Google as posted the transcript from their JuneTune live chat, plus the recording, and the presentations on Personalized Search and Case Sensitivity in Web Search.

According to some accounts, there were over 400 webmasters participating.

This is a must-read and a must-listen. You WILL learn a lot, I promise!

Transcript - Recording - Personalized Search Presentation - Case Sensitivity Presentation

We all know we need to TEST our landing pages, ad copy, well, essentially everything that people will ever see about us on the internet. What converts best? That is the ultimate question.

Many of us are overwhelmed by testing though. Split testing your ads is the best way to get moving and Derek Salyers posted a great article last week that should be a good start for many of you.

Click here to read Five Things to Test When Split Testing Ads

Amit Mehta provided a great post last week about Long Tail Keywords entitled: Are Long Tail Keywords the Holy Grail of Search?

Here are some excerpts and comments about how they relate to insurance.

A long tail keywords is a highly specific keyword containing 4 words or more.

Here’s an example :

buy nike tennis shoes size 10

As you can imagine someone typing in a keywords like : “buy nike tennis shoes size 10″ is READY TO BUY! In other words an effective long tail keywords will have a very high conversion rate.

In insurance, you find specific keywords also convert much better! Try these and consider similar keywords:

• Chicago Illinois Homeowners Insurance (replace Chicago with any city, including small cities, state, or location) - Location-specific keywords usually mean a person is moving to an area or looking for a local agent, which we provide. These convert very high! Similar phrases: Homeowners Insurance in Chicago Illinois, Auto Insurance Agents Chicago, etc.
• Affordable Auto Insurance Quotes - adding a definition of what type of insurance (affordable) is always good. Other examples: Best Auto Insurance Coverage, Compare Multiple Health Insurance Quotes, etc.
• Senior Citizens Auto Insurance - Age-specific (avoid teens, they don’t convert as well), gender-specific, and other qualifiers work great. Other examples: Car Insurance for Women, Life Insurance for Single Mothers, Small Family Health Insurance.

But here’s the thing, a 4+ word keyword will not get a lot of traffic, maybe 1-2 clicks a month. So the trick is to bid on 30k,50k, even a 100k long tails. You can do the math, the traffic will add up.

When I mean long tail, I mean REALLY long tail. C2C bids on several million long tail keywords per merchant. And you thought managing your 10k keyword campaign was intimidating!?!

This means lots of work! But the cost will be lower and the conversions higher. Play with it and see what works for you!

From Jonathan Volk, a primer for you newbies and some reminders for the veterans out there. My comments, with specifics about HometownQuotes and insurance are in bold italics

Here are some good tips to get you started with your Google Adwords campaigns.

• 1. Don’t start a campaign with broad matching. Use phrase and exact. This really helps to narrow down profitable keywords which you can then use as a model for expansion. Turn broad match keywords on once you are making a profit and ready to start expanding your volume.

Additional Notes: The plural version of quote (quotes) converts better than the singular. Also, consider running ads only at certain times of the day based on conversions. Contact Matt for details on conversions by day and hour.

• 2. Turn off content network and search network. Get comfortable with the conversions from straight search results before turning on the methods that can really hurt or help your campaign. The content network is really for advanced users only in my opinion. (Of course this is all my opinion haha)
• 3. Geotarget. Make sure you’re targeting your Ads directly to the audience you are wanting. If your campaign allows for Canadian traffic, make sure you target it! Many people seem to forget that there is traffic outside of the United States and let publishers like me make extra money with a lot less work.

Additional Notes: State specific keywords are GREAT - Kansas Home Insurance (for example) - If you do this make sure the title of the ad is Kansas Home Insurance not “Home Insurance Quotes” or something generic.

Same goes for city specific - Chicago Auto Insurance - San Diego Renters Insurance (for example)

Geotarget out traditionally low-converting areas (feel free to ask Matt for this list)

• 4. Group Your Keywords. Group your keywords into tight groups that are all related to both your ad and landing page. The better the quality score, the happier you’ll be, trust me, it’s worth the time it takes
• 5. Look at what others are doing. Yahoo has a tool that you can view other people’s ads while writing your own by clicking a keyword. Google doesn’t have a tool like this but a simple Google search is fine. See what ads are good performing ads and which seem to suck. The higher they are, the better that ads probably are.
• 6. Be smart! Track your results. I’ve tried setting up Prosper202 and had some trouble getting it to work but maybe you won’t have the same issues as me. It looks like a good app either way.
• 7. Buy an Adwords Voucher if your account is under 14 days old. Buy the biggest one you can get! I find Digitalpoint forums are a great place to buy these vouchers.

Additional Suggestions

• 8. Use the negative keyword lists to filter out the low converting keywords
• 9. Use the budget cap but not the budget optimizer

So those are probably the MAIN things I would tell any person looking to start advertising in Adwords. These things can really mean the difference between making a lot of money and flopping so do it right the first time so you won’t have to lose money!

More great advice on AdWords, affiliate marketing, and more at Jonathan Volk’s blog

If you missed this (and I did admittedly) you missed an important announcement from Google.

Load time is now a large factor in determining your landing page quality score for AdWords.

This effects everything from the design of your pages to the hosting company you choose. Ultimately, in this department, you have to choose between quality and price. Saving $20 a month on hosting could end up costing you much more in the long run if your quality score drops and your marketing costs go up.

It’s something to think about!

Google has a lot of information here (this is a direct link to the part about load time and quality score)

Yahoo! announced last week that it is changing the minimum bid for Sponsored Search from $0.10 to…well not $0.10.

They go into an explanation that somehow involves Van Gogh and hog auctions, but the long story short is that some minimum bids will be lower and some higher.

The objective, according to Yahoo!, is to reward advertisers for better ad quality by allowing lower entry points for certain keywords.

While this move is likely to hurt some affiliates and advertisers, I believe that overall it will help those that are willing to put in a little effort and will go after QUALITY!

You can read the full post at the YSM Blog here

Enjoy!

According to many sources, MSN will cease to give out the $50 credits for new account promotion on February 29th of this year! Previously they had said April 15. So, if you have not yet set up a new account for you…or your best friend…or dog (if you get my drift), NOW is the time!

Click here for the MSN $50 New Account Credit

That is good question, however, the real question is, “how do you get converting visitors to your website”?

You can send thousands of people an hour through your site without a single insurance form submit. Unfortunately, you will not make any money that way. So, you need targeted website visitors to see your banners and links. People who might be looking for insurance now or people who will need insurance quotes sometime in the future.

There are really only two options for this type exposure. Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization.

Pay Per Click

PPC is expensive, the competition is great and the industry leaders dominate the market. The big insurance companies will pay any amount for a visitor if they are branding their business and trying to dominate their specific insurance market. These same companies can also be seen on television and are often heard on the radio.

My daddy use to say that banks and insurance companies have all the money. He was right and trying to compete with these guys on a PPC level will make your money disappear quickly. This is not to say that all paid placement is unattainable, just that some places are going to be out of reach for many affiliates. Obviously, Google, Yahoo and MSN are on that list. You will find the most competitive advertisers on page one of these search sites.

What about page two or page three? Give it a try. The costs will be significantly reduced on each click and using a good landing page may well produce profitable conversions.

Search Engine Optimization

Personally, I recommend you apply your affiliate links to a themed website or blog that can reach searchers organically without paying for clicks. This is a much harder proposition but a great deal more profitable in the long run. I believe all of you reading this now are looking for a long term opportunity. If you dedicate yourself to an easy business model, the income will come.

The easiest way to SEO any website is through a blog. Blogs are favored by search spiders for a variety of reasons but the main benefit to a blog is quick and easy publishing. Insurance covers a wide variety of topics that can easily be blogged. Anything related to home, auto or health can be blogged and monetized through the HometownQuotes insurance affiliate program. These three “products” alone cover literally thousands of broad and niche topics.

Some of you have years of experience in fields that many people search for everyday. Blogging allows you to communicate with these people about your experience while putting free website visitors within eyeshot of your affiliate links.

Blogging may not be the answer for some of you just as PPC may not be an option for some as well. However, if you are serious about the earnings potential available through HometownQuotes, together we can find the right fit for you.

Obviously there is much more to marketing the HometownQuotes opportunity than I have listed here. I just wanted to drop a quick post to hopefully stir some conversation and get some feedback.

Also, please email me your questions. I will be creating a separate category for questions where I will be providing answers on a regular basis. Our business is growing. There is no reason why you can’t be a part of our success.

Throughout the next 30 days, we are launching quite a few new landing pages. We originally were going to save them for September, but as usual, I was pretty excited about it, so I am doing so a few days early.

Currently, we have added 5 new landing pages and plan to add between 5 and 20 (depending on the conversion testing in September) in the next 30 days.

You can check out the new pages here

And of course by logging in and creating new links to the new pages.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

From the Affiliate Summit Blog comes this post.

Affiliate Summit has some great videos - (here) of the sessions.

Here is a clip of one all about conversion rates and persuasion techniques for your visitors.

While catching up on some news today I found a great post with EVERY keyword suggestion tool ever made in the history of man…or something close to that!

Check it out here

We recently added the following terms:

Zander Insurance (zander, zander ins, zander direct, zanders, zanderinsurance, zanderins.com, zanderins, zander.com, etc.)

Dave Ramsey

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation as always!

You can view the entire list here

We recently added the following terms:

Response Insurance (responseinsurance.com. response ins)

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation as always!

You can view the entire list here

According to their web site, “KeyCompete is the answer to this question. KeyCompete is an online keyword research tool that identifies the keywords your competitors are using in their pay-per-click campaigns.

KeyCompete also identifies the competition that is bidding on your keywords.”

From what I have heard from others this is not an outrageous claim at all. I spent some time experimenting with it this weekend and it actually does live up to the hype!

I especially like the frequency of updates they make. I looked into our own stuff and it was very accurate.

So check it out today!

We recently added the following terms:

• MassHealth
• Hagerty (hagerty.com)

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation as always!

You can view the entire list here