And it just goes on and on and on - boring long paragraphs. People just don't read like this on web. They just want something now, they want it yesterday. So you need to think about how your website content is put together.

Don't put things on your site that managing director wants on there or things that you want on there or graphic designer or developer wants on there. Put things on there that your CUSTOMER WANTS.

**Don't Try To Be All Things To All Men

Another way you can improve your conversion rate is to try to focus on one single goal for your website or for each page.

The problem I see a lot of people struggle with is that they are trying to do too much with their web site;

- They are trying to sell a product - They are trying to get people on their subscriber list - They are trying to give information to their employees - They are trying to get new business - They are trying to get information to customers - They are trying to give information about community

Just hold fire a minute and zero in on ultimate goal of site. What is your site's primary objective?

You need to have one goal for site or at least one goal for each page.

**Your Website Only Needs To Do One of The Following 2 Things

To help your thinking in this there are really only two things that a web site should do. If you are in position that you can sell directly over web that is what you need to do - you need to be selling through your website.

If you can't do that, and there are a lot of companies that can't due to type of business they are in, then you need to be getting people's contact information. That is it. Just two things.

Either sell to visitors or get their contact information.

Once you realise this, and it might not be a nice thing to hear, because you might look at your site and think that lots of your pages are now redundant, or that certain pages don't sell anything or get contact information. You might realise that specific paragraphs aren't getting contact information for you or selling anything. The entire creation and copywriting process of your website becomes a totally different exercise.

But if you don't focus on one of those two things then nothing is going to happen. I know from experience that not many visitors will read through your homepage, through about page, through services page and then dawdle along and click on contact and say;

"I will go to enquiry form and see how much do you charge."

You might get odd one. But you are not going to get tens, thousands or tens of thousands. You need to sell something or get contact information. Your website needs to be a machine that does one or both of those things and that is it.

Option 2: Phrase match This specifies keyword by surrounding it in quotes like so: “blue widget”

What this means is that should somebody search for keywords: Need blue widget Blue widget Blue widget where are you Don’t need blue widget

Then your advert will show because phrase is found within keywords. This is next most highly targeted form of search matching and is an ‘improvement’ on broad match – in terms of specialisation.

Option 3: Exact match This specifies keyword by surrounding it in square brackets like so: [blue widget]

Now, your advert will only show if and only if keyword Blue widget

is searched for.

In an ideal world, you will know exactly what every keyword is that your prospects are searching for and you could therefore have an exact match for a keyword search. This would serve to both minimise your advertising expenditure and increase your return on investment simultaneously .

But, to get to a point whereby you know keywords (or at least know as many as possible) which are profitable to you, you need to conduct some research within your adwords campaigns.

So which is best matching options to use? Starting off, it is best to utilise all 3 matching options within your ad-group because: 1. You get to know if there are keywords out there you have missed in your research and can dig further to find out if they should be specified with more targeted matching or added to your negative keyword list. 2. The assignment of your keyword status (on hold, in trial, disabled) is delayed because impressions are spread between variants of keywords. 3. More targeted terms (using exact match) generally have higher conversion rates so you can assign different more cost effect cost per clicks accordingly.

Eventually, as your campaigns mature in time, you will have more and more exact match and less phrase & broad match. As a result your advertising costs will decrease whilst your return on investment will naturally increase.

#3 The Unholiest Error ---------------------- Ok, this isn’t an adwords tip perse as it should be adopted and applied to each and every part of your online and offline advertising.

It’s time to be honest – for each and every piece of advertising/PR you have on go, how well are you tracking results?

I mean can you categorically put your hand on your heart and say, “Yes, by handing out business cards, I generated £x of business last month” (doh! – I’ve just got a new batch printed up and even I’ve missed out on this, slap my wrist, practice what you preach Tom!).

In world of Adwords, you need to know what keywords are giving you results and focus your budget and efforts accordingly.

If you have an advert that shunts prospects to a generic landing page, which is not tracked and you have no idea as a result whether they signed up or bought a product/service.

Then, you are wasting tens, hundreds, thousands (bigger companies are some of worst offenders wasting millions) of pounds every year.

Now you can no longer claim ignorance on biggest mistakes made with Google Adwords. And I shall make sure my next batch of business cards are trackable!