Now that he was actually tracking actual sales, not subscriptions, guesswork was gone. We began eliminating keywords – lots of keywords. Advertising costs plummeted. Sales sailed along at same pace.

But we were not done.

His landing site was very broad, selling over 20 different products, which was find for keyword groups like work-at-home. Yet about half of his Google ads were related to specific product. I had him create mini-landing pages to receive these ads. For example, a keyword group on medical transcription was no longer directed to main landing page, but to a mini-landing page with info about medical transcription only. This slashed his bounce backs and upped his sales.

Finally, I had him recalculate visitor value for each keyword group. A visitor who came from a search on “free home-business ideas” is worth far less than one who types, “medical transcription.” We adjusted his bids accordingly. The results? His sales stayed at $6,000 per month, while his advertising costs plummeted to $2,500 per month. His monthly profit had increased 350%, from $1,000 to $3,500. It took about a month to complete project, and, yes, it was a lot of work, but it was certainly worth it. Best of all, he now had information he needed to keep campaign on track as sectors go hot and cold, and keywords get overbid. Whereas his competitors were working in dark, he understood why and how his site was performing, and why and how it was not.

So let’s review steps 1)Turn off one keyword group at a time to test assumptions 2)Add tracking to advertiser welcome pages 3)Remove poorly-converting keywords 4)Create mini-landing pages for certain keyword groups 5)Recalculate bids based on visitor value by keyword.

We had taken a campaign that was producing a modest income and transformed it into a juggernaut, without any SEO, all built around pay per click advertising, a hot website and a killer auto-responder sequence. But none of that would have worked without first tracking keywords that allowed us to find not just any customer, but right customers.

How do you ensure that quality of your content remains high? The only way possible which is human intervention. Each article is read and reviewed to be sure it has quality we expect at Article Depot. Most webmasters have a lot of pride for what is being distributed in their name so for most part majority of articles are approved within two hours.

Of all articles that have been submitted to ArticleDepot, which one sticks out as your favourite?

In general some of my favourite articles are those where people show a passion. Recently we had an article where someone basically meant to vent out their frustration with returning something in a store. What followed was one of funniest and well written pieces I have seen in a long time. If that person applied that passion to all of their writing, they would probably be quite successful.

What are your tips for writing a good article?

Write on what you know or have a passion for. This comes out in article and gives it a quality you just can't fake. An authoritative article is better than a rehash every time.

Are backlinks from your site SEO friendly?

Absolutely. This was a major issue I saw with other articles sites. Most of them either limit location of links to areas that do not make sense or pass them through their own site in an effort to stop any benefit going to webmaster. This goes against ideals of a world wide web and at Article Depot we are very sensitive about importance of links from both a SEO perspective and a visitor one.

Why should someone submit their article to your site first?

They should submit an article to us first because of quickness in which our articles are spidered (Currently between 2-5 days), SEO friendliness of our outbound links which are all static, and fact that we have more and more webmasters coming to Article Depot to get content for their sites.

Most people submit articles to gain links to their sites. What, if any, other benefits do you see from posting articles to your site?

Its also about exposure. Many times in peoples' rush to just get links they forget about benefit of having control over content that surrounds those links. Most of our submitters see a signifigant rise in conversions (whether that's a sale or a signup) because people are more likely to click on a link when it is surrounded by content they are interested in. Footer links will never go away but real power has always been in above fold natural links.