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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '2 Million Backlinks and 15 SEO Answers from Google's Matt Cutts'

I’ve covered some pretty controversial topics in recent weeks when it comes to SEO. Revealing I’m a scammer, showing how freshness is being abused and then doing a follow-up blog post to show the same again. Though at times it may seem like I’m being a bit harsh on Google, I have acknowledged that the job their staff have must be one of the hardest in the world. Trying to defend yourself against thousands (millions?) of people who are focused on nothing more than gaming their system on a daily basis.

I still feel though that the search results from 2011 and 2012 are just far better than what we’ve seen in 2013. Google should not be getting tricked by people simply changing the date on a blog post and thinking that it’s suddenly fresh and deserves better rankings. There’s also no doubt in my mind that Youtube has a huge algorithmic preference over other video platforms like Vimeo, Wistia & DailyMotion, no matter what Google say about keeping things fair.

My original plan with this blog post was just to share with you the answers from the Webmaster videos that Google share on their channel which are primarily hosted by their head of web spam, Matt Cutts. Then my brain went off on a bit of a tangent and I wanted to cover how much you can really trust about what Google themselves preach. Their head of webspam, Matt, is someone who has no doubt made millions of dollars from his Google stock options (he joined 13 years ago) so my only prognosis is that he genuinely enjoys his job and the intelligent people he gets to work with every day.

On the face of it, you have to give Google credit for making the effort. They don’t really have to give any advice to SEO’s or webmasters; they can just ignore the whole lot and I honestly don’t think it would impact their search market share. Good luck convincing your friends outside of search to start using Bing or Yahoo anytime soon. On the other hand though, it’s also clear to see that most of the videos are just a PR stunt for Google, trying to encourage their ideal internet to make their own jobs easier.

The biggest thing that stands out to me from all of these questions and answers on their Youtube channel is just how scared of SEO the general webmaster seems to be. So much talk of penalties, the disavow tool and updates like Penguin and Panda have put the ‘mom and pop’ on the back foot and worried about doing literally anything to their site.

15 SEO Answers Directly from Google’s Matt Cutts

Whether they give you information you can actually use or should take with more than a grain of salt is debatable, but I recommend every internet marketer who focuses on search to at least watch and read the information Google put out there. It can be a little tedious to go through lots of 5 minute videos from their Webmaster Help Channel, so I did it for you and put the answers together here.

Is load speed a more important factor for mobile? Is it really something that can change your rankings, all other things being equal?

“All things being equal, if your site is really really slow, we do use page speed in our rankings. All things being equal, then yes, a site can rank lower. Look at your neighborhood of websites and if you’re the outlier – your site is very very slow – then you may rank lower.

It’s not that in mobile we apply that any more or any less for desktop search.”

What should we do with embeddable codes in things like widgets and infographics? Should we include the rel=”nofollow” by default?

“My answer is coloured by the fact that we’ve seen a ton of people trying to abuse widgets and abuse infographics. We’ve seen people with a web counter and they don’t realise there’s links with mesothelioma in there. I would not rely on infographics and widgets as your primary way to gather links. I would recommend putting a no-follow, especially on widgets. Depending on the scale of what you’re doing with infographics, you might want to put a rel=”nofollow” on those as well”

What can I do if someone – like my competition – is trying to harm me with bad backlinks?

“You’ve done the right thing; you got in touch with site owners and you’ve said look, please don’t link to me I don’t want to have anything to do with your site. If those folks aren’t receptive then just go ahead and disavow those links. As long as you’ve taken those steps you should be in good shape.”

As memorable .com domains become more expensive, developers are choosing alternate new domains like .IO and .IM which Google geo-targets to small areas. Do you discourage this activity?

“You can pick any domain you want, but if you pick a domain like .ES or .IT because you think you can make a novelty domain like Google.it – “Google it” – or something like that, do be aware that most domains at that specific level do pertain to that specific content. We think that content is going to be mainly intended for that country.

There are a few country code top level domains that are sort of generic because, for example, .IO stands a for something related to the Indian Ocean but there were very few domains that were actually relevant to that. We might go ahead and say okay this is a generic country code level top level domain.”

How does Google treat hidden content which becomes visible when clicking a button? For example a page to buy something then a “show details” button which shows more information.

“If you’re using a tiny little button that people can’t see and there’s 6 pages of content buried in there that users can’t see and that’s keyword stuffing, then that is something we could possibly consider hidden text and probably would consider hidden text.

In general if you just have an ‘ajaxy’ sort of site and things get revealed and you’re trying to keep things clean, that’s not the sort of thing that’s going to be on the top of our list to worry about because a lot of different sites do that. It’s pretty common on the web.”

How does duplicate content that’s legally required (i.e Terms & Conditions across multiple offers) affect performance in search?

“I wouldn’t stress about this, unless the content you have that’s duplicated is spammy or keyword stuffing or something like that I wouldn’t worry about it. We do understand that various places across the web do need to have disclaimers and various legal information.”

Should a customer with 20 domain names link them all together or not, and if he does should he add no follow to the links?

“First off, why do you have 20 domain names? *Giggles* If it’s all cheap online casinos or medical malpractice in Ohio, having 20 domain names there can look pretty spammy and I would probably not link them all together.

On the other hand, if you have 20 domain names and they’re all versions of your domain in different countries then it can make sense to have some way to get from one version of the domain to another version. Even then I wouldn’t link all of the domains in the footer, all by themselves. I would probably have one link to a country locator page on the main .com.”

A client got unnatural link warnings in September 2012 without any example links. 90% of links were removed and I asked for examples in every reconsideration request. Shouldn’t it be better to have live / cached “list” of bad links or penalties in Google Webmaster Tools?

“We’re working on being more transparent and giving more information in messages as we can. I wouldn’t try to say “hey, give me examples” in a reconsideration request (RR) because a RR will read what you say but we can only really give a small number of replies.

Yes the RR has been granted or no you still have work to do. There’s a very thin middle ground which is ‘your request has been processed’. That usually only applies if you have multiple web spam actions.”

If my site goes down for a day, does it affect my rankings when this happens?

“If it goes down for a day then you should be in good shape. If it goes down for two weeks then there’s a better indicator that your site is actually down and we don’t want to send users to a site that is down. If it was only just a short period of downtime I really wouldn’t worry about that.”

If I write about another article, where should I link to the original source?

“Whatever way you choose to do will work fine for Google’s ranking because the link – whether it’s at the bottom of the article or whether it’s in that first paragraph – it still flows pagerank either way. Credit will flow to the website that you’re referring to.

For my personal preference, I prefer when a link is relatively close the top of the article.”

Which aspect of Google updates do you think the SEO industry simply won’t get? Where do you see many SEOs spending too much energy on when they could be taking care of other things?

“One is the difference between an algorithm update versus just a data refresh. When you change an algorithm the signals that you’re using and how you weight those signals are fundamentally changing. When you’re doing just a data refresh, then the way that you run the computer program stays the same but you might have different incoming data or refresh the data that the algorithm is using.

I’ve seen a lot of accusations after Panda and Penguin that Google is just trying to increase its revenue. Let me confront that head on. Panda, if you go back and look at Google’s quarterly statements they actually mention that Panda decreased our revenue.

A lot of people have these conspiracy theories that Google is making these changes to make more money. Not only do we not think that way in the search quality team, we’re more than happy to make changes which are better for the long-term quality of our users.

A lot of people think about “how do I build more links” and they don’t think about the grander global picture like how do I make something compelling and then how do I make sure that I market well. You get too focused on search engines and then totally miss social media and for example social media marketing.”

Why does Google continue to present multiple results from one domain on a search result?

“In the past it was the case that you could search for ‘antique green glass’ and all of the results might be from one domain and that was kind of a bad experience. We introduced something called host clustering which means for each hostname – so like per subdomain – you only get two results.

We then saw people – spammers and bunch of different webmasters adapt – say “ok, do a bunch of different sub-domains and get two results from one hostname, two results from another hostname” and they can get back to crowding up the whole results page again.

We changed things again because we do want diversity in our search results and we made it such that you can get results from one domain then another result from one domain then other results from that domain get progressively harder and harder to rank.

We then made another change not too long ago where we say – if someone is searching for rental cabins in Tennessee – and there’s a really good website about that it may be helpful to show more than just a few results from that domain.

Once you’ve saw a cluster of results from one domain, once you go through subsequent pages we wont show you that domain again so that should help improve the diversity.”

What does Google think of single-page websites? There are some great websites using only a single page (& lots of CSS and Javasvcript) bringing the same user experience as a regular website with many subpages?

Google has gotten better at handling javascript and a lot of times if you’re doing some different or strange JavaScript interaction or having things fold in or out we’re pretty good at being able to process that. In general I wouldn’t bet your SEO legacy on this one single page working well.

If it works for you and users to have that all on one page, for the most part it should work for Google as well.”

Do Google take action on sites that do keyword stuffing (with phone numbers)?

The answer is yes we do. We get a lot of complaints about that. When you type in a phone number of you just get page after page after page of those cookie-cutter sites you get really annoyed and we hear those complaints internally within Google. We treat it basically as keyword stuffing as you’re repeating very similar words after each other – just like someone throwing a dictionary up on the web (but with numbers).

We do consider that web spam.”

Matt’s Comments in a Video about Negative SEO

“We try to think about whether there’s a way that person A could hurt person (competitor) B. We try really hard to design algorithms which are robust and resistant to that sort of thing.

At the same time, a lot more people are thinking about their backlinks…what if people try to do negative SEO? Where they point links at a site to try and make that site rank lower. In my view there are very few people who talk about negative SEO and fewer who try it and fewer still who actually succeed.

We’ve just uploaded a Disavow tool which allows people to upload a text file of links and say “I would like Google to ignore these links to my site.” If you’re someone who wants to do Negative SEO it’s probably a much better use of your time to try and do something productive.”

How Much Can We Take Seriously?

It really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you that spamming Youtube to death works pretty well after my last few blog posts, but it’s a shame that it happens in such prominent industries. And even more of a shame when it comes from networks that Google definitely seems to know about.

First came the tweet from Matt:

I didn’t actually catch this at the time (hat tip to GOS) but it definitely went viral among the Blackhat forums which you can see with pretty much any Google search on the topic. Many of them who relied on Russian link networks started getting a little worried.

Further confirmation came a month later when the highly respected Barry Schwartz covered the topic on Search Engine Land. SEL is without a doubt the most respected publication when it comes to search engine news, so it wasn’t hard to put two and two together judging by the dates on the tweet and their post.

It’s easy to think when you read something like this that you should totally stay away from any of these networks. Especially when they’ve been called out specifically. I mean something so public surely isn’t going to work in Google anymore is it?

How’s this for irony. Let’s look at two popular SEO related search terms. These are arguably some of the most competitive search terms on the web not because of their search volume (although they do get 40K+ exact searches per month) but because you’re literally competing against other people who consider themselves to be among the best at getting top search engine rankings.

And what do we have ranking number #1 for ‘SEO Company’?

Note: I did edit this screenshot to remove the Adwords ads but didn’t alter the positioning of results

An awful Youtube video. I use proxies any time I perform these kind of searches and I’m not logged into Google. The comments I’ll show you in a second clearly prove I’m not the only one seeing these results either. They might change in a few days from this post – I don’t know – but the ones I’ve called out in recent blog posts over the last few months haven’t changed.

Let’s put in another search term like ‘SEO Services’ which gets over 40,000 exact searches per month. It’s a pretty ideal buyer’s keyword if you’re looking for SEO clients:

So where are these links coming from? Well, you can of course start digging into the backlink profile, but other members of the SAPE network pretty much give it away themselves:

And if you’re not convinced, tell me when you last saw such a natural link profile like this one below. Over 2 million backlinks in such a short period of time, more than likely from the SAPE.ru link network.

Please be aware that there are a lot of imitators in Google trying to rank for the name of this network to get customers because of how well it works. They are not the service I’m referring too here. We’re focusing solely on the Russian network that was supposedly taken down and ‘dealt’ with already.

I could do this stuff all day long. Oh wait, I do. The list of examples I have is mind-blowing.

As a side note: My ‘private SEO circle’ is opening 20-30 new places on September the 2nd (will probably max out after an hour or two) so send me an email to HQ @ name of this website if it’s something you might be interested in.

The Google PR Spin

I really wanted to leave some feedback after each Matt Cutts’ answer but I didn’t want to ruin the flow of your reading. Comments like “[don't do negative SEO] it’s a much better use of your time to do something productive” and “just go ahead and disavow those links” aren’t exactly ideal to me when you consider that Google don’t show all of the bad links they supposedly know about pointing to your site. With great timing, Jim Boykin shared some responses from an interview he just did with Google’s John Mueller over Google Hangouts. Here are some of the main takeaways:

• Google supposedly have technical limitations for how many ‘bad links’ they can show in Webmaster tools (1,000 links from 1,000 domains) – I find this hard to believe by the way
• Don’t think you’ll get help from Google on this when Matt commented above that you shouldn’t expect people who handle reinclusion requests to send you example links
• It’s up to you to disavow links even if they’re from sites that scraped content from those that already link to you
• The links in webmaster tools in many cases are years old and rarely get updated (this is from Jim’s experience, not mine) making the job even harder

My thoughts for a while now – which I’m glad Jim touched upon – are basically why can’t Google just give those links no value rather than relying on us to do the job for them and report links which may have been built unnaturally. John’s response: “Well, if we could recognize all of them I guess that might be a possibility.”

There’s a lot to take away from that statement. It’s near impossible for Google to be able to detect with 100% accuracy that certain links are good while others are bad and thus rely on us to report it for them. There are exceptions of course, but then again you have to keep in mind a) Whether something was Negative SEO on another site by a competitor and b) blanket rules for this in the algorithm would wreak havoc across normal search results.

Recently there was a bit of drama surrounding a Moz.com post which suggested that Google +1′s were the number one factor in getting search engine rankings these days. This was quickly debunked by Matt over on Hacker News and the post on Moz was edited to reflect that they had meant that shares on Google+ were getting sites rankings. I’m not here to bash Moz but the correlation does not equal causation. Sites that write good content generally have readers who will share their content on social media sites like Google+ and they are actively attracting new backlinks anyways which help their rankings.

I am here to point out how much Matt dodged a lot of questions on that thread and really didn’t want to talk about shares having an effect on rankings (all that juicy pagerank) but just reverted to the good old Google PR angle “focus on creating great content”. Just like that amazing video that ranks number #1 for SEO company and top 3 for SEO services, right?

If you’re new here, I did write a few blog posts recently which show lots of other examples of terrible search results and I tend to get a few dozen more in my inbox from readers every time I write a blog post like this. I really don’t like to be the person to call out too many examples though (I blurred the links in my last post on request from someone I had ‘outed’).

To wrap up this post, there are a few things I want you to keep in mind:

• Listen to what Google have to say via these channels, but don’t take it too seriously past common sense
• Do not do crazy SEO tests on your money site (the site you can’t ‘risk’) but do SEO tests
• Remember that while Google may have around 2.5 million servers, the people who put these algorithms together sit down for staff meetings at a conference table every week to try and deal with the challenges they face just like you or I would (but a little smarter)

Next week I’m sharing a replay of my first ever webinar which shows you some SEO tactics you can put into place that take affect immediately and will give you an upper hand on people who only read SEO blogs and don’t follow through with their own testing. You’re going to love it (I hope)! Thank you, as always, for reading…

You may view the latest post at http://www.viperchill.com/2-million-backlinks/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '3 Conversion Tricks I Use to Get More Leads Than You (+ Free Squeeze Page Template)'

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When I released OptinSkin back at the beginning of 2012, one of the main marketing angles for the product was that it allows split-testing. Similarly, when I released my free training guide Cloud Blueprint, split-testing was stressed so much as something that can take you from being someone who does ‘okay’ online to someone who can quit their job. When changing just one word on your sales or squeeze page can literally mean a 1,000% change in conversions, I’m amazed when I don’t see people doing it.

Today I’m going to share some of my more private landing page tips that help me get more subscribers and sales than my competition in virtually any niche I enter. I’m also going to give you a high-converting squeeze page template you can customize until your heart’s content. Finally, I’ll share – step-by-step – how to implement split-testing so you have no reason not to be doing it.

100% Free HTML Squeeze Page

I want to kick off this post by giving away a totally free HTML squeeze page that you can use to easily collect email subscribers. I did have the idea of using WordPress and custom pages for this giveaway but I thought it would be too much hassle to make it compatible with people’s themes etc. (and there are premium plugins which do exactly this). The freebie is more about giving you an easy way to quickly get into split-testing without needing any technical knowledge (besides FTP) and start building your readership.

I designed this after putting together so many squeeze pages recently for sites in my PPC case study and this template was one of the best that I found to be working. You can view a preview of it and some of the features, below:

Installation

To install the template, you simply need FTP access to your server. If you do not have this, simply ask your web host what those details would be and then use a tool like Filezilla to access your site. Navigate to wherever your website files are – usually public_html – and create a new folder for the name of your squeeze page. EmailA or something similar is fine. Then just drag and drop the theme that I give you to this location, and it will be up and running instantly.

The theme can be found here: http://www.viperchill.com/SqueezePage.zip (Right Click > Save Link As)

User Guide

I did spend a lot of time putting this together so the user guide is behind a little ‘share please’ box. I’ve never done anything like this before, but would appreciate it if you could help me spread the word. If you are more technically inclined already it should be very easy to edit the theme without the guide. However, if you are a beginner, you’ll get access to a huge page on this website which gives you a lot more information.

6 Things I Learned from My Last Round of Split-Testing

Please keep in mind that the following lessons may or may not work well in your industry. The true beauty of split-testing is that you really never know what is going to convert highly for your audience and the plus side is that there’s always a lot of fun in trying.

1. A laptop screen above my opt-in form worked better than a DVD style cover, an eBook cover and an audio CD graphic. The audio CD was by far the worst graphic that I tested. Keep in mind that I did put an image on the laptop screen that was relevant to what I was giving away and didn’t just leave it blank

2. A blue opt-in box worked better than any other colour I tested. Even when I matched the opt-in box to other colours on the site (such as having a red box with a red title) I still couldn’t beat blue with blue for my particular niche.

3. Having a Facebook like box on the page lowered conversions every single time. I’ve had it help when I’m selling a product, but for a squeeze page it just seemed to take people’s attention away from what I was actually doing. Heat-mapping tells me that people weren’t clicking on it – which is fine, I don’t want them to – so it’s not simply that I was directing them elsewhere and thus lowering conversions.

4. Words like “Weird” “unexpected” “unexplainable” “shocking” and so on which increase people’s curiosity helped a great deal. For instance, it would be better for me to say “This weird piece of software sped up my PC overnight” then something really clean and clear like “I installed this software and my computer became faster”. That’s just an example; I’m not involved in the speeding up of your computers.

5. The title still has the biggest impact for me when it comes to increasing conversions. This not only includes the words used as mentioned above, but the colour and even more importantly the font that is used.

6. Having an image underneath the opt-in box (even like the grass you see in my example) could not be beaten. It increased my conversion rate every single time. I played with this to show people’s faces, screenshots of the software they were getting, random ‘press’ images, and so on. Though not all of the images worked much better, every single one increased conversion rates in some way.

Using My Magic Grass Idea for Higher Conversion Rates

The last point there, number 6, was what I refer to as ‘magic grass’. It’s a really simple idea but something that just seems to work over and over again for me when it comes to getting more opt-ins. Have something on your page that people are likely to click on and then remind them to opt-in using a javascript alert.

Click on the grass below to get an idea of what I’m talking about (you’ll have to be viewing this on site, and not in an RSS reader or your inbox):

If you’re using this on a really long page – like this blog post – you’ll have to pick a point in the page using the anchor attribute for HTML links where the user is returned to after they click OK. You probably noticed you got redirected to just above the grass. Typically I don’t have to do this on opt-in pages as they’re short enough that people don’t have to scroll, so it’s fine if someone is taken back to the ‘top’ of the page.

Here’s the code:

<a href="#" onClick="alert('Hold on quick fingers! Enter your email address in the box for INSTANT ACCESS to your free guide!')">IMAGE CODE HERE</a>

Make sure you put the code for an HTML image or whatever it is you want to trigger a pop-up where I have written ‘IMAGE CODE HERE’. It works especially well for:

• Any graphics on the page showing what you’re promoting
• Graphics showing underneath your opt-in form (possibly as wide as the page)
• Thumbnails showing a clip of a video they’re about to get access to

You can make the message be anything really. Just make sure you’re not condescending and make sure you do write in a fun, playful way. The key point is to remind people that they’ll get the bonus or benefit once they opt-in.

If you use any kind of heat mapping software (I use what’s built into Visual Website Optimizer which I’ll cover later) then you can see where people are clicking and then use that section of your page to trigger this kind of javascript alert.

Please note that I actually wasn’t using a picture of grass in the heatmap above, but I was using something with the same image dimensions (wide but short) which was semi-relevant to what I was giving away. You can split-test this of course to see what works best for you.

Don’t Show Your Add to Cart Button Instantly

This works especially well if you’re doing one of those ‘free guide’ or free presentation style videos where you are actually using that free concept to push towards a sale. If people can see an “Add to Cart” button under the video from the very start they know you have more intentions than just giving away something for free. At least give them a chance to give you a chance by delaying the effect.

<script type="text/javascript">
function showBuyLink() {
document.getElementById("buylink").style.visibility = "visible";
}
// adjust this as needed, 1 sec = 1000
setTimeout("showBuyLink()", 230000);
</script>
<div id="buylink" style="visibility: hidden" align="center">
YOUR ADD TO CART BUTTON / LINK GOES HERE
</div>

Don’t forget to change the part in bold with how long you want the delay to be. 1000 equals a 1 second delay. If you’re promoting a 10 minute video then I recommend trying about 3-4 minutes in because at least this way you’re only showing it to people once you’ve really got their attention with it. As with the theme of this blog post though, this is something you should absolutely be testing.

Get People to Click-in and They’ll Opt-in

This was one of the random ideas I had a few weeks ago that I put into action. At first it sucked pretty badly but with some tweaking it did outperform other pages in some ways. I found that it worked best when someone already know of me / my website and then went to buy or sign-up for something. However for cold traffic it didn’t seem to be as effective as having everything on one page by default.

What this does is basically lure people into taking a very simple action – clicking a link – and then getting them to opt-in or convert in other ways after. For example, you would say you’re giving away something for free and then tell people to click a link to get that free thing – making them assume the link is the access. That link then just unveils more content on that same page and doesn’t take them anywhere else.

My guess is that – psychology wise – they’ve already performed one action and engaged with the page so they’re more likely to repeat it and engage again. Here’s an example below:

This wont work if you’re reading this in your inbox or an RSS reader, you’ll have to come to the post

Click here to download your 100% free PDF

What you reveal is not a boom graphic but the rest of your page where they convert. Hat tip goes to RS for the code. There is a much better way of doing it that I used to use but I can’t find the old code source I’m afraid. The “much better” way simply means that you don’t have to write Click here to download 3 times in a row in the code. It’s only a once off thing though.

Split-Testing is Everything

Split-testing is so crucial to your success when it comes to sales page and squeeze pages that I just can’t over-hype it enough. If you’re not testing, you’re losing money. I can enter brand new niches where I know less about the market than anyone else and quickly overtake their income because I’m finding out what a particular audience really responds to rather than just guessing based on my extensive “experience”. This is not just some broad statement either, I’ve done this for friends and clients where I know very specific figures about their income / leads and I’ve been able to surpass that through nothing but hardcore testing.

Here’s a good example from Mind Valley when they split-tested promoting the Silva Method which has millions of customers.

Recently for example, I removed all text from the Backlinks XXX sales page and replace it with a video. We’ve tried (and are trying) lots of videos on the sales page. Every single variation with a video beat the version of the page with a lot of text that I had in place for months. It sucks that I put so much time and effort into some of the graphics we had up on that page – literally a week of solid work – only to find out it’s not really helping us get sales at all.

But that’s what testing is for. You have to put your ego aside and accept that something else might be working better even if you don’t want it to be. I’ve put together two short guides for you on how to set up testing with different services.

Split-Testing with Visual Website Optimizer

I read the story behind Visual Website Optimizer (not an affiliate link) recently and have to say it was pretty inspiring. Started by one guy out in Mumbai, India, all he wanted was to make $1,000 per month from the service to replace his current income and then some. A few years down the line he’s pulling in millions of dollars per month, works with his best friends, and never took money from a single investor.

Not a bad end result.

The reason the service is so successful is because they’re great at every aspect of their offering. Great support, a great interface and most importantly, great (and fast) results for your split tests. When you first sign-up to the service you get a list of options for split-testing as you can see below:

A/B testing and Multivariate testing seem to be the most popular that I read about online. A/B testing will basically replace one object of the page for you with another. Like swapping between a red opt-in box and a blue opt-in box. Multivariate testing will variate through multiple objects on your page (such as titles, graphics, fonts — whatever you choose) and try to find you the best end result. Multivariate testing only really works well if you have a lot of traffic though, as there are so many variables that it needs to test.

I don’t actually use either of these, but instead rely on split-URL testing. I make too many odd changes (such as changes to the code snippets I shared above) that I find easier just to keep on separate pages of WordPress and use the split-URL options.

After you’ve then put in different variations of the page you want to test, it’s time to select what your goal is. Visual Website Optimizer have options for pretty much everything:

I generally use either visits a page or submits a form. Both of them can be used for tracking opt-ins as you put in your form submit URL from Aweber or you can put your thank you page in as the page that someone has to visit. If you aren’t sure what to track or how to track it then I recommend sending through an email to support. I had a unique situation with some membership site software I run (they go to Paypal then back to my website) and wanted to ensure it would be tracked correctly as the produce is expensive (and sales rarer) so I would have to wait a while for it to test properly.

They promptly responded and helped me select the correct variable.

With testing, your results aren’t always going to be better than your original page. Sometimes your gut instinct is pretty good and the changes you make actually lower conversions. Here’s an example of this happening for me:

Sometimes they go the right way but it’s hard to separate a winner (it can take a lot of traffic) and you need a little patience. I do have far more clear cut examples of of successful testing but this was such an anomaly for me that I had to take a screenshot. I know the traffic numbers are very low so it’s too early to pick a winner, but never have I ever seen the exact number of conversions from visitors for two additional variations that I’m testing.

Split-Testing with Google Analytics Experiments

Google used to have their own split-testing tool that was independent from Analytics called Google Website Optimizer. It seems these days this is now built into Google Analytics so you’ll need to make sure you’re running that on your website to take advantage of this free offering. I personally don’t use Google Analytics at all anymore – though my clients do – so don’t have any personal tests to show you.

I will show you how to set it up though. Once you’ve logged into your Analytics account, you’re going to want to click on Content then select Experiments. You’ll be faced with the following options window:

For the percentage of traffic to test I would probably go for 100% unless you’re making some drastic changes that might put off a large portion of your audience. If that’s the case, then scale things down accordingly.

The next option will then ask you to define the goal (conversion) you wish to track. Something simple like someone landing on your thank you page – where they get redirected after subscribing to your email list – is an obvious one you can use for testing both your own site and on my free squeeze page.

You’ll then see a preview of the experiment before it goes live with the tracking code you’ll need to install on your site.

Simply follow the instructions here and you should be up and running. As mentioned earlier, I don’t use Google Analytics for website tracking so unfortunately don’t have any reports to share with you like I do for Visual Website Optimizer. As with most things Google though, it appears incredibly easy to set-up and be on your way to getting more conversions if you don’t have the budget (or desire) to use VWO.

I hope I’ve inspired you to give split-testing a go if you aren’t doing it already. And if you are doing it, some code and ideas which might help to improve your conversions even further. If you have any questions or feedback, I’m here in the comments. I would love to know what you think…

You may view the latest post at http://www.viperchill.com/ultimate-squeeze/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Securing your Google Account after a possible hack'

A couple friends have recently had security scares with their Gmail account where they were worried that their accounts might have been hacked. I was emailing one of them about how to make sure that your account is safe, and I realized it might be handy to post this on my blog as well.

Here’s the email that I just wrote to a friend:

Here’s what I’d do:
- change your password (make sure you’re on google.com when you change your password)
- check for any strange activity. In Gmail, go to the bottom right and look for a message that looks like “Last account activity: 30 minutes ago. Open in 1 other location” and click on the “Details” link and look for any unusual logins, for example log ins from countries that you haven’t been in recently.
- Also check for weird forwarding rules. If hackers get into your Gmail, sometimes they’ll create a rule that forwards all your email to them. To check your filtering rules, in Gmail click on the gear icon in the top right, then select Settings from the drop down. Click on the link for “Filters” and just check whether there’s any rules that look suspicious to you.

In an ideal world, you’d turn on two-factor authentication like is described at https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/180744?hl=en . It’s more hassle to use two-factor authentication, but it makes your account much more secure against being hacked.

I’m a big fan of two-factor authentication, but I realize that casual users might not want to turn it on. My take is that it’s a lot better to set up two-factor authentication than worry about a hacked account.

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/xfmicHdeOWQ/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '30 day challenge: record a second of video every day'

For June 2013, my 30 day challenge was to record a second of video every day. I was inspired by Cesar Kuriyama’s wonderful TED talk about how he records a second of video every day. There’s a couple things Cesar said in his talk that really resonated with me:

- “[A]s the days and weeks and months go by, time just seems to start blurring and blending into each other and, you know, I hated that“. Totally agree. One of the reasons I started doing 30 day challenges was that I was alarmed at how quickly time was passing and I wanted to make my time more memorable.
- “This has really invigorated me day-to-day, when I wake up, to try and do something interesting with my day“. Recording a second of video a day has definitely made me keep my eyes peeled for noticeable sights. That also happened when I took a picture every day for a different 30 day challenge.

Okay, enough talk. Why don’t I show you my video montage for June 2013? (I missed three days, so I added three seconds from May to make it a full 30 days.) Here’s my video:

To make this video, I used Cesar’s 1 Second EveryDay app. The app is available for iPhone and iOS devices now, and Cesar let me beta test the Android app. The Android version of the app just went live, so you can give it a try.

I really enjoyed this challenge. I definitely did more interesting things, and the video is like a diary of travel and events from June 2013. Even on boring days, there’s probably at least one fun second you can save. The video makes my life look more exciting than it actually is, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing?

If you’re new to 30 day challenges, recording a second of video every day is a great way to start.

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/6bl8QgkHp-0/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '$1K Profit (Almost) in 1 Week: My PPC Case Study'

If you run any site with a large audience, it’s easy to fall into the trap of producing just any old content and forgetting why people followed you in the first place. Though what I’m about to share in this post is going to be highly focused on paid traffic, there are a large number of insights for those who have no interest in doing the same.

I’ve always thought that it is better to master one main traffic source versus becoming only fairly proficient in a lot of them and for now I think I have a pretty perfect grasp on the old SEO game. In all honesty, I’ve never really given paid traffic (and specifically PPC) too much thought throughout my years of experimenting online. That changed recently when I met up with some friends in Bangkok who are making more money than any blogger income reports you’ve seen. I have no desire to enter the same industries as them, but I have the spare cash to put into an experiment, so I thought “why not”.

I just want to make a few things clear before I start:

• I expected to lose money. I view my monetary investment as a learning experience so wasn’t worried about this
• I actually profited, very quickly. It was easier and more fun than I thought
• Even if you have no interest in paid traffic, you’re going to learn a few things here where I really should have known better

Before I did anything, I joined a forum called Stack That Money. It’s a forum my friends in question used to be a part of and I thought that if I could speed up my learning, I would also be able to speed up the results I get and it would make for a better case study.

I remember when a friend of mine paid $5,000 for just a few hours of coaching to a fairly famous internet marketer. I thought he was crazy and should really be learning the basics first as he had never even built a website before. Last I heard he’s now doing $20K+ per month and would probably regard it as one of his better decisions in life.

The forum is far cheaper than that at $99/m, and is full of some interesting characters. I approached the investment as “I’ll spend this $99, devour every interesting thread I can, and then plan my attack.”

I had originally announced that I was going to use Google Adwords for this campaign and I was going to promote two websites I already run. This means I didn’t have to worry about looking for offers and getting set-up with various affiliate networks, which can be a time consuming part of the process. Being on Stack That Money however also convinced me to give Facebook advertising a try as well. I’ve dabbled in it quite a lot in the past, and do actually like their platform.

What’s different about this forum is that people are making serious bank, and actually getting into a lot of detail about how they’re actually generating crazy incomes. Who couldn’t be inspired by this list of topics?

I know I’m going to continue with my membership as well, purely because PPC campaigns are fair easier to duplicate than a profitable blog or SEO campaign. You just find the offer, get a traffic source, and test test test. This is also a downside of PPC as your unique angles can easily be stolen, but it’s great when you’re just starting out.

Being totally honest: People are not going to say I’m using this offer, with this traffic source, and this is how I’m bidding. But they are going to tell you they’re in a certain niche, using a certain angle, and they’re profiting XXX per day.

You’ll get pushed in the right direction, but you are expected to put in some effort. Actually less effort than I thought it would be, based on my own results, but effort nonetheless.

Goodbye Google, Hello Facebook

I have not done enough advertising with Google at all to dismiss it entirely as a network, but here’s what happened in my first day:

• Facebook took about 15 minutes to approve my ads and start getting me clicks
• Google took closer to 15 hours to approve my ads

Now, I was promoting two different things, but I woke up to a Facebook ad spend of less than $2 and I could instantly see results, while Google had took $40 from my account (my daily budget) while I slept and I didn’t have anything to show for it. I decided then and there that I would put all of my effort into Facebook.

Step 1: Test Out My Market With Very Cheap Clicks

I discovered a few years ago now that you could get very cheap Facebook clicks ($0.01 each) by directing traffic internally to your own Facebook fan page. It makes sense that it would be cheaper to advertise within Facebook than try to send people elsewhere outside of the network. This didn’t actually turn out to be the case exactly, but bear with me for now.

I used a terrible image which was much smaller than the Facebook allowed dimensions and really didn’t get to test more than 2 headlines properly, but it was nice to see how big a difference just a headline makes once again. I do enjoy this kind of data; especially when you can get it so fast.

For an un-optimised campaign, I paid $7.74 for 120 page likes. That works out to be $0.064 per like. I was more pleased with my Click-through rate. I’ve been told that getting anything above 0.1% or 0.2% is something to be happy with, so nearly hitting 0.4% gave me a little bit of a boost. Even if it wasn’t to an outside source.

Step 2: Use Facebook Conversions on an Email List

Now that I had a small grasp once again on how to put ads together, I decided to go for some conversions. This is for a website where I sell software, but not in the marketing niche. I also ran a case study for the main site I feature in Backlinks XXX, but don’t have too much to show for that at the moment. This is my own product, so I would be keeping 100% of the commissions. However, it wasn’t time to go for the big sale just yet. I wanted to optimise how much I was paying for each click.

What I did at this stage was use the best title I found from my previous tests (I did a few more similar to step 1, but for different age groups) then load it up with 20 images. Therefore, I had 2 campaigns in Facebook with 10 ads each, all with the same title and body text. The only thing that differed was the picture. Here’s the data from one campaign:

As you can see, the data was pretty interesting here. Two observations can be made:

#1: The picture has a HUGE effect on CTR. I would say it’s more important than the title from my testing. Remember, it’s the only thing that changed

#2: Just because something is getting a lot of clicks, it doesn’t mean it will convert. My 3rd most clicked ad actually had the best conversion rate. The image must still be relevant to the offer

So for this experiment I received 73 email addresses for $14.12. The other campaign ran with slightly worse results which I believe is because I was targeting a younger demographic. Older people seemed happier to give an email address. Just in case you want me to do the maths, that’s $0.19 per email address, or 5 emails for $1. Quite a lot better than most solo ads actually – and highly targeted – so I was fairly impressed with this. I know many people who would be very happy with 500 leads for a $100 spend.

This is also forgetting that I would get more conversions for a cheaper price after optimising the campaign and taking out low-performing ads.

Sidenote: How to Set-up Facebook Conversion Tracking

Apparently this is only a recent thing (within the last year) and has transformed how people are running their Facebook campaigns. No longer do people have to rely on Tracking 202 or CPVLab as they did before (though I hear they’re great as backup programs).

First of all, once you’re on the Facebook ads manager, look on the left sidebar for a fairly obvious link called ‘Conversion Tracking’, as shown below:

After that, you’ll then look at the top right hand corner of the page and click Create Conversion Pixel:

Then you simply select the type of conversion you wish to track. You should know, based on whatever it is you’re promoting:

And then Voila! You get this nice little tracking code that you can put on your website:

While Facebook suggest that you should put this before the end of your head tag like most code, you can just enter it into the page or post on a WordPress site and it tracks fine for me.

You can then go ahead and put this on your Thank you page – where someone gets redirected after an email opt-in – or on the registration form of a product after payment. Wherever you can tell that someone has actually completed a conversion.

Step 3: Make $200-300+ Profit Promoting a Dating Site

Dating is absolutely huge on Stack That Money (STM). While other members are going off into other verticals, Plenty of Fish and Facebook advertising seem to be talked about more than anything else. This is how some people are making thousands of dollars per day on the Facebook ad network. I decided to test it out in a not-so-crowded country (meaning not America, the UK or Australia) and see how I could do. It turns out, I did very well.

Before I continue, I want to say that even if this campaign had made me $1,000 straight away, I knew I wouldn’t keep promoting it. More on that in a second.

I did spent more than $20, I actually spent $47.06 on this campaign. The screenshot you see is targeting men who are interested in women, speak English (All), and are between the ages of 50-65 (Facebook’s max) in a particular country.

I found myself getting higher click through rates with the same ads on the 40-50 age group, rather than 20-30 and so on. The reason I was going to stop this campaign no matter what is for a few reasons:

• I only get $1 per lead and that really is the best offer available for this country. If I relied on this, I was barely making a profit
• The country is too small. The ad frequency I highlighted in that ad shows that some people have seen the same ads over and over again. Optimisation could help, but there isn’t much room to scale
• I can’t track conversions. I have absolutely no idea which ads are bringing in actual users. I need to research other tools (or anyone in the comments?) with how I could
• The real money is made from people buying a premium account, which is why I could end up making around $500-600 from this campaign. But I have no idea. I can’t keep spending when I don’t know what I could or couldn’t make thus don’t know my profit margins

I’ve since joined a number of other CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) companies that were recommended on STM and thankfully I got fast approval since I’m a member. As someone who had only played with Facebook for a few days, I was pretty surprised that I was making these profits. Now I can totally see how people are doing six figure months and killing it.

What I’m looking for from a new offer is basically more room to scale (a country with a bigger population and / or a bigger payout for free leads). I know they exist, so I may as well be trying with them. I will still stay clear from the biggest markets, and perhaps rely on some friends for translating into other countries. More on this in a future post I think.

Step 4: Spending $27.97 to Make Over $600!

This number would have been a little higher, but I did have a couple of refunds which brought it down a bit. I actually pulled in closer to $700 in sales from that spend. I own the product, so the profit margin is huge.

First of all, here’s how not to set-up a campaign:

I can’t remember exactly what I did here, but I think people weren’t buying the product and instead opting in for my email list, which triggered a conversion. Actually, no, that doesn’t make sense either. I messed up somehow and was tracking the wrong thing, which Facebook clearly registered. I wish I could get 398 conversions for spending $17.61, but I definitely did not.

Lesson learned: Make sure your set-up is correct before going out and letting your ads run.

Here’s a small insight into the sales that I made (I set up a new membership name called Premium in Wishlist member):

This is for software that I own and promote, but again not in the marketing niche. The price is between $30-$50, depending on what you purchase. I don’t want to give away too much here as my profit margin is huge and there’s no way for me to benefit by outing myself.

Here’s some more realistic tracking numbers when you’re sending someone straight to a ‘Buy now’ page:

There are a few more ads below the ones I’ve highlighted, but you get the idea. One of them actually had a 0.6% Click through rate, which I’ve heard is pretty huge for Facebook. I am promoting to pretty tight demographics though (5 year age groups, in particular cities). Paying around $5 for a $30-$50 conversion is pretty damn fantastic to me.

Step 5: Big Money, Let’s Dominate Adwords too!

I was obviously very happy and excited from the results for my previous test, so I thought I should start setting up things with the Google Adwords network. I decided from the start that I was going to play around with the Content network rather than search results. Meaning anyone who runs ads on their websites using Google Adsense has a chance to display my own ad and that my ads would not appear in search results when you look for something.

I ended up spending over $40 with Adwords and didn’t get a single conversion.

(A sample of the ads I ran in one campaign)

Now, I did say I was going to use this as a learning experience, and I am, but I quickly decided that at least for now, Facebook is far more interesting to me than the Adwords network. Adwords gives me a far bigger volume for my audience than Facebook will, simply because of how many sites there are out there related to my software, but I’m just wasting money without any training in their platform. I’m going to watch a lot of videos online to learn the network better, and try it out again.

Step 6: Always Test, but Accept When You’re Wrong

Now, one thing I haven’t yet told is that I am worried about the size of my audience availability on Facebook. Though I was doing tight-targeting, I’ve known from the start my potential audience there is quite small for that very profitable industry. I would say I could max out at between $10,000 – $15,000 in profit. I know that sounds like a lot to some of you, but I’m really looking for campaigns where I can bring in an additional 6-figures per year to my business. Especially when it’s going to be taking time out of my other endeavors which are already very lucrative.

For this reason, I decided to stop sending traffic direct to a sales page and once again send people to an email list. My theory is that I’m wasting those 600+ clicks if I’m only getting 2 sales from it. My thinking was that I can get 100 or 200 email subscribers, and then probably get more than 2 sales from those people.

I spent more money than usual testing this theory, and it just didn’t work out. I got a few hundred new email subscribers, sent them a few follow-up emails, and then pushed them on the product. It didn’t help sales conversion rates at all. I now know I may as well push this campaign hard, max out my profit margins and get as many customers on board as I can. And I’ll do this by directing people straight to a (split-tested) sales page.

My Step-by-Step Facebook Attack Plan

This has not been tested as far as it can be tested and there are probably much smarter people reading this who don’t follow this strategy at all. However, from my reading of PPC guides and actually testing, here’s a recap of my own Facebook strategy:

Step #1: Start out with some cheap clicks to an internal Fan page of yours (where applicable) on Facebook. Max out the budget at $15-20 so you’re not going to get a shocking bill, and then play around with some variables. Simply get used to the Facebook system and see how quickly you can get approved. Don’t worry too much about the images you’re using or anything like that.

Hell, I just used the default picture from my Fan page which Facebook pulled up for me. Run around 5 ads within the same demographic (i.e. men, 40+, living in Spain who like Apple) and just change the titles around a bit. Keep the ad copy text the same. Notice how much of a difference one little change can have on the click through rate.

Step #2: Start promoting a page on your website where you have some kind of opt-in form. You can skip this section if you don’t have this option in place, but you may as well be getting a better return on your “testing investment” than just some Facebook likes. This time choose your best title from the previous tests and have some fun with the images.

Once again, notice how much difference a change in your ad can have, even when two other variables are the same and you haven’t changed your targeting. Also use this opportunity to try Facebook’s conversion tracking system. You can then optimize for conversions rather than just paying for clicks.

For my bid amount, I tend to bid in between Facebook’s suggested bid. So if the suggested bid is $0.10 to $0.20 then I would bid $0.15. Facebook will automatically lower how much you’re paying per click (if you’re not using the optimize for conversions option) if you get a good CTR, so don’t worry about the price too much to begin with.

Step #3: Find an offer. There are literally thousands of companies you can sign up with such as Neverblue, Cupid.com (instant approval), Commission Junction etc. I am currently only using one of those three, but I will very shortly be using a number of companies recommended to me on STM. You get ‘fast tracked’ through the approval process which is another benefit of being part of their community.

It’s totally fine to promote your own product or services as well if that’s what you want to do. I did and had a lot of success with it. The plus size is that even if someone doesn’t convert, you can use pop-ups or exit redirects to convince people to sign-up to your own email address as well. This means, of course, that you can market to them at a later date after building a connection.

Read affiliate blogs and reviews for specific programs to find out what kind of verticals are big. Forex, dating, Facebook game installs, iPhone Apps etc are all big and all offer a CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or CPL (Cost Per Lead) model where you get paid for every lead or paying customer you send someone. For instance, you might run a Facebook ad targeting gamers aged 18-23 and you can get paid $2-$7 for everyone who installs and starts playing that game on Facebook. The potential is limitless.

Step #4: One Headline, One Demographic, One Hundred Images

The best advice I received was basically to keep your ad copy the same and go through a massive testing spree with images. Not necessarily 100 pictures, but at least a few dozen.

If your target demographic is not too small, then split this up between 2-3 campaigns with 10 ads in them each. Again, each time keep the title of your ad and the ad copy the same. Just go through styles of images. So for dating ads targeting women you might try:

• Men in suits
• Men with their cars
• Men in uniform (police, firemen, teachers)
• Men with tattoos
• Men looking poor
• Men looking rich
• Chubby, “cuddly” men

The options are endless and I promise you’ll be amazed which ads get clicked more than others. Then you’re focusing on the CTR of the ads to see which one is getting you the most clicks. Another thing I love about PPC is that the more testing you do, the more likely you are to find a profitable campaign. Or in other words the more you put in, the more you’re likely to get out financially. Perfect for someone like me who is happy to do the ‘hard work’ in return for the big money.

For images, don’t pick anything that’s too professional. I’ve found images that are a little quirky to be the best. For example, using the free stock photos site here, I pulled up the following options:

My guess that the best converting of these – and I’m not saying they’re great pictures at all, it’s just a quick example – would either be top left or bottom right. Bottom right has something ‘weird’ about that it people are likely to notice, and top left looks good but not too staged and professional.

If you’re like me and have problems with the ‘Power Editor’ for Facebook (which only works in Chrome) then simply go through with the Create Similar Ad option so you can change images very fast:

Here’s a little secret, I’ve found that ads targeting men which have a girl sitting in a car get clicked more than any other. I have no idea why, and that’s the beauty of testing so much. You find what works even if you can’t explain why it does. I guess something about the picture just looks more ‘natural’ and honest

What to Do If “Place Order” Doesn’t Work

I have had an issue now since day two where the place order button in Facebook just doesn’t work for me. It’s even more frustrating when you’re creating a new ad, set your criteria, then click the button and nothing happens. Meaning, you have to do it all over again. A Google search shows I’m not alone, and a friend messaged me about the same problem as well.

The solution is fairly simple. Create an ad with the URL you wish to promote – don’t select any demographic criteria at all – and then click Place Order. Then go back and Edit the ad, and you shouldn’t have any issues changing all your criteria and clicking Save. I can’t believe a billion dollar company could have issues like this – especially when it comes to the main system which makes them money – but I just can’t get past this no matter what browser I use.

Hopefully this solves some frustrations for those of you who try the platform.

The 3 Tools I Tested in this Case Study

I did use a number of tools to help in my learning and to speed up the process for this case study. As I said earlier, I view anything I spend as a learning investment and I’m happy to lose money in the short-term to help increase the chances of making good money in the long-term.

Tool #1: Alexa Pro Advanced – $149/m

I had planned on using this tool for one month only, but I ended up using it for about a minute. The reason I paid for it in the first place was to get more insights into the data that Alexa currently has. By default, Alexa shows you 5 words or phrases that are likely driving traffic to any website. You can see this for free without needing an account.

However, with a pro membership, they say you can see a lot more of this information. I wanted to use it on sites in my industry (and for ViperChill while I had access) to find good keyphrases to target for things like my Adwords campaign and possibly for content ideas as well. You don’t get access to this data on their $9.99/m plan and you don’t get this data on their $49/m plan. You specifically need to pay $149/m to find more data on these terms.

Keeping in mind that the free plan gives you 5 phrases, how many do you think the $149/m option gives? 50? 100? A few thousand? No, it gives you 10. Barely more useful than the free service itself, and I can only praise the fact that they gave me a quick refund.

Tool #2: Social Ad Ninja – $147/m

This is a great tool which is specifically great for those of us who advertise on Facebook. Essentially, it’s a spy tool which lets you see other ads that people are creating. The main features include:

• Seeing how long someone has been running an ad. If it has been running for a long time, it’s probably profitable
• Being able to search by domain being promoted i.e. match.com, relevant keywords, and even search by titles
• Knowing the demographics that people are targeting with the long-running ads which are there

Using this tool I found a title from the same industry – which I adapted to mine – which was by far the title which got me the best CTR. You definitely don’t need to have this tool to profit on Facebook, but even just for one month of usage, you’re going to get a ton of insights which should speed up your learning process.

I’ve already cancelled my membership (though it hasn’t expired yet) as I have really abused a few industries and took notes of all the things I saw that were working.

Tool #3: Ad Beat – $99/m

Ad Beat is very similar to Social Ad Ninja but instead of being focused on Facebook, it gives you insights into people using Google Adwords. I was specifically interested in seeing the banner ads that people are using in my industry and how long they’ve been running. When you’re running on the content network using only images, the graphics you use are everything.

I think I received quite a good CTR from what I’ve been told (over 1%) but I just couldn’t convert those visitors into anything meaningful just yet. I definitely haven’t given up on Adwords though, and will return to AdBeat once it becomes a more serious part of my advertising efforts.

Where I Go From Here

First of all, unless someone convinces me otherwise, I’m going to go all out on my profitable campaign and run it for all I have. I’ll push the ad frequencies on every single age group of my target market and make as much money as I can until it stops becoming profitable. As mentioned earlier, I think I have a ceiling of $10,000 – $15,000. I don’t expect to spend more than a couple of hundred dollars to reach this.

My market is bigger than that, but seemingly not from Facebook as my ad frequency just becomes too high, too quickly. Maybe I’ll be surprised and make even more than that, but it will still be a nice income stream at the end of the day even at the lower end of the scale.

What I’m really going to try out though is the dating niche via Facebook. It’s definitely saturated with a lot of competition, but I’m willing to test a thousand landing pages and ad creatives if I have to in order to make a campaign profitable. The thing about Facebook dating is that – for the most part – it can be scaled up to a huge level once you find something that’s converting well. This leaves the potential for consistent, 4 figure days in profit.

I bought myself a notebook and a fancy pen (really) just to take notes from Stack That Money (non-aff) for the next few months. There are a lot of case studies from people banking really hard with Facebook dating. My favourite comes from a guy in India who was making $0/day just a few months ago, and now he’s making posts like this:

I’m under no illusion that it’s going to be easy money, but PPC campaigns are obviously far easier to duplicate than an entire blogging strategy or seeing how someone is ranking with SEO in the same industry. I’m not going to be able to get started until a few weeks from now (I’m working on something pretty huge of my own), but it will get my full attention when the time is right.

I’ve joined quite a few new networks in the last few days, and I’ll be ready to continue profiting. In the next few days I have another free guide to this subject coming up (including split-testing, easy to create landing pages and all that good stuff) so subscribe below in the yellow box if you haven’t already.

You may view the latest post at http://www.viperchill.com/ppc-case-study/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com