If you promised a certain outcome in your ad then your landing page should directly respond to this. Remember, your ad sells the landing page and your landing page sells the product or service!
What more information and tips on Adwords landing pages? Read my other article on landing page optimisation.
Not turning off the Content Network
The content network is an entirely different beast all together! I would advise anyone who is relatively inexperienced with Google Adwords to turn this option off until they’re comfortable and know more about how it works.
What’s the content network? Well, it’s the ads that get placed on relevant websites (not Google search results) around the internet that list information you are trying to target. The general idea being that your target market are reading about a certain subject, see an ad that interests them and end up on your landing page.
The Content Network is completely different to the search network and is very misunderstood. The Content Network is enabled in the ad campaign by default so you have to manually opt out of this.
Ads and landing pages designed for the search network are generally treated by the visitors completely differently in the Content Network and it would be best to split the search network and Content Network into two different campaigns so you can monitor performance. Remember the point made on split testing?
It’s so important that it’s the first thing I look for while taking on a new client. My advice, turn it off and master the search network first, it will probably save you 30% to 40% of your advertising budget.
Thanks for reading, please share this!
So there you have, my top five ways to waste money on your Google Adwords campaigns. If you’re doing any of these methods I strongly suggest you look over these points in more detail!
Please feel free to link to this page and also send to everyone you know who is using Google Adwords for their business. It may just save them a lot of money.
As always, please add your comments and feedback below. Thank you.
Simple jQuery AJAX Example using GET in a single file!
This year after being converted to the wonderful world of jQuery I decided to use all of my AJAX processing using the AJAX feature in jQuery. It’s halfed my AJAX programming time! So I decided to create a very simple example so others can get started with AJAX in jQuery.
If you’re familar with AJAX then the following should mostly make sense to you…
You can also see a work example of this here.
<?php
//if someone is trying to access this file for AJAX use...
if($_GET['action'] == "jqueryajax")
{
echo "This is the AJAX output!!!";
}
else
{
//if someone is simply accessing the file for normal use, simply start a normal HTML document output...
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Simple jQuery AJAX GET example using a single file</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../javascript/jquery.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="targetdiv_id">This text will be replaced by the AJAX output or an error message.</div>
<script language="javascript">
function jquery_get()
{
//The following stores the id of the target DIV we wish to use for the output...
targetarea = "#targetdiv_id";
//Using the target we update the contents of it to show we are attempting to access the ajax command...
$(targetarea).html("Accessing AJAX via jQuery...");
//We use the jQuery AJAX routines...
$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
//The following tells jQuery where to look for the ajax and what command we want to use (see beginning of script)...
url: "jquery-ajax-get.php?action=jqueryajax",
dataType: 'html',
contentType: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
//How long we should wait before we giveup...
timeout: 10000,
complete: function(obj) {
//If the URL doesn't return a 200 code (ok) what shall we do...
if(obj.status != 200) {
$(targetarea).html("Failed to get a response from AJAX!");
}
},
success: function(obj) {
//if everything returns fine, we should output this! obj = what the ajax script outputs (see begging of script)!...
$(targetarea).html(obj);
},
error: function() {
//If AJAX doesn't work (invalid url to ajax processor for example), here is what we'll output...
$(targetarea).html("Error communicating with the AJAX processor!");
}
});
}
$(document).ready(function() {
//Once the document is ready, and jQuery is loaded, lets run the following...
jquery_get();
});
</script>
</body>
</html>
<?php
}
?>
So there you have it! A very simple method of demonstrating the jQuery AJAX GET method using a single file.
Let go over the process…
1. It loads the page and works out what kind of request is being used. Is it for normall HTML or AJAX?
2. If it’s for HTML, it gets it ready. We setup the target area (targetdiv_id) and then put some default text in.
3. Once the page is ready it loads jQuery and attempts to load the same page but in a different way (using a GET of “action=jqueryajax”)
4. It then outputs the result from the page using AJAX and puts the output in the target area (targetdiv_id).
5. That’s it!
Well there you have it – a really simple example of using the AJAX methods in jQuery with a seperate AJAX command processor.
Thanks for reading and please leave your comments!
Simple PHP benchmarking script
Recently I’ve been doing some client projects and wanted to compare two functions that performed the same task in a slightly different way. The only real test was to benchmark the functions and choose the most efficient. I came across a variety of different ways to benchmark my PHP functions and thought I’d share the easiest way to get started. Here is the simple code I used…
<?php
//start the timer - record in microseconds what the current server time is
$microtimeref = microtime(true);
$a = 0;
//start the loop to produce a benchmark of something we can relate to...
for ($i = 0; $i < 10000; $i++)
{
//perform the action you want to test...
$a++;
}
//finish the timer, subtract the start time from the end time, round up and output!
echo "Total time: " . round(microtime(true) - $microtimeref,3) . 's";
?>
As you can see it’s very basic but gets the job done. In order to get results you can actually measure, you have to do quite a lot of them and compare the results. A good starting block is 10,000 operations of the two functions you want to benchmark and note down the results.
I shared this because as a programmer you should always seek the most efficient way of performing a task (time permitting) to create a better system and help you grow as a programmer.
Thanks for reading, please add your comments!
Looking to upgrade your computer? Try a SSD hard drive first!
A few months ago I was looking to upgrade my computer because I was waiting just a little tooooo long for it to perform the things I needed. Applications became slugggggisssssh and it was becoming irritant to wait (especially as you can hear the hard drive churning away) . So, I started looking at upgrading the components to make it faster as I’ve done countless times before this.
It wasn’t long before I had priced up a new faster process, more memory and a fancy new motherboard to connect it all together.
Enter The SSD!
Before I purchased these fancy new items, a friend of mine recommended I purchase a SSD hard drive first and see if that improves my performance. I wasn’t too sure but had heard great things regarding SSDs and decided to jump in.
At the time it was around £130 for a 64GB model and thought best use for boot drive and keep my slower spindle SATA drives as storage (as I have around three and wanted to put them to good use). I ordered from eBuyer.com and it arrived the next day. So, as always, I got home and got to work on installing Windows 7 and my array of applications.
SSD Hard drive = Single best computer upgrade EVER!!!
Once I got everything installed and how I liked it I was simply BLOWN AWAY with how much of a performance boost it gave my computer. Things generally happen almost instantly and applications loaded in a snap!
I won’t bore you with stats (I’m sure you’ve already seen them elsewhere) but my Windows 7 load time halved! Loading up MS Visual Studio, Dreamweaver and other Adobe applications happened in just a few seconds. Generally, the SSD reduced my load time for applications etc by around 65% – that is a massive improvement.
I can honestly say that it has prolonged the life of my computer by an extra 2 to 3 years!
So remember! Try the SSD before purchasing a whole new system first. You’ll be pleasantly surprised and pleased with your self!
ALWAYS track your changes while performing SEO!
Recently I was performing some SEO for a client in the very competitive market of accountancy. Things where going great! I moved them from page 7 to page 2 in Google in a matter of weeks. Perfect, I was a rock star*!
One week I made a minor change to their title tag and the next crawl I moved a whole page DOWN in Google just before their SEO Rankings Report was due in a few days! I thought “Oh ****”!
Luckily, I decided to track all my changes in a spreadsheet with dates and time and saw it must have been a title tag change to cause such a big loss in the rankings. With a few clicks of a mouse and a few pings their rankings where back to normally and I was a rock star* again.
So, just to recap, ALWAYS track the changes you make!
