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Not too long ago, a person was bidding on Yahoo with an eBay ad for the
keyword SEO Book at over $2 a click. Assuming I can get a 1.5% conversion rate,
I can afford to pay that much, but this person was just throwing away their money.
Just to test the waters, I placed my e-book on eBay, and it did not go for anywhere
near what I usually sell them for.
I find it hard to believe the person who was bidding a dollar a click was making any
money. They later lowered that bid to 21 cents. In some markets, there will be
dumb companies that rotate in, lose money, and then go bankrupt. By the time
they go bankrupt, others may soon take their money-wasting market position.
Some terms are not worth buying at the price the keywords go for. And if they are
valuable, they may have more value at a lower position.
Landing Page Tips
Conversion is a way to measure how successful a pay-per-click campaign is.
The following are a few tips to improve landing pages:
? Remove excessive navigational options. Unless it is necessary,
remove other options. Let people do what you want them to do, and
don?t give them many other choices.
? Structure your content so it is easy to consume. Use bulleted lists,
headings, subheadings, testimonials, pictures, and other formatting
techiques to make your offer easy to scan.
? Make link text appealing. People tend to glance over copy instead
of deeply reading every word. Since links are action points, people
tend to pay more attention to link text. Make sure link text is
appealing since it is far more likely to get read than most of the page
copy.
? Use pictures of people. People like to look at other people.
Testimonials appear more legitimate if they have pictures next to them.
? Give visitors a clue they have found the correct page. Place the
words they searched for in large text at the top of the page to show
them they are in the right location. If you are a large merchant with
many products, maybe use something like ?search results for:
? Send them to the most targeted page. Typically, it is best to point
people at a landing page instead of the home page.
? Other ideas. Some of the other concepts listed throughout this e-
book (such as using short paragraphs and concise subheaders
also
apply to landing pages. Corey Rudl constantly retested his landing
pages. You can learn a good amount by seeing how he changed his
landing pages over time, by looking in Archive.org. MarketingSherpa
also has a landing page handbook for sale.