A valuable piece of information you can capture in your landing page is the keyword the user searched for. Find out what keyword your Adwords consumers used. You'll discover what keywords are bring consumers to your website. You will learn exactly what consumers are looking for when they come to your website.

Using the strategy of having one keyword per ad group should already tell you what the consumer was looking for. But, if you use phrase or broad match, you may not have the complete search term. This information is valuable, since it will tell you what term consumers use to find you ad. You'll discover what niche is bring consumers to your website. You can then use this to target other similar keywords. Plus you can alter your landing page for the search term.

The technique uses Adwords dynamic keyword insertion. Adwords assumes you have more than one keyword per ad group, and therefore can't insert one keyword out of many into the ad. Instead, Adwords uses the search term for it's dynamic keyword insertion.

That means you whenever you use the {keyword} in your ad, Adwords will replace it with the consumers search term. Using it can tell you exactly what your visitors are searching for.

You simply use this in the url for your landing page, in the form a querystring parameter. A querystring parameter is a piece of information you can pass to a url as a key-value pair. It's part of the url, but doesn't affect the path or page name. You will need server side scripting, like PHP or ASP.NET to take advantage of the technique.

For example, perhaps your landing page is [domain]/myPage.aspx. You can add the querystring like [domain]/myPage.aspx?search={keyword}. When Adwords displays your ad, it will replace the token with the search term and it will now be a parameter passed to your page.

You take the search term and add it to a database so you have a record of every search term used to reach your website. You will learn exactly what consumers are looking for when they come to your website.

Adwords click manipulation could be taking money from your pocket. This type of Adwords fraud is advanced, sophisticated and quite mature. Learn what it is and what you can do about it.

Here is a wonderful description of how software exists that can click your ads and behave like a human visitor. The idea is that your competitor could use such techniques to exhaust your Adwords budget.

"(Click manipulation) technology was well developed before Google even existed. People were using it to manipulate click-through rates for banner ads, Web polls, hit counters, and other click counting services as far back as 1996."

"The more sophisticated operations use networks of servers scattered across multiple NOCs, employing software that spoofs user agents, identifies itself with multiple IP addresses across a wide variety of C-Blocks, and randomizing routines that are intended to simulate users clicking through links and spending anywhere from 3 seconds to several minutes on the pages."

"The technology was employed on the commercial side for the intentional manipulation of DirectHit results, Goto.com paid ads, affiliate programs (such as those operated by Amazon, Commission Junction, ClickBank, etc.) and large banner networks."

"Anything where someone felt they could gain an advantage, make some money, or deprive a competitive of an advantage or the ability to earn money has been targeted by click manipulators."

First, I have no doubt such software exists. But it seems that only the extreme case would become a target for such manipulation. The high level of sophisticated attack would only be worthwhile in a highly competitive and lucrative market.

Attacking mid-sized to small markets doesn't seem worth the effort. Perhaps a business model where someone attempted to sell the click manipulation technology might make it profitable. But simultaneously you can't advertise that you employ or sell such technology.

Second, click manipulation would increase your ad group or keyword CTR. A better CTR means a better quality score. A better quality score means you could lower your CPC bid. So while the prospect of exhausting competitors Adwords budget may be appealing, the knowledge that you are improving their quality score and lowering the CPC certainly offsets it.

Make sure you set a daily budget just in case.

The headline is perhaps the most important piece of your landing page. It is the first thing a potential customer sees. It is also the first marketing message your deliver. The goal of the headline capture the visitors attention and compel them to read the rest of your sales copy.

The best way to capture a visitors attention is to demonstrate your landing page is relevant to the search term. If a visitor believes the landing page will satisfy the reason for the search, they are more likely to remain on the page. If you can display the visitors search term in or around your headline, that will convince the customer that you landing page is what they are looking for.

Assuming you only one keyword in your ad group, or at least on a few terms centered around a single keyword, you can put that single keyword on your landing page. If you can incorporate that kewyord into your sales copy, the more likely the visitor will stay.

Adwords Dynamic Keyword Insertion provides a more flexible means of determining the visitors search term. First, you add a querystring parameter to your destination url. The parameter could be named something like "SearchTerm". Then, use Dynamic Keyword Insertion to to supply the value of the parameter.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion will replace the Adwords tokens with the search term the user searched for. This means that the destination url will contain the exact search term. This is more targeted than putting your keyword in the landing page.

Your landing page must be able to generate dynamic content. You want your landing page to check for the SearchTerm parameter in the querystring. If found, display it as your headline or part of it.

This technique will make your landing page more relevant for your users. You should get an increase in conversions.

Eliminate CTR penalties using Adwords placement campaigns. A placement campaign allows you to specify which websites will display your ad. This gives you an opportunity to improve the quality of content network traffic.

Assuming you are familiar with the proposed Adwords strategy, you'll recall that the key to getting low cost per clicks with Adwords is relevance. Relevance is determined by two means. First Adwords checks your keyword, ad and landing page to assign a quality score. The guide discussed in detail how to get a good or great initial quality score.

Second, Google reevaluates the relevance and quality score using the Click Through Rate or CTR. Adwords will assume that your landing page is relevant if consumers click on your ads. So, the more consumers that click on your ads, the higher the quality score you receive. On the other hand, if you have many impressions but a low CTR Adwords will penalize you and lower the quality score. The process is very much like Darwin's natural selection where strong ads are rewarded and weak ads penalized. A half percent CTR is required for maintaining a good quality score. A half percent CTR means one click per every 200 impressions.

There are a few options for an ad that has stopped showing due to a poor CTR.

1) Delete the keyword and ad. Generally this is a good idea because it will keep the poor performing ad from dragging down the entire campaign CTR.

2) Rewrite the sales copy to make it more compelling and increase the CTR. Your ad must still be showing for this to work.

3) Pay a higher cost per click to have the ad appear again.

There is an alternative to the keyword driven campaign that eliminates relevance, the CTR reevaluation and just about any other Adwords penalty you can think of. It's an Adwords placement campaign where you pay per impression. Adwords does not charge you per click. Instead you pay per impression or CPM, which is the number of times your ad is shown.

An Adwords pay per impression campaign doesn't need to track relevance, quality score or CTR. Adwords doesn't care how your ad performs. You will be paying for impressions, not performance. Adwords has shifted the burden of monitoring the performance to you.

You have to track your performance. You don't want to pay for thousands impressions of an ad that doesn't generate clicks. You must be sure you have a compelling ad that generates clicks.

In addition, you can choose which websites will display your ad. This allows you to target a specific audience and market. Generally speaking the content network traffic in Adwords is the lowest quality traffic. This is traffic that doesn't convert well after it has come to your landing page. The content network is Adsense publishers, so you have websites trying to get ad clicks by any means necessary, which results in lower quality traffic than Google Search traffic.

But with the pay per impression campaign, you can specify which websites to advertise on. For example, you can advertise on About,com, which is owned by the New York Times. You can be assured that the Adsense tactics used on About.com will lead to higher quality traffic.

Pay per impression is a viable alternative for getting into a competitive market. If you find that regular Adwords campaign is too competitive, try a placement targeted campaign, either CPM as discussed or a CPC campaign. Again, make sure you have a compelling ad first.

A very common mistake with Google Adwords campaigns can wind up costing you money. Discover what the mistake is and why it's a problem. Learn what you can do to protect yourself.

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.

Why? The content network is all the websites that belong to Google's Adsense program. While Google is trustworthy, not all of it's Adsense participants are. Some Adsense websites attempt blatant fraud. Just do a search for those who got banned from Adsense. In most all cases folks were banned for cheating Adwords advertisers by clicking ads.

Many other Adsense participants make every attempt to trick visitors into clicking your ad. Google doesn't ban Adsense participants for just being sneaky, Google really only bans fraud. But, sneaky traffic is not going to get you any return for your Adwords spending. For example, two years ago, the hot thing to do on Adsense was place a graphic over the Adsense ad. The graphic was usually in no way related to ad. But, this made the visitor believe the graphic was related to the ad. When the visitor clicked the ad, he or she wound up on your website which had nothing to do with the graphic. In most cases, the visitor is immediately left your website, wasting your money.

Many website exist where Adsense participants make ads look like navigation, attempt to blend ads with content and other tactics to confuse or trick visitors into clicking ads. Adsense publishers are always looking for the next gimmick to increase their Adsense clicks. How motivated is a consumer going to be if they were tricked to your website? The traffic generated by Adsense publishers is of low value.

A basic level content network traffic is less targeted. Google search traffic consists of a consumer actively searching for keywords. Content network traffic consists of consumer browsing other websites and stumbling across your ads.

Unfortunately, as an Adwords advertiser this is all at your expense. Now you know why the content network traffic is low quality, so go turn it off.

At intermediate and advanced levels you can use the content network. Placement targeting allows you to display ads on specific websites. If you choose respectable website, you can get good quality traffic.

You can also choose use the content network as is. Adwords allows you to separate search network bids and content network bids. When you enable the content network, enable separate bids as well. Never pay more than 10 cents a click for the content network.

Did you know that when Google separated bids for the search and content networks it ended the Adsense gold rush? Back in 2005, Google allowed Adwords advertisers to separate bids. Previously, an Adwords advertiser got only one bid for both. Highly competitive markets forced higher bids. Adsense publishers would target high payout keyword in the hopes of making a dollar or two a click. Since the change, even highly competitive keywords pay much less on the content network.