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SEM, SEO, RSS, Web Marketing, Google Adwords, Overture, PPC, Podcasts,Website Traffic Tips: September 2004

Google Adwords Succes Story: Golf Balls

Here is a great success story! This company is using both Google Adwords & Overture to drive online sales. Growing company with great product. They Sell 30 Million Used Golf Balls a year! You can purchase the golf balls online and save a ton versus new balls. I know that I put quite a few balls in the water every year. Great gift for dads for xmas!

Check out this story from the Houston Newspaper today about this company. It will blow your mind.

The website for the company is: www.lostgolfballs.com

Enjoy

Rodney Rumford

www.semmarketing.com

Google Adwords As a List Building Tool

Here is a quick tip for you. I have been using Google Adwords to generate subscribers to lists. If you are targeting a specific market you can build a special landing page and campaign that will take the users to a page to subscribe to your mail list, newsletter,request info page, free bonus, etc.(anything where you want to build a contact list)

I have seen anywhere from 20-85% sign up rate for this tactic. It is very targeted, and I usually use this if I have an idea of what the lifetime value of the average subscriber is.

This can be used to build a subscriber list before you launch a specific product or service. It can also be used simply as a lead generation sales tool.

Rodney Rumford

www.semmarketing.com

Google Adwords Rules Automation: You can't use the word tips in your ad copy!?

I have recently come across interesting changes in the automated editorial rules/ guidelines that Google uses for adwords. It is interesting to note that the word "tips" is considered a gambling type of word by their software when really this term can be used for a thousand other things: cleaning tips, running tips, racing tips, marketing tips, health tips, weight loss tips, cooking tips, relationship tips, etc...

The list could go on forever.

You can request an exception but this normally takes 2 days. My advice is to use another word. This can be a challenge since they give you such limited space, and tips is a great ad copy word that drive people to action. I have seen this flagging on several other words in ads, but it is really a sign of how google is trying their best to apply some level of checking of ads thru software automation. This might help to catch a gambling site that they don't want to advertise on adwords. But my question is this: Why punish the rest of us that are not even remotely connected to this sphere?

They should be able to find the content of the site and monitor that way since they index web landing pages. This is just a loose marble of a thought that I have had rolling around in my head for a few weeks. Enjoy

Extreme Home Makeover TV Show: I worked on it!

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to drop everyone a quick note and let them know that this coming sunday at 8pm central time, 9pm west coast time the ABC TV show extreme home makeover is going to broadcast the season premier of a home that was remodeled in Encinitas, California (about 4 miles from my house).

I worked on this house for 2 days almost non-stop (till 2 am) and met and worked with all the celebs on the show.

Here is my quick review of the celebs:

Tye: The host, does not do any real "heaving lifting" as he is the "star" of the show. He tends to oversee projects, not the actual construction of the projects. Hey, we even ran a table saw together.

Paul: The carpenter, the nicest guy in the world, very down to earth and skilled! I worked with him on these 2 projects. He told me to come back any time and work on any house on the show. I guess he thought I did OK.

Michael: The interior designer, funny as can be, very talented, full of energy and nice. His mom was at this episode taping. You could tell she was so proud of her son.

Tracey: She seemed nice enough, but I really did not work with her at all

Constance: The project designer. This woman is way better looking in person. Very smart and quite talented in her designs. I watched her do some quick design sketches and she is very talented, organized, and positive.

Preston: The high architect design snob. Nice guy, but a bit flakey. Has good design eye but is so disheveled it is kind of amusing. I worked on 1 project with him and we ended up scraping the project because it did not work out the way he thought it would. But first, I had to get about 3 giant splinters in my hand from the canned project. Ouch!

It was a really cool experience. I actually built(with 1 other person) the living room table(which is a table that looks like a minature basketball court, the kids in the family are all into sports) and this really cool wood and glass craftman style Trophy Case(to hold all the kids trophy's). Hopefully, at least the furniture will make it into the show(even tho in all likelyhood you might not see my smiling face). They give the dad a "Best Dad" trophy, so it should make the show. You never really know, it may end up on the cutting room floor.

It was very moving & rewarding to see the family and the reaction when they got home to see the house. The family's name is Wofford, a dad who has 8 kids and his wife died a few years back from complications from the flu. They were living in the typical 1970's single level california ranch that was about 1200 sq. feet. I think 3 of the boys were living in the garage (which you can do in southern california as the weather is almost always 70 degrees.) I believe the rebuilt house turned out to be close to 4000 sq feet. It was unbelievable when it was finished, heck I wanted to live there. I am sure this newly rebuilt house is worth somewhere in the range of $900k-1 million now.

Anyway, I just wanted to give everyone a heads up about this show, you just might see me on it. Pass this on to anyone that knows me, they might get a kick out of this. I believe in giving back to the community and helping people that could really use a hand. I know I felt great having worked my tail off for a few days. Like everyone on this show, I shed a tear or 2. That's one of the nice things that the internet has given me; total freedom to live my life as I choose.

Here is a link to the show:

http://abc.go.com/primetime/xtremehome/

Rodney Rumford

RSS Marketing Blog: SEO Tips

Recently we have been doing extensive testing on RSS & Blog Marketing and how these technologies can positively impact your search engine rankings. Very few SEO companies are looking at this as a tool to improve your rankings. Using RSS and Blogs together has show us some amazing results. We have been able to achieve rankings of as high as #1 on Google and Yahoo on very cometitive keyword phrases. We will release these results in the coming weeks after are testing is complete.

I would welcome any success stories from my readers if you have been doing this.

Rodney Rumford

www.freersstraffic.com

The 100 Greatest Headlines Ever Written

Writing a killer headline in your ad copy, or in your sales letter, can be the difference between success and failure. Having a great headline is an art form. Check out this free article from Jay Abraham, a seasoned veteran that has been doing this for years. There is nothing to buy and I promise you will learn a lot about how to market your business and knock people upside the head.

See the 100 Geatest Headlines Ever Written

Rodney Rumford

www.adwordprofitsoft.com

www.FreeRSSTraffic.com

Google: Contextual advertising with Adwords and Adsense

For those of you that would like to learn more about contextual advertising with adwords, check out this video slide presentation. Keep in mind that contextual advertising rarely-if ever- has a good ROI when compared to pure search results. You could learn from this informative video, but take it with a grain of salt. It does not mention any of the negatives! enjoy....

http://www.google.com/adwords/context/webinar/1971/index.html

Rodney Rumford

www.adwordprofitsoft.com

www.FreeRSSTraffic.com

Google Offical Response: Ads By Goooooooogle

OK. So I told google what myself on some of the blog posters and email respondents thought about this ad by Gooooooooooooogle nonsense. I gave them an earfull and hopefully they heard from lots of other advertisers....."more relevant"??? How about if people actually thought the ads were by Google and not some unknown company....boy these guys need a lesson in Branding 101.

Here is the response I got.......

Hello Rodney,

Unfortunately, at this time, we do not have a estimate as to how long we are going to test the new ad format. However, we sincerely appreciate the time you have taken to offer us this feedback and have passed this on to our engineers.

Additionally, please note that per the AdWords Terms and Conditions,AdWords policies, which includes the physical presentation of Google Ads, may change at any time. Be assured that these changes are intended to make Google advertising as relevant and useful as possible to both users and advertisers, and we will certainly consider your feedback. Please feel free to reply to this email if you have additional questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Leslie

The Google Team

Ads by Gooooooooogle: Adsense = Nonsense

Ads by Gooooooooogle: Adsense = Nonsense



You may have noticed that Google AdSense ads now say "Ads by Gooooooooooooogle". 12 o's what the heck is going on? When I saw this I thought, this is nuts. Why would google do something so stupid and potentially dilute the value of their brand.

This is nonsense and everyAdsense participant & adwords advertiser should tell them so! If you are advertising with adwords and are using contextual advertising you should not be happy with this change either.

I received an email from Google asking what I thought about this. So I told them this is lunacy, people will not trust the ads, it dilutes the power of the google brand, it is eye-catching but confusing to web users. It could adversely effect click thru rates and as an adsense publisher & adwords advertiser, I don't want to be their guinea pig.

It is just that little nuances like this can negatively impact click thru rates. I test and measure everything and since the started this nonsense I have seen the click thru rate decrease by 18% .

If you are obsessive about these things,(and I am) you will also notice that they are not doing this to ALL adsense participants. You can still see some ads that have the old reliable "ads by Google" ad header. I guess google is doing some split testing like I do with all my ads. I can't fault them for that, but I sure hate being part of their experiment unwillingly. It is not what I signed up for when I agreed to run their ads. I have many options for ways to monetize site visitors with different forms of advertising and when they change the rules and it negatively impacts my business I am not happy.

Additionally, since myself and many of my clients use contextual (content) advertising as an advertiser with google adwords; this effects that side of the business as well. Adwords Contextual advertising has almost always been a low value ROI proposition. Now they are making it even worse.

As a paying advertiser on Adwords I agreed to have my ads shown by Google, not Gooooooooooooogle. !



I just wanted to get this out there and make everyone aware of this! So what do you think?

Rodney Rumford

http://www.adwordsexpert.com

http://www.adwordprofitsoft.com

http://www.semmarketing.com

RSS Marketing Flow

RSS Information Flows. This a very simplified flow diagram of RSS & XML and how information gets from websites or blogs to people's desktops seamlessly. People have been asking me about RSS marketing and how blogs can actually increase marketing effectivesness and increase traffic. So here is a quick slide from my new book...

Enjoy,

Rodney Rumford

RSS Photo Rodney Rumford: Media

Ok ...So people wanted a better picture of me. So here you go. Just promise not to throw darts at it. This is actually a publicity headshot I did recently for a new book I had published. I take the worst pictures. I hope everyone in the U.S. is enjoying thier holiday. I still work on holidays. The internet never takes a day off.

Rodney Rumford

Winners: Google Book & Software Contest

Hi Everyone,

OK, so I said I would give away 2 packages of Ad Word ProfitSoft(our Software) and the Google Adwords Success kit ebook in our contest. I wanted to know what your most pressing issues/questions were regarding RSS(& Blogs) and How you could profit and make money with this. But, I had way too many questions to only pick 2, so I picked 3 Winners!

First, I want to personally thank every participant in this contest. I read every single email, and there were a ton(200+). The questions & submissions were amazing! Good questions, thought provoking questions, money making questions, technology questions, basic questions,....I am amazed by my readers loyalty, inquisitiveness and level of intelligence.

RSS & Blogs are truly the next field where the smart marketers will make substantial income. This virtually untapped field is going to be swarmed by people trying to make money with thier websites in the next 18-24 months. If you understand ("Get") RSS and Blogs and thier online marketing potential, you will leave most online martketing people in the dust. It would be like knowing what Google was all about 4 years ago....

Sorry for the rambling message... it is 3AM and I really want to get the Winners Posted Here.

The winners are:

Jacques Venter

Rick Stooker

Jennie Pipkin

Again, my sincerest thanks to all participants.

Rodney Rumford