I asked Ron Drabkin at Adisem to put together a few tips for those of you looking to get a little extra bang for your Google AdWords bucks. Take it away, Ron.

Many online advertisers are surprised and dismayed at the prices that are currently being charged for keywords in Google AdWords (and Microsoft AdCenter, Yahoo Search Marketing, etc.) As anyone who has watched Google’s stock price can guess, the prices for keywords have indeed been going up over the last year in particular.

One fairly easy thing advertisers can do for little to no cost is to expand their list of keywords. Typically the price you pay for click/conversion will drop if you add more keywords, since more specific keywords are in most cases cheaper, since there are less bidders for each.

Here are some tips on finding more keywords for your site.

1. Pull up your own website, and that of your competitors, and read them. You very well may have phrases on your own site that you haven’t realized would make very good, targeted keywords.

2. Try one of the keyword generation products. The one I use personally is Keyword Discovery by Trellian (www.trellian.com), which has a free trial. These tools are good for finding popular tweaks and misspellings that you can add.

3. Decide if your offering fits city and interest pairings. You may want to take a list of all the cities in the US, or wherever your focus is, and pair them with interests. The online travel industry does this is the segment with probably the best keywords on the internet. So type in some words like “Cabo Hotels” or “Phoenix Vacations” into Google and watch the ads that come up for ideas on how you might do it.

4. Think out of the box to create different, unique keywords. Here is one example. I thought off the top of my head that “find a party” is a good keyword phrase. I just went to Google and there is only one ad on this keyword phrase, and it is not from a dating site. Google tells me that there is some significant traffic on this keyword phrase. Is this a good keyword? I don’t know, but I am sure that Dave or any of you could tell me.

5. You may want to buy keywords that are your competitors’ names (so if you are working for Ford, you might buy the keywords “Toyota, Camry, Solara, Corolla, etc.) It is not a classy move, but is common. Or, you can buy keywords of near competitors, paired with ads that tell the difference between your site and theirs. (Example, if you are advertising a speed dating service, you might buy keywords that are for regular dating, and your ad would simply say ”try speed dating instead.“

6. Make sure you have found keywords for different languages, or groups that have their own slang. As an example, I looked at the keyword ”Pinay“ (which means something like Philipina, in Tagalog – I think), I found an ad for True.com, but no other dating site. ”Pinoy,“ which I believe to be the masculine equivalent, gave me no dating sites.

7. Think if you want keyword substitution. It can be the subject of an entire other article. Simplistically, when you type a keyword into Google, and see that some of the ads on the right have the keyword you typed bolded in their text ad, it is because their advertiser has keyword substitution turned on. I am happy to discuss this with any readers who are curious.

Anyone who would like to discuss this with Ron is welcome to contact him, contact info is at www.adisem.com.

Technorati Tags: adisem, adwords

What the heck is this? I found it stumbling around the nether regions of Match.com.

Local Singles in Roselawn Finance; Roselawn Finance Online Dating

Find an online single in Ohio or the Buckeye State today. Match.com brings Roselawn Finance daters together. Start searching for Roselawn Finance, Ohio singles looking for love just like you. Online dating in Roselawn Finance, Ohio is no more or less safe than any other kind of dating. So you have nothing to worry about, search our online personals today! Whether you're looking to online dating to be your matchmaker for love or just a date or two, Match.com can help you meet your match.

And then, from the Department of Redundancy Department, this nugget of copywriting:

Find an online single in Ohio or the Buckeye State today. Match.com has millions of smart, sexy and attractive singles meant just for you. Match.com has millions of smart, sexy and attractive singles meant just for you. We are a ohio personals site making your online dating experience the best. Search Match.com for ohio singles today.

I'm too tired tonight to explain how ridiculous it is for a company to leave this sort of stuff open to the public when it's obviously not ready for prime time. Free donuts to the first Match sysadmins to pull Local Personals down and check with the mothership to see what's up.

Technorati Tags: match+is+broken

LookBetterOnline is good for new (albeit expensive) personal ad photos, although there are several alternatives.

Photochop is a San Francisco company, founded last year, that will help you remove your personal shortcomings during this vanity-filled season of holiday photo-taking and sending.

I like that you only pay if you are satisfied with the results online. I guarantee the company is going to run out of money before they get traction, but what better way to turn those drunken holiday party pix into usable Match and Facebook photos?

Via VentureBeat.

Technorati Tags: photochop, profile

SpyFu is a beta service for finding out what your competitors are paying for keywords.

Arizona-based Spyfoo feeds a list of keyword searches to Google and tracks the ads, ad placement, and organic search results returned for each. Then you can go in and search on your competitor and see what they are buying.

During the beta the data is pretty stale but should get more up to date when the beta tag is removed.

Check out the results for phrase dating.

Via alarm:clock.

Technorati Tags: adwords, keywords, spyfoo

November 2006 Top 10 Search Terms on this blog:

1. sex.com
2. online dating
3. hornymatch.com
4. lovehappens
5. adultfriendfinder
6. friendster skins
7. adult friend finder
8. smutvibes
9. friendster skin
10. frienster

New visitors continue to be around 85% with 15% returning.

62% from Google
13% from Other
11% Direct link

70 % Internet Explorer, mostly still on version 6.
23 % Firefox

Average time on home page 3:11.

Some short articles that mention sex have longer pageview durations, which makes sense.

#1 article in the last month was Sex Sells, Just Ask Adult Friend Finder.

Technorati Tags: google+analytics, visitor+stats

Finance people certainly have a unique grasp of language. According to the Form 8-K dated 30-Nov-2006, Spark Networks President and COO Gregory R. Liberman “entered into Amendment No. 2” of his employment agreement.

Liberman can now look forward to 287,000 reasons to stick around Spark while contemplating the purchase of up to 150,000 of the Company's ordinary shares at fair market value.

Technorati Tags: sparknetworks

SL Profiles enhanced profiles displayed within SecondLife's client. The profiles are pulled from SLprofiles.com. The site accepts advertising, which is paid in Linden Dollars (in-world currency.) Profiles can have first life and Secondlife pics, places blogs, ratings and more. Very cool to be able to bring web content into the SL client. Word on the street is that various third party clients will be available soon. Snow Crash here we come.

Technorati Tags: secondlife

Hot on the heels of the USA Today article about anonymous calling, the NY Times has a piece about, you guessed it, “the last phone number you'll ever need.”

If a service is going to take off in the social and dating space, it's got to be easy to use, keep the user on the same website and do cool stuff other offerings can't.

I want my anonymous number to work exactly like my mobile number. Most services don't offer anything like that. Make sure to read the fine print as these companies continue to pitch the industry.

Speaking of Skype, I just went over my mobile contract by 300 minutes, time to get a Skype speaker-phone so I can ditch the borg-like headset. Did you see that Skype announced a huge re-org? All the old timers are leaving as it becomes eBay-ized. Sad.

Technorati Tags: anonymous+calling, skype

Meetic and China.com are partnering to provide online dating service to the expected 100 million eligible singles.

Two things about this that I'm sure about.

#1 Sounds like the site will be available in Engish, French and German. Ni hao?

#2 Since its launch in 2002, more than 500,000 couples have become engaged. Is that how they measure success over there, by getting engaged? That's 342 engagements a day, which makes eHarmony's 45 look pretty small.

Technorati Tags: china.com, meetic

I was not aware until I read this press release that Alon Carmel, one of JDate's founders, became a JLove investors in June 2006.

The release is question is a clear Seinfeld, which I am making an official category. A Seinfeld is a press release about nothing, although I'm extending that to other mis-steps as well, which the dating industry sends me examples of daily.

Technorati Tags: jdate, jlove

Spark Networks plc (AMEX: LOV) announced today that it has launched live and anonymous calling and interactive games on a number of its online communities including AmericanSingles, Date.ca and CollegeLuv via Userplane Webchat and Webmessenger applications.

This is good news for Userplane (Sponsor of this blog), especially after being acquired by AOL earlier this fall. I'm not sure why JDate and other services weren't included in the deal. American Singles userbase has eroded significantly as marketing spend continues to be reduced at underperforming sites in the Spark network.

Interactive games are mentioned briefly, but there is no sign on the AS homepage that anything has changed.

Technorati Tags: userplane