It doesn’t get much better than spending a long weekend in the Poconos. The beauty is stunning and the relaxation is deep.

This is what summer looks like!

Carl Sagan auto-tuned. Turn on, tune in and geek out.

Wow, I already did one post today (my first in quite some time) and now I’m going for a record setting TWO posts?!?  I just turned the blogging world UPSIDE-DOWN.

Anyhow, the Consumerist wrote last week about a for-real-real version of a Tracy Jordan Meat Machine Sandwich.  It appears to involve bacon, cheese, a creamy dressing and FRIED-FUCKING-CHICKEN FOR BREAD.

Now I’m not claiming to be Professor Health Food here, I love me some fried food just as much as any other gravy-blooded American, but there has to be a point at which we say “This far, no further!” Is an inside-out, breadless, fried chicken sandwich really what America is craving?

Of course it is!  After all, it’s Atkins friendly.

I’m an Apple fanboy, I admit it.  Once a staunch PC guy and open critic of Apple products, I have completely converted to the dark.  So it should come as no surprise that I am totally oggling the iPad the like a hungry castaway oggles his fellow shipwreckees.  Beautiful design, intuitive interface, shiny, what’s not to love?

So while poking around for ways to win an iPad (who wants to pay $500 for Gen 1?) I came across the latest from the Will It Blend gang.  It was only a matter of time, and yes it’s a little painful/hilarious to watch.

My shiny new Thesis install is done, but I’m still playing with all the bells and whistles.  So far though, it’s pretty sweet.  I’m sure the look will be continuously changing for a while, but I’m very pleased so far.

Anyway, here’s a little holiday cheer- Boston Style

Last week I received an email from my hosting company, NetProHosting, that they were closing their doors. It’s a shame, they were super cheap and I never had any trouble with them.

The sadder news is that I’ve spent a week migrating everything to my other host, hence the crappy default WP theme you see now.

I’ll be upgrading to the Thesis theme this week and tweaking the look fr a while after that. Until then, enjoy the amateur look and feel of the blog.

Chris and Kelly - just married

So yeah, I got married.

I’m serious!  We exchanged rings and everything.

Elvis was there.

Hail to the King, Baby

You have your keywords, you’re tracking conversions and you’re adjusting your bids accordingly… or are you?

Are any of your keywords on broad or phrase match?  Are you simply adjusting your bids based on the performance of the keyword on which you’re bidding?  Then you’re potentially throwing away a lot of money.  Efficiency in PPC is all about analysing data, so if you’re only looking at surface level data, you’re missing the big picture.

Here’s what I mean: with broad and phrase match, several search queries are being matched against the term you’re bidding on.  If your keyword is something like “shoes” and is being broad matched, just think of all the search engine queries that could potentitally contain the word shoes!  It’s a rather severe example, but I’m trying to make a point.

Say you’re bidding on Keyword X, and Queries Y and Z and both being matched to it.  You’ve spent $110, received 120 clicks and made 6 conversions worth $30 each.  You’ve spent $110, made $180 and might feel pretty good about that.  Let’s dig a little deeper and see what’s actually happening:

Keyword X

• Query Y: 100 clicks, $100 in spend, 1 conversion
• Query Z: 20 clicks, $10 in spend, 5 conversions

So while you’re bidding on Keyword X, it’s actually Query Z that’s making all the money while Query Y is losing it.  You think you’re bidding on a single term, but in reality you are placing a bid based on the aggregate performance of all the queries being matched to it!

The solution of course is to gain this kind of insight into the actual search queries your keywords are getting and their performance.  Then it’s simply a matter of adding those queries as exact match keywords so that you can bid them appropriately.  In the above example, Query Y converts and is probably worth holding onto at a much lower bid.  It will convert far less often, but will at least turn a profit.

So how do we go about gaining this insight?  If you use Google’s conversion tracking, you can simply run a Search Query Performance report in the report center.  This will show you some of the search queries triggering your ads along with some performance metrics like CTR and conversions.

If you’re running ads as an affiliate or are not using Google’s conversion tracking, you might want to look into a product like Xtreme Conversions.  This program tracks each individual search query and matches a TID based on the query, engine, referring domain (great for “search partners”) and the bid keyword.  You can then match the TIDs from your conversions and see which search query and bid keyword produced it.

This info should be plenty to take your keyword targeting to the next level and improve your PPC efficiency dramatically.

Sweet dancing Jehova, I haven’t posted since before Christmas!

While you’re busy whiping the look of utter disbelief and dismay off your face, let me tell you what I’ve been up to:

-Nothing.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s what’s coming up!

The Content Network Cure is continuing to evolve and grow into something bigger and better than I ever thought it would.  Sometime this weekend you should be seeing a totally new site going up with more content and resourced to help with mastering this tricky tool.

What I’m most excited about is a free Q&A video series I’ll be working on.  You’ll be able to submit questions on the site, and we’ll probably pull some questions from the customer support emails as well.  The videos might be hosted on YouTube for easy sharing, or I may just host them myself and make them easy to link to.  Either way, free vids!

The CNC affiliate program will be discontinued for the time being.  I want to work all the bugs out of the new site before I even try to incorporate an affiliate system.  Besides, there may just be a bigger ticket item on the horizon for you to promote.  No promises, I’m just sayin’…

If you have any ideas for what you’d like to see from the Content Network Cure in the future, or ways for me to grow the business in general, please leave your comments below.

I first came across this on The Sneeze (or was it Retrocrush?) a couple years ago.  It still makes me delightfully uncomfortable.

Happy Holidays, everyone!!!