One of the best kept secrets of the Web is the fact that about 50% of search queries on any given day have never been entered into a search engine before. People type all kinds of crazy stuff into search engines. Often, the more specific and unique the keyword, the better it converts.

This means that the keyword data that shows up in Google Analytics should be a gold mine of opportunity to find new keywords as well as negative keywords. Google AdWords’ broad matching option includes an “expanded matching” feature that pulls in all kind of related keyword strings. Expanded matching captures the good, the bad, and the ugly keywords that you may or may not want in your campaign.

The problem is that Google Analytics does not give the data on the keywords that you need to build out your campaigns and target them better. It’s strange, but true. If you look in your paid keywords reports in Google Analytics for AdWords, you will only see the keywords in your campaigns that pulled the visitor to your site – you will not see the actual search query. For example, if your keyword in

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List provided by Dev Basu:

1. Microsoft AdCenter Search Funnel
2. Niche Bot
3. Trellian Free Search Term Suggestion Tool
4. Niche Watch
5. SEO Book Google Tool
6. Keyword Lizard Google AdWords Keyword Combination Tool
7. GoLexa All-in-One SEO Tool
8. Ontology-Related Keyword Finder
9. Google Suggest

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Often, clients have glaring issues with SEO that are preventing them from getting high page rankings.

The most common issues and the easiest to fix are the title tags and meta-tags. Your title tags need to be properly optimized to tell the search robots what is on your page. They should not be longer than 80 characters, and they should target your very best keywords. Your description meta-tags are also very important. Most of the time, webmasters write these tags with just a boilerplate description of your site with some keywords thrown in. What most people don’t know is that the description meta-tag is the most common source of your “snippet.” A snippet is the summary of your site that the search engines use in their search results. You should write a description meta-tag the same way you would write a pay-per-click ad, except you have 150 characters to work with instead of 70. You can incorporate a much stronger message with many more keywords. If you want to see a site that uses title tags and description tags effectively, check out Amazon.com.

Another quick change to help your site increase search rankings is by increasing the cross-linking within your site.

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We find that gaining high quality scores is similar to search engine optimization tactics from 1999. Like early search engine optimization, quality score is largely based on keyword density, but the density in this case is not created on a single page. Instead, it follows a keyword on your landing page through the URL to the ad text and back to the keyword that triggers that page.

So if you want a great quality score, you need a tightly themed Adgroup with a small list of keywords. You then need to write ads that feature these keywords, so they get bolded on the search results pages and generate a high click-through rate. It’s also best if these same keywords are placed in the URL, headline, and title tag of the landing page and are featured in the ad copy of the page. We call this “keyword siloing.”

It also helps if your landing page has some valuable content or links to content. Pure “squeeze pages” with no content (just lead forms and a picture) are being penalized by Google. Google states on their Site Quality Guidelines page: “Try to provide information without requiring

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So how do we go about targeting your campaign and avoiding overly broad, expanded-match keywords? We generate an extensive negative keyword list to run against your broad-match keywords. To build a great negative keyword list, we first work off a generic list of negatives that work across many campaign categories. Words such as free, career, jobs, courses, etc. are often good negative keywords.

To find more negative keywords that are unique to your market, we will run a “search query report” from your AdWords campaign and get a partial list of queries that triggered your ads. We will see if there are any keywords we want to block. We also use special javascript code to pull out the actual search queries in your Google Analytics reports, but the real skill of using negatives is in knowing how to apply them to your account.

The matrix below shows exactly how Google treats negative broad, phrase, and exact-match keywords against a variety of search queries. Study this chart carefully to make sure you are using these match types properly. (Click on the chart to enlarge)

What this chart does

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Key elements that make a great landing page

If you want to read a great article by some of the best minds in landing page research, try this post at MarketingExperiments.com. You will find links on the page to podcasts that describe the very latest research in landing page optimization.

The experts at MarketingExperiments.com stress that landing pages need to be consistent with the ads that brought the visitor to the page. The landing page itself should have one consistent message that is clear to any visitor (just because you know what you are selling doesn’t mean the visitor knows). The headline on the landing page should grab the reader’s attention, and the ad copy should clearly express your value proposition. The page should have a clear call to action with phone numbers, action buttons, and lead contact forms clearly visible on the page.

Your content should be organized on the page, so the reader can follow it straight down the left side of the page with no interruptions. Use a two-column format or one-column format with the column on the right if possible. The points mentioned above sound simple. The

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If you want to do some homework on your own to improve your Internet marketing campaign, we recommend you check out MarketingSherpa.com and MarketingExperiments.com. In fact, if you go to these sites and subscribe to their newsletters, you will likely find some ideas right away that will generate instant improvements in your campaign. For search engine optimization news, trends, and advice, there are dozens of blogs and sites that provide a wealth of information. One of our favorite sites is Sphinn.com. This site is modeled on the Digg.com social bookmarking platform. You will see articles on this site posted and ranked by the very top experts in the search marketing field.

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Although the interview is limited to discussing e-commerce sites, the topics covered can be applied to lead-generation sites as well. In the webinar, conversion expert Ayat Shukairy of INVESP Consulting gives a detailed explanation of how her company increases her clients’ conversion rates into the double digits. Bearing in mind that most e-commerce sites only convert 2 to 3 percent of their traffic, this can mean an enormous increase in profits. If you invest time and effort in increasing your conversion rates, you will absolutely crush your competitors. Watch the video, learn the methods, and then call us to help you implement a careful plan to improve your campaign. Increasing conversion rates is probably the most important part of any campaign. Most people become obsessed with increasing traffic to their site. Imagine seeing a fourfold increase in your sales volume without spending a dime more on traffic. Furthermore, improving conversion rates is a capital expense that builds equity in your site. Sites with high conversion rates are extremely valuable because they are securing a long-term future for themselves in the market.

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While most people jump to conclusions and speculate, we choose to follow the research on this long-debated topic. The general rule of thumb is that the more expensive and complex your product is, the longer your copy needs to be. Most expert copywriters agree that ad copy needs to be as long as it has to be to present the full story about your product. Sometimes this is 200 words, and other times it can be 5000 words.

If you have the time, we highly recommend you listen to the audio and read the complete study at marketingexperiments.com. Below is a brief excerpt from the study in which the authors summarize their findings:

Again, long copy outperformed short copy; this time by an even greater factor of nearly four to one. Our ROI was a dismal -66% for the short copy page and a very respectable 50% for the long copy page. In general, long copy offers the following advantages:

1. Your visitors will have most of their questions answered and will have less anxiety about ordering from you.

2. Long copy can reduce customer service by qualifying your customers to a greater degree.

3. Long copy with bolded

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