Google Analytics is the best way to track the performance of your ad groups and keywords. Google authored both Adwords and Analytics and can quickly integrate the two together. Plus, if Adwords makes enhancements or changes, Analytics will change along with it. Third party or custom tracking tools will have a harder time keeping pace with Adwords.

You link to Analytics using your email address Adwords. If you setup your Analytics account under a different email address, simply add your Adwords email as an Analytics administrator.

You should enable the auto-tagging and cost data features when linking Analytics to Adwords.

Auto-Tagging
Auto-tagging allows Analytics to gather information from Adwords. Google will append querystring parameters to Adwords landing page urls. These parameters are just key value pairs that appear after a question mark in a url. The parameter added is the Google click id which is abbreviated gclid. Analytics will recognize this parameter and will use it to integrate Adwords data into your Analytics account. This all done for you when you enable auto-tagging. Auto-tagging should be enabled by default.

One very important side note about auto-tagging is that it generates a unique id for each click. When a consumer clicks your ad, Google process the click and redirects to your landing page. This is how Google records clicks. Some advertisers use third party tools to track Adwords clicks. These tools use the weblogs that record every hit on a page. But a problem arises when a visitor uses the back button on the browser. The weblog will record another hit on the landing page which translates into a click, but Adwords will not (since it didn't go through the Google servers). A similar problem occurs if a visitor uses the refresh button. Shuman Ghosemajumder at Google says this particular problem accounts for a 40% fictitious click count. Many of the Adwords fraud claims arise from this 40% inaccurate count.

When you use auto-tagging, the Google servers append the unique gclid to the url. This querystring parameter will appear in the weblogs. You could then safely count all the weblog hits for a gclid as one Adwords click. This would prevent the fictitious clicks. Should you use a third party Adword tracker now or in the future, please use the auto-tagging feature available in Adwords and Analytics integration.

Cost Data
Cost data allows you view Adwords budget information inside your Analytics account. You can enable it with these steps.

1) Log in to your Adwords account at https://adwords.google.com

2) Click on the Analytics tab.

3) Click on 'Edit Settings.

4) Click the 'Edit' link in the upper-right corner of the 'Main Website Profile Information' box.

5) Check the 'Apply Cost Data' checkbox.

6) Click on the 'Save Changes' button.

Next time we'll discuss two of the reports in Analytics you can use to get additional Adwords data.

A consumer will not buy a product. Consumers purchase solutions to problems they are having. They make a purchase in order to fill a need or a want. You can encourage a consumer to buy your products by making your sales copy trigger an emotional response. They are five major emotional appeals sales copy uses to persuade consumers.

The primary emotion is curiosity. You've probably seen many ads making outrageous claims. These ads attempt get attention by making consumers want to know if such statements are true. In general, the more shocking the claim, the more you can peak curiosity. The more curious you can make a consumer, the further they follow you down your sales funnel.

Internet marketing Adwords ads tend to work on curiosity. Have you seen the ads where the marketer claims to me making $90,000 a month? Have you been curious to find out if that's true or how he did it?

Another emotion is insecurity. Almost everyone has certain aspect about themselves that they are insecure about. In addition, certain demographics tend to share insecurities. For example, teenagers tend to be insecure about their popularity in school. Your sales copy can promise to address feelings of insecurity.

Good examples of insecurity in advertising are commercials for insurance for senior citizens. These commercials appeal to the health concerns of the elderly, and promise security with their policies.

Fear is the third emotion you can use. Consumers have many fears, death, financial debt, loss of someone close to them, aging and more. Your sales copy can appeal to these fears, and them promise alleviate them with your product.

Pharmaceutical commercials for high blood pressure or heart disease tend to rely on fear. These commercials use statistical figures to provoke fears of disease and death.

Vanity is the next emotion. People tend to want to improve themselves. Your sales copy can promise to make them look better, feel stronger or be healthier. Fitness equipment uses vanity in their advertising. How many home gym machines promise all three of the above?

Greed is another powerful emotional trigger. Almost everyone could use more money. Internet marketing ads make use of greed, promising more traffic, more sales and bigger returns.

Your goal as a copywriter is to use these emotional triggers and tie them to your product or service. Explain to a prospect how your product will benefit them. Persuade them that your product will make their life easier or safer. Promise to make them happier and healthier. Appeal to their wants and desires.

Dynamic keyword insertion is widely touted as the greatest thing to happen to Adwords in the last two years. The biggest benefit may be to your CTR. When a consumer sees the exact search term in your ad, it can be very compelling. CTRs will often rise when using dynamic keyword insertion.

However, dynamic keyword insertion is not for every situation. You must be careful not to over use or abuse it. The following problems can arise when using dynamic keyword insertion.

1) Dynamic Keyword Insertion doesn't increase the relevancy of your ad.

Adwords likes to see the keyword you are targeting in the headline or ad description. It will increase your quality score if the keyword is part of the ad. However, it doesn't consider dynamic keyword insertion to be the keyword. So you miss an opportunity to improve your quality score.

2) Dynamic Keyword Insertion can lead to poorly written ads.

You've seen ads that don't seem to make sense when you read them. You can be sure that such ads are using dynamic keyword insertion and that accounts for the poor sales copy. When you use a large keyword list, it's practically impossible to write a single ad that will make sense and be compelling.

3) Dynamic Keyword Insertion can't help your landing page.

You may have read that your landing page can benefit from dynamic keyword insertion. It can't. Your landing page is outside Adwords. Dynamic keyword insertion only occurs within Adwords. Want proof? Stick the token {KeyWord} on your landing page and view it a browser. The token will not be replaced.

4) Dynamic Keyword Insertion may make it difficult to track ad performance

Split testing your ads and sales copy is a proven method to improve your ads. However since you won't know exactly what you ad said at any given time, it makes if difficult to test changes to your sales copy.

You must be aware of the advantages and drawbacks before you use dynamic keyword insertion. You must then make an informed decision if it is right for your situation. You are generally better off without it if you customize your ads and landing pages.

Your domain name is virtual real estate. A relevant domain name will boost your Google quality score. Plus, using keywords in the destination url will also boost your quality score.

There is an old saying that the three most important things in selling real estate are location, location and location. This drives home the point that the one major concern of real estate is the location of the property. It's the number one rule of real estate.

On the internet, real estate is the domain name. If you want to receive traffic for a particular keyword or market, you must choose the proper real estate and location. That means you want a domain name related to your keywords and market. Ideally, your main keyword or phrase should be the domain name or part of it. This will put you in the right location for your market.

Both search engines and human consumers will respond to the proper domain name. Google Adwords will reward you with higher quality scores if it can match your domain name to the keywords. Plus, Google will also boost your organic search results for your keywords if the domain is relevant.

Human visitors will assume you are more of an authority with a relevant domain. Imagine an Adwords ad where the search term is part of the domain name. The consumer will recognize your domain as targeted for their search. That will increase the likelihood of a consumer clicking your ad.

One question with domain names is should you use dashes or underscores in your domain name. One school of thought is that the dashes or underscores will help search engines recognize individual keywords, and hopefully boost organic rankings and quality scores. The other argument is the human visitors are likely to forget dashes and underscores when typing a domain name in the browser address bar. The safest play is for you to buy both domain names, one with dashes and one without. You promote only the dashed domain name but you have the second domain in case someone types it without dashes. Domain names are less than $10 a year, so it's well worth the price.

In Google Adwords, the destination url and display url are important as well. A domain name cannot cover every keyword for your market. You must ultimately select one keyword or phrase as you domain name. But your destination url can include the keyword as part of the path. That way you have a relevant domain name plus a path that contains the keyword. If you give each keyword and separate destination page, then each keyword can be part of the path.

Similarly you can put the keyword in the display url. The display url is not used for anything other than display. It has no effect on the destination url. But, since it is displayed the consumer will see it. So, using the keyword as part of the display url will make your ad more appealing. The consumer will notice your url is targeted for their search term.

Dynamic keyword insertion can be used to place the search term in the display url. It can also be used in the destination url, but it should not be used there. Adwords will not give any benefit to a url that is using dynamic keyword insertion. It is not treated as the keyword itself when determining the quality score.

Abuse of adwords will lead consumers to regard Adwords as spam or worse. This could damage your campaigns and your bottom line. Discover how Adwords is being abused.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) is encouraging poor Adwords use. Dynamic Keyword Insertion is a relatively new feature of Google Adwords. Adwords will replace the token {keyword} in your ad headline, ad text or url with the consumer's search term.

But, this has lead to Adwords abuse. An advertiser can write a single ad in a single campaign or ad group, use dynamic keyword insertion and bid on every keyword imaginable. For example, have you noticed that ads for Target.com come up for just about anything you search for? Target is a large department store and will likely carry the products in question, so they aren't technically abusing Adwords. They are guilty of running a very poor campaign. Several ads read poorly when just using a template and ad. Plus the quality scores must be awful, unless Target.com has such a high CTR.

There are several websites abusing Adwords much worse. Many of these sites are just Adsense Arbitrage websites. That means they hope to pay very little for Google ads, and then display nothing but Adsense ads and hope to have an ROI. These websites have no content at all, and only display Adsense ads.

• all the automotive.com
• all the information.com
• best3websites.com
• ToSeekA.com
• seekful.com

Again, it is easy to assume the quality score should be low for sites with no content. You must assume that these websites are paying top dollars for clicks. Either that or the CTR is so high the relevance isn't a factor. Perhaps the keywords are such niche keywords that even a poor quality score has a low cost.

The main questions are will this weaken Adwords in the eyes of the normal consumer. Consumers that click on ads taking them websites with no content may become sick of ads and refuse to click any ad in the future.

Second, will Google do anything about it? As long as the Adsense arbitrage advertiser continues to pay, Google will remain happy. Plus Google also takes a percentage of the Adsense payment too. Thus there is incentive for Adwords to continue to support these poor quality websites.