"You mean your European customers can't access site?" Ruby asked.

"That's what I thought at first. When Hong Kong monitoring station reported an alert, I assumed transatlantic connection was blocked. But when Florida monitoring station reported in, I had to check site. And guess what?"

"I guess that you won't be home for dinner."

"Sorry. I have to get on line with web host and straighten this all out."

"Hey, that's OK. I'm just happy you get instant those alerts. I would hate to see you get that call during our dinner and have to go all way back into office. Let me know when you're coming home."

"OK. I'll let you know as soon as I do. Bye."

Carl checked more detailed report online. Here is an example.

As Carl dialed his ISP, he realized it would likely be a long evening. But not as long as if he received less frequent reports. And not as long as next day would be if website had been offline for next.

And that's what website monitoring is all about.

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.