Optimizing Traffic for Sales, Google Keyword Planner and Banner Tutorial

Published: Tue, 08/27/13

Bear with me...a lot to cover today!

Wow, there's a lot going on and I wanted to cover all of it which makes for a lengthy email. I'll try to be as brief but as thorough as possible for each topic. There are some links to video tutorials that folks have asked for and updates on changes that impact our business processes - all good, in my opinion.

Keeping Your Traffic - an Ingenious Plug-in

Funny I should be reading a post on Copyblogger today about "optimizing traffic" and this new plug-in for WordPress should come out because, in my mind, this plug-in does exactly what Copyblogger is recommending. It helps you get more from your current traffic.

This plug-in does something so forehead-slapping ingenious that it's been on my mind since Igor told me about it a couple of weeks ago.

This plug-in welcomes back traffic that just went to Amazon but couldn't find what they wanted and it does it in a way that should help you get more from that traffic.

Have you ever had a click over to Amazon that didn't result in a sale? Stupid question, right? We all do. But how we handle that traffic is pretty typical. We do nothing with them.

This plug-in lets you get a second chance at that same traffic.

Here's the scenario. You have an affiliate link on your site. Someone clicks on it and the link opens in a new window. Maybe they bought something and maybe they didn't but they have to go back to the tab in your browser that displays your site at some point even if it's to close the tab. However, with this plug-in enabled, the traffic gets a special, very simple message - did you find what you were looking for? And then offers them a way to search AGAIN to find something that meets their needs.

Duh! Think about it..if we ran brick and mortar stores and someone came into our shop, we'd do whatever we could to help them find what they were after up to and including asking them questions right as they were leaving. The same principle can certainly apply to our websites but until now there hasn't been an easy way for you to do that for an Amazon site. Igor's solution is simply brilliant.

You need to see this in action so look at the demo Igor has set up on his page:

Simple WordPress Plug-in that Re-engages Existing Traffic

Amazon Report Change for Mobile Sales

Whoa, Amazon! In checking out my reports on Amazon today I noticed a new column in the Orders Report. This column tells you whether or not your sale came from a user on a desktop or a user from a mobile device.

That's incredibly handy to have. If you see that more of your sales are coming from desktops and not from mobile devices, it might be a clue that your site or content location is not well designed for mobile users. Maybe it loads too slow or is too hard to navigate on a smaller device.

You can match that up with data in your traffic stats from Google or your own source and see if the conversion rates and clickthroughs are trending the same or not for the different devices.

That kind of information could be used to make design changes on your site to take better advantage of mobile traffic.

To see this data, bring up your Amazon Associates dashboard, click on the Reports tab and select Orders Report. The column has been added to the right side of the report.

The data prior to August 26th will all say desktop but the information going forward will be very useful.

Stacie's Two Week Strategy Now Available

A couple of week's ago I mentioned Stacie and her back to school PLR pack. Included in her material was her 14 day plan for promoting her new content and it's pretty simple, well laid out and has worked well for her for quite some time.

Many of you were interested in her strategy more than anything else but because the PLR pack was limited up front to 50 copies, that left many of you without the opportunity to get your hands on her strategy.

She's put up a new pack including her strategy and removed the quantity limits. The price is cheap, the material is excellent AND she's got some extras for you in this one because the topic for the keyword research and PLR portion is geared towards action figures - a hot niche at Christmas.

In my Christmas Cash Out product I referred folks to a free banner maker from Fotor. I'm in love with this app. (All the images in this email were created with the tool.)

However, it's not the easiest thing to learn and some of you asked for a video tutorial showing how to use the banner maker. You can watch that video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpgzWo5dGcI

(Gees, I sound tired in that video, but I'm not. Sorry for the dry and rather monotone voice...not my usual style.)

New Google Keyword Planner Tutorial

It looks like Google has completed the transition to the new Google Keyword Planner which means no more access to the Google Keyword Tool.

No worries - I've been using the new tool for weeks now and am very comfortable with the new layout. If I can adjust, so can you.

To make things easier, though, I've done a quick tutorial on using the new tool.

You can watch that here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqo2iMWNBng

Finding More Keywords for Christmas Cash Out

Several of you were interested in understanding how to find more keywords to use with Christmas Cash Out. I posted some information in the WSO thread but in case you don't make it back there, I'll relay the same information here.

To Quickly Find More Keywords:

Take any keyword from the list and plug it into the Google Keyword Planner (or your favorite keyword tool)
Click on the Keyword Ideas tab to see the results
Click on the download arrow to download the report and choose the option to Segment Statistics by Month so you'll see the monthly search trend (this will allow you to identify the keywords that have increased search volume in November/December)
Find keywords that are at least 3 words long (4 or more is better as they're usually more targeted and lower competition) that have an increase in search volume in November and December
Do the SEO competition analysis outlined in the book

I did that with just one phrase and found another 30 not on the list that would work perfectly.

Another method is to look at the keywords that mention a group of people (boyfriends, boys, etc.) and replace that word with some other group of people. You'll see I did not include all the different "groups" (wife, wives, husband, husbands, guys, etc.). Then run that phrase through the Google Keyword Planner and follow the same steps outlined above.

You should be able to find hundreds of other keywords relatively quickly using the list of over 700 as seed keyword ideas.