Free Tools For Better Pay Per Click Campaigns:

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3 Free Tools For Better Pay Per Click Campaigns:

As anyone who does a lot of Pay Per Click advertising knows all too well - the marketplace doesn't' lack for tools designed to make your life easier, maximize your ROI, save you time or just simply make working with keywords more enjoyable. Look, let's be honest - we'd all rather be golfing than hunting for good mis-spelled keywords to drive traffic our competition is missing, and I don't' golf. I really don't understand the game either. It just feels like a big waste of an afternoon unless there is heavy drinking and maybe a little bit of gambling mixed in. I am a good tennis player though. Anyway - the point I'm trying to make is - you don't need to go out and spend a fortune on some of those expensive, highly promoted PPC tools to really enhance your advertising efforts. I use the following 3 tools regularly. I don't' do nearly as much advertising as I once did ( as I now prefer and feel much more comfortable using a more diverse set of promotional practices - many outlined in previous or forthcoming posts) but still get incredible value each time I put them to use. And - they are all free. ( although the 1st tool has a paid version which I do pay for - for most, the free version is sufficient).

1) http://SpyFu.com

I LOVE spyfu. Spy fu isn't a real person, but if he was, I'd give him a big fat man hug. Spyfu should be illegal. But it isn't, which is very good for us snoopy type A personalities. And I mean illegal in a good way. Like against the Internet marketing law kind of thing. Because what it will do for you is essentially:

a) Show you your Competition

b) Show you all of your Competition's stuff - domains, related domains, sub domains, categories, etc, etc, ETC….
And - This is a very big And by the way -

c) Scrapes all of the Keywords and Ads your competition is running for all of their keyword campaigns and allows you to download those keywords and ads into an excel spreadsheet ( or really any other type of file once you have the data).

What does that mean for you?

Well - how about knowing EXACTLY what ads your competition is running for EACH one of their keywords on a per keyword basis. And what about having a fully populated keyword list on your PC, ready to upload to your favorite Pay Per Click engine at the mere click of a single button? How About knowing the clicks each one of those keywords is getting, the approximate cost of each keyword on a per day basis, the mis-spellings, the ranking that advertiser places for that keyword and much more? It is all there folks - Spyfu is my number 1 competitive intelligence tool when going after a new market - and the basic version is free! ( Note - as of Summer of 2007 Spyfu does limit some of the above to a paid membership - ie - they now require you to sign up before you can download or export your list to excel)
You do not need to pay for it to give your keyword campaigns a big kick in the ass though - and while I'm not a big ass kicker myself, I do recommend strongly that you take yours over there and check it out now. ( and no - there is no affiliate link here - just a great program that you will most definitely benefit from having in your toolkit)
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2) Mikes Adwords Wrapper

I know, I know, there are other tools out there that do this, but old habits and loyalties die hard in my book. If you are just getting started in pay per click marketing, you NEED to be making good use of exact and phrase matching in your ad campaigns. Specificity is the key, and never more than right now, summer of 2007 and beyond. Being relevant is always hard work, weather you are Ralph Nader trying to jump back into the 08 elections, or whether you are running a PPC ad campaign for the latest dog training e book to hit the market. The ad words wrapper ain't going to make YOU more relevant per se, (Sorry Ralph )but it will expedite the process of making your keywords look nice and pretty when you upload them into your campaigns. Essentially, you brainstorm your keywords, dump them into the main text box, and then * wrap* them according to how you want them to appear in your ad campaigns. I do a lot of exact matching when I advertise, ( and so should you if you want higher CTR and lower costs) and this nifty free tool saves me tons of time by wrapping my exact match keywords in brackets, phrase match words in quotation marks, and leaving the good ole' broad match words alone. Once finished - I can put each set into it's own group for more ( or less) refined ads, depending on my goals for that particular campaign. And again - there are other things that will do the same thing - but some of us remember the good old days when wrapping brackets around your keywords all afternoon was almost enough to make you reconsider going back to telemarketing death and dismemberment insurance on the graveyard shift for another 2 years. No pun intended.

3) Yahoo Search Marketing Ad tool

Who loves ya, Yahoo? Well - I don't. I get terrible results with their contextual ads from a Publishers perspective, and their paid search engine marketing yield is often anemic from the standpoint of volume ( and often quality ) of visitors they send to my sites. But they are getting better - and while I don't do a ton of advertising on Yahoo right now, I do some…….And I love the keyword ad tool that they give you access to when setting up your keywords and campaigns! Similar to Spyfu above - but not quite as involved - and all in one small space, you can click on any of the keywords that are in your ad group and Yahoo will spit out 5 or 6 ads that are currently running for that word or phrase. So if your stuck, are having writers block, or just like to thieve other people's sh*t , this gives you instantaneous inspiration to finish that ad you were writing on your fancy new green widgets. Pragmatically - it also gives you an immediate window into the wonderful world of your competition, as you can immediately check out some of the competing url's to see how they are marketing THEIR green widgets, and again, you can use that information to expand/grow/improve upon your own offers. I use this tool constantly, and it has helped me leapfrog the brain cramp that often times settles in after staring at my screen for one hour to many. It's not revolutionary, but it WILL help you write better ads, especially for those of you who are not very bright to begin with.

( Just making sure you are still paying attention..

I hope this was helpful, and you are able to use and benefit from the above as much as I have. And I will add more of these simple and effective free tools over the coming days and weeks, because as I've said over and over on here, and otherwise - you do not need to break the bank, or your budget to have great success on line.

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