They actually guarantee that my site will appear above all other sites on every search engine for my selected keywords.

I knew, of course, that it was some sort of scam, but I was curious about exactly what the scam was. They never actually say it in so many words, but apparently their “service” is a browser-based plug-in that inserts an ad for your site at the very top of the page in your web browser.

They key point that they don’t tell you is that only people with their browser plug-in installed will see your ad. Here’s a screenshot of their home page:

AdWord Express is a scam

The only way AdWord Express could be accomplishing that is with a browser plug-in. Google doesn’t sell ad space like that, and neither do any of the other major search engines.

And here’s a screenshot of their “Browser Upgrade” page:

AdWordExpress is a scam and they will install malicious plug-ins into your browser.

They very cleverly don’t tell you anywhere that their “EXCLUSIVE TOP PLACEMENT” will only appear to people who install these browser plug-ins, but that’s obviously what they’re doing.

And here’s a screenshot of the status bar for installing the “Upgrade for Internet Explorer” and the “Upgrade for Firefox”:

AdWord Express will install plug-ins to your browsers. Probably malicious malware-laden plug-ins. After all, a company that will scam you in one way is likely to scam you in other ways.

See what’s going on there? The IE “upgrade” will run a program called “Upgrade.exe,” and who knows what that will do on your computer….. The Firefox “upgrade” will run “install_tb_XPI(),” which will install something to Firefox —The name suggests a plugin that displays a toolbar, but who really knows?

AdWordExpress is found at adwordexpress.com. They have a private registration through Network Solutions. I swear that the day I received their spam, they were at adwordexpress.net, but that domain now has a GoDaddy parking page. The two domains were registered on 10/4/11 and 10/6/11, just 2 days apart, so they’re probably the same people. It appears that perhaps GoDaddy has already detected their scam and deactivated their site. The .com is still live through Network Solutions, though.

Please…… don’t anyone fall for this scam. And whatever you do, do not install their “browser upgrades.”

A Realtor may be an expert at marketing and selling real estate — but that Realtor may not be an expert at writing AdWords advertising copy or managing an online pay-per-click campaign. Pay-per-click is an easy way to get targeted traffic to your web site without waiting for the long-term results of organic search engine optimization. It’s also an easy way to throw away lots of money without seeing any return.

We’ve put together a few tips to help you fine-tune your PPC advertising to help you get the most bang for your buck. This article focuses primarily on real estate PPC advertising, but the concepts are applicable to most any type of service or product.

First, the basics:

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising, is an online advertising model that allows you, the advertiser, to run ads on the Web — and you pay only when someone clicks on your ad and goes to your web site. This is called a click-through (or click-thru). The ratio of ad views to click-throughs is called the click-through rate, or CTR. Google and Yahoo are the two biggest and best-known PPC networks; there are others, but they don’t have nearly the reach of these two — and Google is by far the biggest. We’ll focus here on Google’s AdWords program, but all the major PPC advertising networks operate using similar concepts.

One major benefit of PPC advertising, of course, is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Imagine being able to put an ad in your local newspaper that only costs you money when it causes someone to call you! But another major benefit of PPC advertising, which is sometimes overlooked, is that it allows you target your advertising precisely in a way that no other advertising medium can match. Think laser targeting: You make a keyword list, precisely targeted to your professional services. Those keywords will trigger your ad, which is precisely written to capitalize on the keywords that triggered it. And the ad itself sends users to a page on your site that is precisely written to give the user exactly what he is looking for.This is not your father’s advertising — This is Scud-style laser-guided-missile targeting!

Imagine being able to run commercials on television that would only get shown to viewers who had just been searching for exactly your services! And only having to pay if that viewer actually responds to your ad! Then imagine being able to custom-tailor that viewer’s experience when he does respond — controlling exactly the message he gets, which may be different from the message some other viewer gets who responds to different ad you’re running.

How Does PPC Advertising Work?

You, the advertiser, bid on keywords related to your business. You bid the maximum amount that you’re willing to pay per click, and your bids go into a pool of bids. If your bid is high enough (compared to the other bids in the pool), your ads gets shown when someone searches Google using the keywords you bid on. The keywords you bid on trigger your ad to show on Google’s search results pages when a user searches for those keywords, or triggers your ad to appear on web sites that carry AdWords ads, when that site’s on-page content contains those keywords. It gets more complicated that that — you can use different types of keyword matching to define how broadly or narrowly you want Google to match your keywords.

When your ad is shown and a user clicks your ad, they get taken to the landing page on your web site that you specify, and now it’s the job of your web site to induce that user to call you or submit your contact form, or do whatever is it you want that user to do once they arrive at your site.

Setting up a PPC Campaign

In your PPC account, you start by setting up a “Campaign,” which consists of an ad and the associated keywords that you want to have trigger that ad. (You can create multiple versions of the ad within the campaign; we’ll address that a little further down. But it helps to think of a campaign as “one ad and its associated keywords.”) You should set up multiple campaigns, with each campaign being tightly focused on one particular theme or topic. A real estate agent might create separate campaigns for “homes for sale,” “condos for sale,” and “land for sale,” for example, and depending on your marketing approach, you might want to have even more campaigns. You might also want to create one or more campaigns aimed people wanting to sell real estate, who are looking for a real estate agent to represent them in their sale.

Within each campaign, you create an ad and a list of keywords that will trigger your ad. A “keyword” can be — and usually is — a phrase : one or more words together. A Realtor, for example, might bid on terms such as “Punta Gorda homes for sale” or “waterfront condos,” while a carpet store might bid on “carpets,” “floor coverings,” and “rugs.” You want to create a specific and unique list of keywords targeted precisely at the topic of the campaign. For your “Homes for sale” campaign, for example, your keyword list might include “homes for sale,” “houses for sale,” “waterfront houses for sale,” “affordable homes for sale,” and so forth.

Now, wait just a goldarned minute! Shouldn’t the “waterfront houses for sale” be in a separate campaign aimed at waterfront houses? Yes indeed. And shouldn’t “affordable homes for sale” be in a separate campaign aimed at affordable homes? Yep. Exactly so. Look very critically at your keyword list, both while you’re developing it and after you think you’re done, and see if there are keywords that should be separated out into a campaign of their own. After all, we’re working on a laser-targeted approach here.

Keyword Matching Options

You’ll want to read the support documentation in your PPC network for the keyword matching options. In Google, keywords can use broad matching, phrase matching, or exact matching. What are these options, and how do they work? Until you gain experience in your PPC campaign, phrase matching is probably your best bet to use, but here’s a quick rundown:

• Broad Matching: In Google’s AdWords program, this can be a good way to throw away money. The “broad matching” option in AdWords automatically includes Google’s “expanded keyword matching technology,” which tries to use computer “intelligence” to match your keywords with other, related, words, such as synonyms and related phrases, that in all likelihood will include terms that you do not want. Your carefully crafted “Gulf-front home” ad may be shown to people looking for a lake-front mountain cottage. Your target audience will not be well-targeted, and the click-throughs that you get are less likely to be interested in your services. As you gain experience in PPC advertising, you might want to include some broad matching, but if you do, you definitely want to use an extensive negative-match keyword list.
• Phrase Matching: Phrase matching will trigger your ad for any search query that includes the keywords in the order you specified, even if the search included additional words not part of your keyword. For example, a phrase-match keyword “waterfront homes” will match searches for “waterfront homes with a pool” and “Florida waterfront homes” — the search will always have your keyword phrase in it.
• Exact Matching: Exact matching only triggers your ad for searches that exactly match your keyword. Using the example above, if you put “waterfront homes” in your keyword list as an exact-match keyword, a search for “florida waterfront homes” will not trigger your ad.

Negative Keywords

The ability to list negative keywords for each campaign is one of your most powerful — and one of the most often overlooked — tools in your PPC toolkit.

You should include negative match keywords in every campaign you create. Negative-match keywords ensure that your ad is not shown for searches that include the negative keywords you specify. For example, in your “homes for sale” campaign, you might want to list “nursing” and “retirement” and “Masonic” and “children’s” as negative-match keywords — because you don’t want to show your ad to people looking for a nursing home or retirement home or Masonic home or children’s home. If you set up a campaign for “luxury homes,” you’ll probably want to list “mobile” and “manufactured” as negative keywords, so that you don’t show your ad to people looking for mobile homes. You might also include “affordable,” “tear-down,” and “handyman special” in your negative keyword list for your “luxury homes” campaign. You should spend at least as much time developing your negative-keyword list as you do developing your regular keyword list.

If you are a Realtor who sells real estate in Florida, you should include every U.S. state other than Florida in your negative keyword list. You don’t want to show your ad to people looking for “homes in Montana” or “condos in California.” You can still display your ad to people in those states — someone in Maine who is searching for “waterfront homes in Florida” is probably a good target for your waterfront homes campaign. But someone (whether in Florida, Maine or California) searching for waterfront homes in Oregon isn’t your target market. Don’t show your ad to those folks.

Keyword Bidding

You have to specify the amount(s) you’re willing to pay for each click on your ad. If you bid too low, your ad won’t be shown. If you bid high, Google’s AdWords program automatically adjusts your cost-per-click (CPC) to one penny over the next-highest competitor. If you bid $4/click, and the next-highest bidder is bidding $0.50/click, you’ll pay $0.51 per click. But be careful: You could cause a bidding war that ends up costing everybody more money. You’ll have to experiment to find the bid price that works best for you. Use Google’s keyword tool to see what the average CPC is estimated to be for your selected keywords, and bid somewhere in that neighborhood to start.

You’ll have to experiment to find the bidding level that works best for you, and you’ll probably need to adjust your bids up or down as your market changes. A few real estate agents over-bidding in your market could cause your minimum CPC to increase significantly — and likewise, a few real estate agents who blew through their advertising budget with nothing to show for it could decrease your CPC when they drop their PPC advertising.

Writing Your Ad

Laser targeting is the key. Did we mention laser targeting? Don’t forget: You’re creating a laser-targeted advertising campaign here. Write your ad headline and copy so that it is laser-targeted to the keyword list you created. Are you bidding on the keyphrase “luxury waterfront homes”? Your ad headline should read “Luxury Waterfront Homes.” Your ad copy should expand on that theme. A campaign for “waterfront condos”? Your ad headline should read “Waterfront Condos.” Give that searcher exactly what he’s looking for.

This is why you should create multiple campaigns, each with its own specific keyword list. Don’t try to use the same ad to reach people looking for luxury homes and waterfront condos and commercial real estate. Create separate campaigns, separate keyword lists, and custom-written ads to laser target your ads precisely at the laser-targeted keywords.

Your Landing Page

AdWords, and the other PPC networks, allow you to specify a particular landing page on your web site for each ad. Do not send simply people to your web site’s home page. Here again, laser target your landing page so that it exactly reflects your ad and your keyword list. Your “luxury waterfront homes” campaign should send people to a page on your web site that promotes and offers luxury waterfront homes. Your “commercial real estate” campaign should send people to the most appropriate page on your site for people interested in commercial real estate

It’s a good idea to consider developing specific landing pages for specific campaigns. If you don’t already have a page on your site that’s exactly perfect for a given ad campaign, you should create one. It doesn’t need to be part of your site’s main navigation, and you don’t care about optimizing it for organic search rankings. You want your landing page to reflect exactly what your visitor was looking for, and exactly what he expected to find when he clicked on your ad.

The Laser-Targeted Campaign

If you have followed the steps above, you have created multiple ad campaigns, each with a carefully developed keyword list, and a carefully written ad, and a carefully created landing page, such that for every campaign, you are targeting a very precise type of search, showing an ad that exactly matches that search, and sending the user to a landing page that exactly matches that search. You’re creating an information scent that the user can follow. You’re taking that user by the hand and leading him down the path to exactly what he’s looking for. Congratulations! Now…..

Read, Read, and Read Some more

There is much, much more. You should spend some time reading everything you can get your hands on about PPC campaigns, and you should spend some time exploring the account management interface in your PPC account. Study up on geotargeting. Learn how to run your campaign only at specific times. Read about the differences between the search network and the content network. Set your monthly maximum budget. Explore different keyword matching options, and try out variations on your ads. Read up on Google’s “Quality Score” to find out how that affects your cost-per-click.

Through research and experimentation, you’ll figure out what works best for you to maximize the return on your PPC dollars.

I’m not a fan of NetBiz. They’re not necessarily a scam, but they do seem to be at least somewhat misleading in how they represent themselves.

What they’re doing is pay-per-click, plain and simple — where you run ads on Google, which appear in the “Sponsored Links” section, and you pay a set amount “per click” whenever someone clicks on your ad. There’s nothing wrong with pay-per-click; it can be a powerful tool to get targeted traffic to your site. And there’s nothing wrong with paying a PPC expert to manage your PPC campaigns for you. But I’m skeptical about anyone who offers a PPC campaign on a fixed budget, while attempting to conceal exactly what they’re doing.

Despite their claims about being “featured on that first page 100% of the time,” they *have* to be setting a maximum per-month budget, which would be below what they charge you — otherwise, where would their profit come from? If and when you get enough clicks that the monthly maximum is reached, your ad would not show again until the following month. Period. There’s no other way they could make these offers and stay in business. Yet they don’t seem to want to tell you outright that your ad is running on a pay-per-click basis.

I haven’t had the pleasure of receiving any calls from NetBiz myself, so I can’t speak to the truthfulness of their sales pitch. But other people who have spoken with NetBiz reps report their experiences:

• An Austin, Texas, Realtor wrote a blog post nominating NetBiz as 2007′s Most Misleading Telemarketing Call.
• A Realtor in Hawaii reports on his blog that a NetBiz telemarketer claimed to be calling “on behalf of Google.”
• The Website Publisher blog also reports phone-spam from NetBiz and deceptive claims that they’re calling “on behalf of Google”

Furthermore, if you’re going to spend money on pay-per-click advertising, I’d recommend that you either hire someone who knows what they’re doing, or learn a little bit about it yourself and manage your own campaigns. For PPC advertising to be effective, you need to focus on carefully written, tightly focused ads, with very carefully selected keywords lists to trigger the ads, and with tightly focused landing pages on your site developed specifically as landing pages for your ads.

This slap-dash kind of offer from NetBiz, with no discussion of the value of the keywords, or any focus on writing the ad itself, and no mention of targeted landing pages — I just don’t think it’s a good way to spend your advertising money. NetBiz seems more focused on getting your money than on running advertising that will work for you.

PPC advertising isn’t rocket science, but getting a decent return on your advertising dollars requires more thought than NetBiz seems to put into their offers.

As always, do your research, gather the facts, and make up your own mind. But I recommend avoiding the NetBiz approach.

Read more about AdWords advertising:

• Maximize your Pay Per Click Return
• Eight Tips Every AdWords Advertiser Should Know

First thing: You want to create multiple campaigns, with each campaign focused around a particular product, category or topic. For example, you could create Campaign A for Product A, Campaign B for Product B, and so forth. But you might also benefit by creating a campaign about Hot New Feature in Product A, in which you would target your keywords, ad text, and landing page to that particular feature, and another campaign about Great User Benefit in Product B, in which you would target that user benefit of product B.

Each campaign should be tightly focused on a single theme. Make up your keyword list for each campaign to reflect the theme of that particular campaign. Write the ad(s) for each campaign to reflect the theme of the campaign, using the keywords from the campaign. For example, if Product A’s hot new feature is something that will save users money, you might run ads with headlines like “Save Money With Hot New Feature,” “Hot New Feature Saves Money,” and so on, and the text of the ad should focus on that theme: “Product A Increases Your Bottom Line By Saving You Money”. (Please note: The sample ad text and headlines I’m using here are quick, off-the-top-of-my-head examples, not well-thought-out ways to promote Hot New Feature of Product A.)

When you’re ready to focus on your Product B Great User Benefit campaign, you’d write your ads with ad headlines and text that use those keywords: “Great User Benefit in Product B” for the headline, and ad text that refers to or describes the user benefit.

What you want is for people who search for, say, “Hot New Feature,” to get your “Hot New Feature” campaign, with an ad headline that reads “Hot New Feature” and ad text that focuses on that feature. Someone else who searches for “Great User Benefit” would get your ad headlined “Great User Benefit” and ad text that promotes the user benefit of your product. Don’t make the mistake of lumping all your keywords and ads together under one campaign — think in terms of “laser targeting” your ads to the search words that people are using.

2. Opt Out of the Content Network (At Least Initially)

Second, after you create a campaign, be sure to go into “Edit Campaign Settings” and either opt OUT of the “content network” altogether, or else check the box “Content bids” to set separate prices for content clicks. This allows you to specify much-reduced bid amounts for your ads to appear on the content network. The “content network” is when ads appear not on Google’s search results page, but on regular websites that carry Google ads. A lot of these websites are junk, and they will NOT bring you good targeted leads. You’re opted in to the content network by default, which I think is pretty scummy of Google. I recommend that you opt out initially, and after you’ve spent some time learning your way around the system, only then experiment with opting in to the content network. There are a lot of good sites in the content network that you’ll probably want your ad to appear on, so you probably should opt in at some point, in a small way, with a much-reduced bid for content network ads — but not right away. First learn how to manage campaigns and write targeted ads and set up keywords lists, and only then should you venture into the content network.

3. Exclude myspace.com

If/when you do opt in to the content network, go into the “Tools” section, the Site Exclusion link, and opt OUT of myspace.com. When myspace.com started carrying Google ads, thousands of advertisers were suddenly hit with huge advertising bills because of all the kids on myspace who click-click-click willy-nilly on everything they see, with no intention of buying anything. And even after excluding myspace, keep an eye on the sources of clicks to see if your ads are getting clicks from any other sites sending you large amounts of worthless traffic. It’s one thing to pay for good traffic; it’s something else altogether to pay large amounts of money for huge amounts of worthless traffic.

4. No Search Network

While you’re in there editing the campaign settings, I also recommend unchecking the box to opt OUT of the “Search network.” There’s good stuff that you’ll be missing — AOL’s search, for example — but Google’s so-called “search network” is mostly garbage spam sites that will not bring you good traffic. I think until Google cleans up its “search network” everyone should opt out of the search network.

5. Keep Tabs On Your Campaigns

The first few days (even the first few weeks) that you’re running PPC ads, you should spend some time every day checking on the clicks you’re getting, and the ads and keywords you’re getting them from, and conversion rates. Don’t just set up some campaigns and then ignore them — go into your account EVERY DAY and see what’s going on. Dump the ads that aren’t performing, or edit the headlines and/or text. Very minor tweaks in the wording can make a huge difference. If you have ads that are performing well, create some additional ads very similar to those, but with minor changes, and see if they perform even better. If you have ads with good click-through rates, you ultimately end up paying less per click on those ads, even while the ads themselves get shown higher up in the block of paid ads. Ads with poor click-through rates will get shown lower down, and cost you more per click. So it’s well worth spending some time to experiment and find the ads that work best.

6. Learn How Keyword Matching Options Work

When setting up your keyword list, pay particular attention to the keyword matching options — broad matching, phrase matching, and exact matching. You should probably start with phrase matching. Broad matching can result in this scenario:

I have a client who runs humpback whale watching tours on the Silver Bank in the Dominican Republic. There are sperm banks that (I’m guessing) bid on the phrase sperm bank, using broad matching. Google’s world-famous algorithm says to itself “sperm bank …. sperm whales …. humpback whales … Silver Bank ….. Humpback whales must be related to sperm banks. I know! I’ll show sperm bank ads to people searching for humpback whales on the Silver Bank!” (I think the sperm banks may have wised up after a few clicks on those ads — I’m not seeing those so much anymore.) It’s a clever algorithm, but it’s not very smart. This is what happens when you let Google’s algorithm run wild with broad matching. Stick to phrase matching and/or exact matching. You might end up with your ad appearing for searches on bull sperm if you use broad matching. If/when you decide to experiment with broad matching, keep a *real* close eye on what’s happening with your ads. You might not like the results.

7. Setting Your Daily Budget

In your campaign settings, set your daily budget fairly high initially (although not so high that you’ll go broke from paying your AdWords bill, of course). If you set it too low, your ads hardly ever get shown. Be prepared to throw some money away those first few days with a high daily budget — higher than you really want to spend on an ongoing basis — so that you get enough data to get a feel for which ads are working and which aren’t. Then after a few days lower your daily budget to a more reasonable level. I recommend lowering it in fairly small increments, so that you can see what daily budget results in how many clicks results in how many sales. Tweak as needed until you reach a level you’re comfortable with.

You set the “cost per click” that you’re willing to pay for each click separately from the daily budget, and you can edit the cost-per-click separately not only for individual campaigns, but for individual keywords within each campaign. You might find, for example, that the keyword nutritious dog food converts better than the keyword healthy dog food, so you might be willing to pay more per click for that keyword.

8. Target Your Landing Pages

And last — at least, last for today’s entry: For the most part you don’t want to send people to the home page of your site. For your Hot New Feature in Product A ads, send them to a page about the hot new feature in product A. For the Great User Benefit in Product B ads, send them to a page about the great user benefit in product B. Create some additional pages on your site to serve as landing pages for your ads, if necessary.

Remember the “laser targeting” I mentioned above? Target with your landing page, too. Lead the user down the path that he’s already looking for: Targeted keywords that trigger targeted ads that lead to targeted landing pages. Every step of the way, the user is following a path that takes him to exactly what he’s looking for. And be sure to include a clear (and targeted) call-to-action on the landing page: “Buy Product A Now” or “Start Enjoying Great User Benefit in Product B Today.”

• After you’ve explored the Google AdWords interface and set up a couple of campaigns, come back and read this again. It will all make much more sense then.
• Read more about pay-per-click advertising for real estate agents.