Thursday, Jul 10, 2008    Text size: 

Billed as a workshop that would "teach attendees how the team at Wildline! has been turning profits for webmasters in the largest search engine online," the seminar did not disappoint; with the panelists Charles Hentrich, Evan Magers and Brandon Wishnow revealing many details of working with the search giant that would not be available to outsiders.

After an introduction by industry veteran JohnnyV, Wildline! President Charles Hentrich started things off by describing why search engine marketing is still such an effective promotional tool.

"You have an actively engaged user, searching for what he wants," Hentrich said. "And you can measure your ROI precisely and in real time."

Hentrich went on to discuss how there are currently five main players in the search market: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask — with Google accounting for the lion's share of search volume; delivering 720 million of the 1.2 billion monthly searches for adult content.

Next, iSearch Media co-founders Magers and Wishnow tackled the "eight keys to success for adult advertising on Google," which include building your account the right way; optimizing for a high Quality Score; ensuring that ad creatives stand out; avoiding Google's content network; paying attention to negatives; becoming an expert on Google editorial policies; the importance of making data supported decisions; and not pissing off Google.

Magers emphasized the importance of putting keywords into tight ad groups and favoring long-tail keyphrases that use 4-6 keywords, as they "provide a more in-depth view into the psychology of the surfer."

He also opined that most AdWords campaigns fail due to receiving poor keyword quality scores from Google — something that impacts both the price and availability of paid inclusion search listings.

As for profitable click-prices, Magers offered that "adult sites shouldn't pay more than 20-25¢ per click, and often much less."

The subject of limiting paid clicks to the most profitable users was also covered, with Wishnow stating that using "negative keywords prevent 'bad traffic' from reaching your site." For example, a big tits paysite might want to include the word "free" as a negative word, so that surfers searching for "free big tits" wouldn't see the paid listing.

"Always make data-supported decisions, instead of relying on your gut feelings," Wishnow said. "Implement conversion tracking to see what terms are actually resulting in sales."

Finally, the panel conceded that not every domain would be suitable for an AdWords campaign, but that the only way to know for sure is to try it yourself and see.

"Help Google help you," Magers concluded. "Show them that you have the surfer in mind."