MSN Ad Center will be a nice keyword tool once it rolls out while Google AdWords has the most advanced keyword tool right; Yahoo tool shows actual searches, according to Brad Geddles who is the director of Search Marketing for LocalLaunch.com

The top things to do

1. keyword matching options
2. keyword research
3. measure everything
4. determine ROI
5. test everything
6. look at Ad Copy
7. look at Landing Pages
8. look at Keywords
9. look at Search vs. Content
10. look at Geography

Top 5 things not to do:

1. don’t send all traffic to home page
2. don’t use the same ad copy for all keywords
3. don’t ego bid (bidding without a reason)
4. don’t have a set and forget mentality
5. don’t do something without testing it

Christine Churchill of Key Relevance spoke next about landing pages in terms of conversions.  Where do people land when they click on an ad and it can make a big difference in conversion rates - the landing page can make the difference between large jumps in conversions and it not happening.

When people search for a keyword they have a concept of what they want - but if the landing page does not connect with them - they’re out of here.   One of the simplest way to accomplish this is to put the same words in your ad copy onto your landing page.  The landing page does not even have to be part of the site where your selling the product or service. 

The biggest mistake is sending people to the home page - and that simply does not work in most cases because of the homepage looks like.  IE: "car audio" but when you go to the page it’s got much more on it.  You need to build a page that just focuses on one thing - you can cross sell in other places.   Christine also mentioned Malcolm’s talk about the Tipping Point - if you give them too much info - they’ll shut down and be confused.

Put a call to action button in a prominent location above the fold.  Also look at the resolution of the screen at different resolutions and make sure the landing page works at different resolutions.

Also make it easier for the user - a lot of landing pages have too much info on the home page and they don’t know what the next step is.

Long forms scare people - the longer the form the scarier it gets.  The shorter the form, the better - and if you can prefill the form, it’s better.  Also, use faces and bright colors where you want to draw people’s attention.

Give a compelling offer - they need to see it within 8 seconds and understand it or they or leave.  (all kind of things can be compelling).

Set the mood - if you sell desire and sell health - your going to sell more than if you just put a lot of text with little else.  Avoid dense text except if your selling to woman who might be more likely to read dense text on a page because the enjoy the shopping experience more.

Guide visitors eyes - use colors and images - and make the images click-able.

Warm Fuzzies for Trust

• site design
• address and phone number
• trust seals of approval (BBB Online, TRUSTe)
• privacy policy
• customer testimonials
• product reviews and awards
• guarantees
• secure server

The rest will be covered in The Solid Basics of Success -   Part 2 -Webmasterworld Pubcon Boston