Driving sales with Google Adwords

My Google Adwords campaign has been running for a few days now and is driving traffic to my AOL landing page on my UK broadband comparison website www.ukbroadbandfinder.com.

I can't use AOL trademarks, but I have written loads of ads which are quite specific about AOL broadband and dial up package details - speed, downloads, free wireless router, free month, broadband with no minimum contract if you switch to AOL, etc.

Now the campaign is up and running I am tweaking it all the time - clearer Google ads, more popular keywords, keyword mis-spellings - and I'm also continually optimising the landing page (while I also work on the general SEO on the whole broadband site).

It is hard work but the person I really feel sorry for is Jason Henry at affiliate network TradeDoubler, who has been the recipient of far too many emails from me about Adwords functionality, keywords, and optimising. Sadly for Jason, there's more to come.

I'll be working with AOL and TradeDoubler later this week to fine-tune my campaign, and also to find out which areas of my broadband availability website need search engine optimisation (SEO) changes.

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder

Blogtastic

I've currently got four consumer blogs linking to www.ukbroadbandfinder.com

So far they haven't been optimised for search engines (SEO) as I have been concentrating on my main broadband website, but I hope I am doing some things right to build traffic on my blogs and to drive traffic from them to my broadband website.

Google loves blogs if they are regularly updated.

UKBroadbandFinder Offers at http://ukbroadbandfinder.blogspot.com. I use this blog to post new broadband offers or promote aspects of my broadband comparison website (new articles, great functionality, etc). I track all the links so I can establish if any sales come directly from this blog. I also make sure that all links have title text and keyword-rich link text.

My broadband blogs:

UK Broadband News at http://ukbroadband.wordpress.com. This is for news articles about broadband, dial up, mobile, internet and more. There is usually something to write about about each day - for a start there's always a story about Virgin Media (people trying to buy it, spats with Sky, cable broadband offers...). I'm using it to drive traffic directly to my broadband website and increase my credibility in the sector.

The Broadband Glossary at http://broadbandglossary.wordpress.com. Need a broadband definition? I've been developing this glossary for a couple of months now. It covers more than just broadband - dial up, internet, www, etc. I'm trying to add to it each day. It drives traffic to www.ukbroadbandfinder.com, and vice versa - I hope it answers users' questions about broadband and keeps them on my site.

UK Broadband Finder blog at http://www.ukbroadbandfinder.com/broadband_blog.html. This blog has broadband special offers, industry trends (free trials, free broadband) and website information (new articles, new site functionality).

BT Tradespace site at http://ukbroadbandfinder.bttradespace.com. This has short blog and product posts about broadband offers and news. BT Tradespace is quite popular with search engines.

Next blogging steps:

1. BT Tradespace has an option to upload a podcast. I'd like to record my own broadband-related podcast and upload it to the site.
2. Update my ukbroadbandfinder.com blog more often!
3. The first 3 are all on Technorati. I need to link up with other blog directories.
4. Do more for SEO on the blogs themselves.

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder

Broadband Adwords campaign goes live

This week I finalised my new Google Adwords campaign and sent it Live.

I've used Adwords for broadband before but I had found it difficult to get good returns - so a few months ago I switched it off. Since then the sales have been building, but I know I need to make Adwords work alongside my SEO-driven organic search traffic and sales.

With Adwords, the obvious broadband keywords are, not surprisingly, expensive, and my previous landing pages were too generic (which meant I paid even more for my clicks).

So with my new campaign:

1. My new PPC (pay per click) campaign is more targeted - it goes to a revamped AOL landing page that has been optimised for SEO.
2. TradeDoubler sent me some good converting keywords
3. I used an application called KeywordConvert which is really useful for generating keyword phrases (add your keywords to three columns and it automatically comes up with all possible combinations for broad match, exact match and phrase match).
4. I have written targeted ads - four for each Ad Group. It will be interesting to see which of these gets the most click-throughs (and whether those clicks then convert!)

Now the campaign has been running for a couple of days I can already see where I need to add more keywords so I'll try to do that this weekend.

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder

Narrow down your broadband results

I haven't posted for a while but I have been busy working with my friendly neighbourhood techie (otherwise known as Brett) on www.ukbroadbandfinder.com.

Today the new broadband results filters went live - which means customers can narrow down their broadband search by lots of factors including download speed, price, upload speed, broadband type, download allowance and more.

This should be particularly useful for people in urban areas who can get loads of broadband deals in their area, or for anyone who knows what's important to them in a great broadband deal - superfast broadband speeds, a cheap broadband deal, unlimited downloads, or a one month broadband contract.

I've spent a lot of time today testing the new filters and reworking the text and and I'm sure I'll adapt the filters over time as I get feedback on what works best (and what users want to filter on to narrow their broadband search).

The broadband search filters work on a postcode or phone number search - or just go to the broadband packages listing page and filter from there.

So check out the filters now on www.ukbroadbandfinder.com

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder

New wireless broadband article

I'm still adding new and updated original content to my website.

Today I have added another article to my broadband comparison website, www.ukbroadbandfinder.com.

This one is about wireless broadband and Wi-Fi - how it works and what some of the terminology means.

I've also included a list of broadband packages that come with a free wireless router.

As with all my new pages (and some of the old ones - retrofitting takes a long time...) the wireless broadband page has a search engine-friendly URL - http://www.ukbroadbandfinder.com/wireless_broadband.html

I've also added several blog posts to my UK Broadband finder blog (about recent changes to the website) - as we all know, Google loves frequently updated websites!

So check out my wireless broadband article now on www.ukbroadbandfinder.com

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder

Polling day has arrived

I said in my last Broadband Apprentice post that I wanted to add a poll as a regular feature. After a couple of tweaks, the UK Broadband Finder poll is now up - check it out at www.ukbroadbandfinder.com

I'm going to aim for one poll a month. The first one asks what is the most important factor driving visitors' next broadband package purchase. I think the results will make interesting reading as cheap broadband battles with blistering superfast speeds or unlimited downloads. I'll report back on the results at a later date.

Why am I adding a poll?

1. to learn more about what my website visitors: what they want from their broadband, biggest broadband gripes, best / worst providers, etc
2. for feedback on my broadband comparison website
3. to drive visits through publicity from press releases and news stories (about my poll findings)

So check out the poll now on www.ukbroadbandfinder.com

By Sarah, UK Broadband Finder