Adwords began calculating Quality Scores for ads for each consumer search in the later half of 2008. Part of the new calculation is page load time. You'll learn What is page load time, how does it affect your Quality Score and what can you do to improve it.

What does page load time mean?

Page load time is the time it takes for your page to render after it is requested. The life cycle of a page is straight forward.

1) The request for the page is made

2) The server will performing any server side processing, like dynamically generating content or accessing a database. When the page is completely constructed, it will proceed to the next step. NOTE: Static HTML pages do not have server side rendering, only PHP, JSP or ASP.NET pages have server side processing.

3) The server begins transmitting the response over the internet

4) The client computer receives the response

5) The client begins rendering the response in a browser window. Additional requests are made for flash scripts, graphics and javascript.

6) When the page is completely rendered, and all other requests are complete, the page has loaded.

Adwords must really be measuring the time from the request until the response is read. I doubt Google can actually be attempting to time to render the page n the client, and make the child request for graphics and so forth. Google would have to add some javascript code to the page in order to know when the client side rendering was complete. I seriously doubt they would do this.

How does it affect your Quality Score?

Google has this to say about why it considers page load time.

Based on this paragraph it seems Google is trying to crack down Advertisers using server side redirects and interstitial/ad pages. A server side redirect would be when the destination url is requested, the server side scripting language redirects the request to another url. This really performs two request, and thus increases the page load time. An interstitial page is an advertisement page that is shown (briefly) before the content, and may be achieved with a redirect.

It also seems that Google is saying if your page takes to much to respond, it's likely doing something sneaky.

What can you do to improve your page load time?

1) Optimize your server side scripting
If you do use PHP, JSP or ASP.NET, make sure your server side code is optimized. This is especially true when using a database. You need to optimize both your database, and your code for speed.

2) Get dedicated web hosting
Most cheap web hosting happens on a shared server. That means that many websites from many website authors are all on the same server. All of these websites compete for server resources, like bandwidth and memory. Heavy traffic to some other website on a shared server can slow your page load time. A dedicated server is one where only your website(s) resides at. It's more expensive, but you get dedicated resources.

3) Compress the size of your page
A web page is really just a file. That file must be transmitted from your server to the client computer over the internet. If you can decrease the size of the file, the file will transmit faster. You can compress your pages by removing whitespace. You can remove any unncessary HTML tags. You can use relative urls instead of absolute urls. Do anything to decrease the size for the file.

4) Lose the Flash Animation
Flash animation is generally rendered on the client side, so it may not factor into the Page Load time. But then again it may. Either way, Flash animation tends to be slow, so get rid of it for the sake of your customers. Sure it looks great, but you can't afford to lose sales because nobody waits around for the Flash animation load.

5) Strip out unnecessary elements from the page
Again, elements rendering on the client may not affect the page load time. Then again they just might. Remove any unnecessary graphics or images. These take a long time to load. Minimize javascript or CSS includes. Additional requests need to made for these files, so keep it to a minimum.

6) Optimize your page
As a final effort, you can optimize the HTML itself. For example, table HTML tags tend to render slower than a CSS/Div layout. If you have tables, you might consider switching to a CSS/Div layout.

You earn money when a visitor converts. Until your visitors convert you are spending money. No matter what your conversion is, either sell a product or collect and email address, you want a visitor to take that action. Your landing page must convince the visitor to convert. The following are several ways which you can increase the conversions of your landing page.

•   Do research.
Build your landing to speak to your ideal visitor. Keep everything the page geared toward that ideal visitor. A landing page trying to capture a broad spectrum of visitor attention is destined to get a lower conversion rate.

•   The headline is important.
Your landing page headline is perhaps the most important marketing message your landing page can have. You can be guaranteed that almost every visitor will read your headline, even if they read nothing else. Grab their attention with the headline.

•   Match the landing page to your AdWords Ad.
Having your keyword in the landing page headline will get the visitors attention. It will tell the visitor the page is relevant to what they searched for. This will increase you chances of the visitor remaining on your page and reading the rest of your sales copy, and converting.

You can use Adwords Dynamic Keyword Insertion to pass the search term to your landing page as a querystring parameter. This will allow a dynamically generated landing page to use the visitors search term in the headline and sales copy.

•   Give the visitor only one option, the option to convert.
Remove any navigation links, outbound links and advertisments from your landing page. Make sure the visitor doesn't get distracted by some other link or message. You want to them to convert, and only convert. This means keep your message to a single page.

•   Remove unecessary graphics or features.
Again, you don't want to distract potential customers from your message. Get rid unneeded graphics, CSS or javascripts. Keep your message simple and focused. Removing unecessary elements should also increase the page loading time. You don't want to lose a potential conversion because your page was too slow to load.

•   Give the visitor every opportunity to convert.
Don't have only one conversion link or form at the bottom of your page. Make sure your visitor doesn't have to search for the conversion opportunity. Popup windows and DHTML windows provide great ways to attract attention and convert.

•   Use Testimonials
Consumers like Testimonials from third parties. For some visitors, Testimonials may be more persuasive than your sales copy. When collecting testimonials you can write the copy yourself and simply ask the Testimonial giver to agree with it.

Good performing ads are achieved through split testing. You should be testing and improving your ads to increase your traffic and ROI. This articles discusses how to perform split tests, including using a chi-squared calculation to know when the test is complete.

You need to know to what headlines, call to actions and sales copy work best for your Adwords ads. You can only learn what combination of factors results in the best ad through testing. Split testing is the most common way to test your Adwords ads.

Split testing is a simple principal. You have an ad running for your website or product. This ad has an established number of impressions and clicks. But, you want to know of a different headline or sales copy will result in a higher CTR. So you create an identical ad to the original, or baseline ad. Then you change one thing, or variable about the second ad. That variable can be anything you want to test.

• A different Ad Headline
• New sales copy
• A new call to action
• Synonyms for certain words
• Use of capital letters
• Word or sentence order and structure
• The landing page url

Anything you want to test can be variable. Just make sure you come up with distinct variables to test. For example, don't call a headline change and a landing page change a single variable. If you change both these items and obtain a higher CTR, you won't know if the new headline improved CTR, or if the new landing page scored a higher quality score which then improved CTR. Instead, treat these variables as two distinct variables and run a different test for each. For example, test the headline first. Then once that test is complete, test the landing page.

You now have the original baseline ad, and a new test ad. Add them both to your ad group and monitor the impressions and clicks. The trick to split testing is knowing how to compare the baseline ad with a high number of impressions (because it's been running) against a new ad with a low number of impressions. One may have a higher CTR, but how to you know if that trend will continue as the test ad gains more impressions?

A split test relies on statistics to determine when a test is complete. You can use the chi-squared calculation to determine if there is enough sample size to draw a statistically significant conclusion and declare a winner. The chi-squared calculation will return a confidence level percentage revealing how certain you can be that an observed trend will continue as impressions accumulate. For the chi-squared calculation, a percentage above 95% is considered probably significant. This is the confidence level you need to declare a winner. 99% is consider significant and 99.9% is high significant.

The chi-squared calculation and confidence level calculations are complicated formulas. Fortunately, adwords-marketing-tool,com offers a free calculator to do the work for you. The calculator is completely free and gives you a chance to enter your impressions and clicks for both ads and gives you a confidence level. If your confidence level is 95% or above, you can declare a winning ad. If below 95%, you must continue to allow both ads to run and try again when you have more impressions. The closer the CTRs of the two ads are, the more impressions it will take to reach a conclusion.

You simply check the CTR of both ads when the calculator says you reached a confidence level of 95%. The calculator will display the CTRs and the confidence level. If the baseline is the winner, discard your changes and keep the original ad. If the test ad is the winner, discard the original ad and use the test ad as your new baseline.

Continue to split test as many changes as you want. You will be improving your CTR with every test.

Google penalizes Adwords ads with poor click through rates. If your ad is not generating clicks, it's making it more expensive for you to advertise. Discover how to improve the click through rate of your ads.

Your Adwords ad is sales copy. You are attempting to persuade a potential consumer to make a decision based on your ad text. This is the art a science of sales copy. Sales copy can be defined as salesmanship in print.

The trick in Adwords is that you only have 95 characters to do it in (25 character headline + 2 lines of 35 character description). That is daunting task for any professional salesman.

The following tips can improve the sales copy in both your Adwords ads and in your landing page or sales letter.

1) Speak to the customer
A general rule of sales copy is that you want to appeal directly to the consumer. By using the word you, you address the consumer in a direct personal way, as if you were speaking to them. Use you in your sales copy instead of your product name or I.

2) People buy solutions, not products or services
Another general rule of sales copy is that a customer is looking to find a solution, not buy a product. A customer doesn't want to buy a drill, instead they need a way to make a hole. You need to sell a solution. A perfect example of this are Billy Mays TV commercials for Hercules hooks, Oxyclean, OrangeClean or any of his products. Did you ever notice the commercial starts by describing or creating a problem? The commercial then proceeds to persuade you that they have the solution to the problem. The commercials are like that because the method works.

3) Feature versus Benefit
You may be tempted to list a prominent feature of your product. Don't. Instead, make a list of every feature you can think of. Then write down the corresponding reason the customer would want that feature. You can often move from feature to benefit by using "what that means to you, Mr. Customer is". That becomes a benefit. Then don't describe a feature in your ad, but describe a benefit.

4) Use a Call to Action
A Call to Action is a sentence instructing the consumer to perform a task. The consumer will often be subconsciously persuaded to do it. A call to Action generally begins with a verb (the action). Here are some examples.

• Click here.
• Download your copy now.
• Call now.
• Get help.

5) Keyword or Phrase
Your ad will be more attractive to the customer if your ad text contains the keyword or phrase they searched on. Right away your customer will view your ad has highly relevant, because the keyword is right there. The headline is a particularly good place to have the keyword since your customer sees it first. this tactic is done automatically if you use the Adwords strategy from adwords-marketing-tool,com

6) Use Free if applicable
Using the word free is likely to increase your CTR. Make sure your landing page does freely give away what you promised.

7) Hype words
Hype words like amazing or incredible may help you attract attention. But be careful, overuse them and you sound like a snake oil salesman.

8) Sense of urgency
You can create a sense of urgency with a phrase like limited offer. This encourages a customer to make a purchase on the spot. If you have the space available, you can describe the consequences of failing to act.

9) No risk
Consumers are cautious of being taken advantage of. A money back guarantee or a no risk free trial helps persuade you consumers.

10) Test your ads
The only way you'll know if your sales copy is working is to test it. Split testing is the accepted method of testing your ads. You run two ads simultaneously. After the proper amount of time, you compare CTR or ROI and declare a winner and remove the lesser ad.

Google Adwords can quickly become expensive if it is used incorrectly. The following tips will show you how to correctly setup your campaigns. You'll discover what to do and what to avoid.

1) Use Google's Adwords Editor to manage your campaigns.
The Adwords Editor is free tool from Google that helps you manage your campaigns. It allows you to make bulk or multiple updates to your campaign. This saves you time and effort when compared to making manual changes online.

2) Disable the Content Network.
Beginners should stay away from the Content Network in Google Adwords. When you are just starting out, disable the content network in your PPC campaigns. Traffic from the content network is lower quality than Google search traffic, because it's coming from Google Adsense participants who don't care what quality of traffic they send your website. When you have proven ROI from your website, you can use placement campaigns or regular content network.

3) Set a reasonable daily budget.
You want to throttle your traffic and Adwords spending until you have a proven ROI. When you achieve a good ROI, you can increase the daily budget and increase your traffic. You don't want to throttle your campaign by bidding to low per click, because that can affect your CTR. You need a good CTR to maintain a good quality. Throttling your campaign with a daily budget stops showing your ads, so you won't get impressions and damage your CTR.

4) Don't set your CPC too low.
You don't want to throttle your campaign by bidding too low per click, because that can affect your CTR. You need a good CTR to maintain a good quality. You never want to damage your CTR by bidding to low. In fact, if you begin with a high bid, you can achieve a good CTR. After your achieve the high CTR, you can lower your CPC and still maintain a ad good position, saving money in the long run.

5) Don't hang on to poor performing keyword.
You probably have some keywords and ad groups that are not performing well. The half percent is a good goal for a well performing ad. Any ad group or keyword performing under a half percent with a high number of impressions needs to be altered. The poor performing ads can damage your overall campaign CTR and lower the quality score and position of your other ads. Remove the ad group or keyword. If you decide you simply must have this ad group or keyword, move it to it's own campaign and start split testing sales copy changes.

6) Evaluate your landing pages as if you were performing SEO.
Your landing page is examined and scored by Adwords just like your website is for inclusion on the Google search engine. Performing SEO on your landing pages will improve your quality score. The Google webmaster tools can provide free information on how Google scores your pages.