Google

Adwords Tips Part1

As noted in this post Ive been having a few problems in getting my adwords running perfectly, and one of the things I noticed was googles keyword tool was showing even this site as not having enough text. As you can see there is plenty of text so I posted my problem on DP and GuyfromChicago was quick to inform me I probally should remove <meta name=’robots’ content=’noindex,nofollow’ /> from my code. Apparently theirs a feature in WP under privacy that blocks robots from search engines. I quickly turned it off and within the hour all my landing page qualities did change but not for the better. Almost all of my keywords dropped to poor and only a few stayed OK.

So now where I used to be paying .10 cpc, it was wanting 5 cpc. Of course Im not going to pay $5 per click so I emailed the kind people at Google asking whats the deal? A day later they replied in a very detailed letter exactly what I was doing wrong. (Thank you, Divya Ramaswamy from the Google AdWords Team) Basically If you dont have a great rating for a keyword you have to work on two things, Landing page quality and writing a more targeted, relevant ad.

So before I made my landing page better, I tried to see if making more relevant ad copy/groups would lower costs a bit. For the sake of this post, lets say the site Im advertising is selling antique Ford Mustangs. Initialy my ad copy was very general something along the lines of”Buy Cars here!” and my keywords were well I had 255 keywords under that one ad for multiple car companies and multiple types of cars. So, I created a new ad group with a very detailed ad copy, something along the lines of “Buy a 1965 Shelby Mustang,” and the keywords were very detailed. I only used keywords having to do with buying exactly a 1965 shelby ford mustang. I know it seems obvious but its very easy to get carried awaywith keywords, remember its better to have 10 detailed ad groups then one large one. Having multiple ad groups is also useful when you realize users who are refered by ad group A dont convert into sales while ad group B brings in plenty of conversions. If this happened you could delete A and afford to put more money into B bringing more sales.

Another, feature you should take advantage of to make the most of your ad budget is negative keywords. I noticed this when I was buying ads for this blog and bid on the keyword “free tips” and noticed in analytics someone searched for “free sex tips” and clicked my ad, obviously this blog isnt going to be useful for someone wanting sex tips and they are just going to click the back button. So keeping with the Ford Mustang example, If you are selling antique Ford Mustangs you dont want your site to be showing up in searches for toy cars ie remote control Ford Mustangs. Even if that user clicked your ad they arent looking to buy a real car as they probally are too young to even have a license, so you get nothing by showing up in searches like that, in fact since its cpc, you loose clicks from searches that are relevant that could possibly convert to a sale. So dont only think about what type of keywords you want to show up in searches but also what keywords you dont want to show up for.

The last thing I have to say about choosing the correct keywords/ad copy is in each ad group throw in some phrases. Your ctr on phrases isnt going to be as much as simply keywords but the conversion on those clicks will be very high. For example, If I search for “I want to buy a blue 1965 ford mustang”, and click your ad chances are if your landing page is good enough Ill buy the “blue 1965 ford mustang” youre selling. For a product like a car, conversions would be lower than normal but feel free to replace the mustang with any affiliate program.

I did all the above for my ads and while it was time consuming it did pay off as keywords that were at POOR jumped to OK, and my bids dropped out of the dollar range. While this made it so I could afford advertising and click throughs were converting, it still wasnt making me much money. If I wanted to make any real money needed to have Great minimum bids. So it was necessary to change my landing pages a bit.

Heres the basics of what Google says about Landing Page Quality(click here for exactly what they say)

• Provide relevant and substantial content.
• Treat a user’s personal information responsibly
• Develop an easily navigable site.

What I gathered from that is my landing page has to have relevant text and cant have alot of ads. So to test this out I created an ad extremely relevant to a landing page, specifically made for this experiment. I am going to be testing the quality results for the same keywords with

Im still waiting on results from the above experiment so Ill post an update later this week with confirmed results and a conclusion on how good or bad my adwords are doing after all these changes.

P.S. If you have any problems ever with Adwords and cant find a good answer in their F.A.Q’s dont be afraid to email them, while alot of the time the replies are going to be copy and paste from the Google support manual(this is necessary to handle the quantity of support) you will usually get the answer your looking for.