1 June 2012

Great blog by John Zwissler

Original Blog Posted: 1 Jun 2012

Tips for Success in Content Networks:
Small business owners save themselves a great amount of time and money by utilizing the most effective strategies to manage their online advertising campaigns. Business owners with Google Adwords accounts may advertise their goods and services on content networks as well as in general search.

A content network is a network of websites that provide content: text content, video content, and audio content. These sites allow advertisers to show ads next to the content. It is not enough to simply have your advertising show up on pages in the content network. Success in business advertising on content networks depends upon the following techniques.
When creating content network campaigns in your Google Adwords account, always turn off search. By the same token, turn off content networks when you create campaigns for search. Keep content network and search campaigns separate.

Create unique keyword lists for each campaign. A “keyword” is actually a word or a phrase connected to a specific search campaign. To successfully advertise in content networks, limit your campaign keywords to only one to three words. Longer phrases used as keywords are unlikely to result in relevant matches.
Make a list of keywords that describe the type of sites on the content network on which you want your business ad to run. For search campaigns, it is best to create as many keyword phrases as you can think of to describe that site and how your ad relates to it. Creativity is highly useful. The more specific keywords you come up with, the more likely you will find a handful that sound best and will bring more traffic to you.

For content networks, however, keywords should describe the sites in more general, broad terms. This is a different strategy from designing keywords for search. Using broader keyword terms widens the net for more relevant sites to show your ad.

Maintain separate keyword lists for search campaigns and content networks.
Google scans the millions of pages in the content network on an ongoing basis. Google looks for matches between your keywords and other campaign data to put your ad on the most relevant sites.

To succeed in content networks, you must keep track of all of the sites on which your ad appears. Pay attention to how much traffic you get from each site. Exclude low performing sites from your campaign.

It is also advisable to bid lower on content networks than you bid on search campaigns. Keep search and content network campaigns separate, use broad search term keywords for content networks, and keep track of which website in the network send you traffic for advertising success.
About the Author: John Zwissler @ AddMe.com www.addme.com