I just started workign with a new account with about 150,000 keywords - they were not grouped into small ad groups --- at least 100 keywords in each ad groups with some as much as 1,000+. However, the ad texts are very relevant and the account has a average CTR of 3-5% Well, a lot of these keywords (most actually) got hit with $10, $5, $1, $0.50 and lower minimum required bids eventually.. I didn't understand because most of these keywords had CTRs of 2% and up some as high as 20% CTR.... still hit with $5 min req bid... So I called them up and said my CTR is great, my keywords, ad groups & ad text is relevant, etc etc...they even took at look at my account. Google told me that if the req. bid is $10 or higher that has almost always to do with the landing page quality. As for the other high minimum req. bids, they said that that since the CTR for the individual keywords (while they were still active) was great and account CTR is great and keyword is relevant to ad text, etc it has to do with the keyword's overall performance across ALL ADVERTISERS that ever bid on this keyword in the past--- if that keyword did not perform well then Google will raise the minimum required bids for new advertisers attempting to bid on that keyword because they assume it will perform bad based on history as well. They also said that if you leave the keywords inactive, overtime as the other keywords in the ad group do well the min req bids of the inactives may go down eventually --- however, they said that was unlikely for the $5 and up ones.. Has anyone else encountered this? This was the first time I heard that and I think it is ridiculous..
I have found the following to be the main issues for $5 and $10 min bids 1. display URL pointing to 404 error pages 2. Bad keyword clustering 3. Bad campaign structuring 4. Irrelevancy. Start from top to bottom and your issues will be solved. Check out my videos in my sig for more information
What do you mean by "bad keyword clustering" and "bad campaign structure"? You mean the names of the campaigns and whether there are too many or somewhat not relevant enough keywords within each ad group? From my past experience with other accounts, campaign names had nothign to do with this issue. This is a typical ad group in my account: ad group- Poems keywords - love poems, romeo and juliet poems, classical poems, shakespeare poems etc. etc Also, if these were my issues as you say why wouldn't the Google reps just tell me that--- they looked at my accoutn and keywords closely..
no not the campaign names, you can name the campaigns and adgroups whatever you want. I am talking about the clustering of keywords within the adgroups. You might be covering to many keywords. Example acne solution acne symptoms or computer software computer downloads These should not be placed within the same adgroup there are very much different from each other. This is bad clustering.
Hmmm... yes that is what my ad group look like--- almost all of them. but with 150,000 keywords this is near impossible to restructure all ...
with the right tools it can be done fairly quickly.... If your interested in outsourcing this let me know...
More like this: 1.) keyword -> ad copy -> landing page relevance 2.) Googles own history on that keyword 3.) Your account history and ad spend with them 4.) If you're promoting something they like or not Display urls do not matter, campaign structure and adgroup is just a given and relevancy always matters, but they're not the most important parts. Maybe if you're managing clients and have no experience doing your own stuff, then you'll look at things from a different perspective, but most people here are not managing accounts for anyone. So they don't see how the secretary or junior manager in charge of "internet ads" put together a really crappy campaign. It's all coming together now.
Never seen a £5 or £10 bid caused by your account history (then again, maybe I just haven't had a bad enough history). In the past, when I've seen these minimums, it's been caused by landing page quality or breaking (or bending) Google's rules. Regarding the scale of the task, would you rather bid on 150,000 keywords and lose money, or 1,000 and make money? I'd strongly recommend pausing the campaign, and starting again with the biggest traffic drivers.
Yes...I faced many keywords with min. bid $10, $5, etc...but there are relevant keywords in ad groups..I checked each ad groups two times but still some of keywords requires min. bids and still those are inactive position
Fix the problems with your landing page. Does it look spammy? Have you got Contact Us and Privacy Policy buttons? Do you have any real content? Does it just contain a bunch of links to other websites?
What you think is relevant is probably far from it. As I said earlier are you mixing terms like acne solution acne symptoms or computer software computer downloads These are not relevant to each other to be placed in the same adgroup. Many people think they can, but solution vs symptoms have no relevance to each other.
For purpose of discussion...sure they can be placed in the same ad group and sent to the same landing page with phenomenal success. Symptoms and solutions are very, very closely related. Example: I have a landing page that outlines a number of acne symptoms and then offers solutions for each. It would like like: Acne Symptom A few sentences describing the symptoms. Solution A few sentences describing the solution(s). Repeat that format a number of times on the page to cover multiple symptoms and solutions. Drop those two keywords in an ad group; [acne solutions] [acne symptoms] and use an ad like; Acne Problems? Common acne symptoms and acne solutions explained. www.acneinfo.com/symptoms-and-solutions and/or {KeyWord:Acne Problems?} Common acne symptoms and acne solutions explained. www.acneinfo.com/symptoms-and-solutions Just an example of how you could tie seemingly unrelated topics together.
Well I added a few new ad groups for testing, based on the suggestions here. The keywords were nicely clustered (very relevant to eachother), ads containe dthe ad group and/or keyword name in headline and one of the description, landing page is highly relevant down to keyword level, ad group name is in theme of keywords. And guess what? Out of the 200 keywords, only 5 remained active-- the rest asked for bids between $0.50 - $10.00 !!! I searched these "inactive' keywords in Google to see if anyone is bidding on them and pretty much nobody else is bidding on them... I am supposing that this means that google black listed this keyword due to google's own previous history with it and makes it hard for ppl to bid on it thinking that it will perform badly based on past experiences with it... I used to do ecommerce type keywords before and this did not happen at all. Now I am working with content type keywords that are all over the place and this is happening a lot... I really don't know what to do... everything I put up gets slapped =( Also, my account history started off not too great due to account structure but it was fixed within a month and has been running steady at about 3-5% CTR for 2 weeks now... does that mean the account history is not a problem any more or doe sit take longer?
You are correct, good point, it is possible provided you do it correctly, but for optimization purposes I would say its still better to keep them separate. I think there are to many newbies to think that far ahead when structuring their campaigns and ads. It always better to keep things simple.
It is actually not that complicated at all but i think that google provides rules for us the end user but breaks them when they feel like. I saw someone mention "if you are advertising something they like". What does that mean? Their likes and dislikes should not come into play. And now that I have been reading this section of DP I am more and more disillusioned with Adwords all together. Reason being, this: When I ran my campaign. Our ad contained keywords we were using in the ad copy, the landing page was relevant, it had a privacy policy link, clear contact us etc. Account history and ad spending is interesting because it was our first an only campaign. Thus no history. I guess they didn't like our promotions so they priced us out of it. lol
Doing it right is lot more complicated than most people think. That's why see so many "problem" posts related to AdWords.
This is not the first time i have heard of this problem, i am sure if you do it right, there will not be any problem at all.
I have seen pages moved from one domain that had been bumped from $0.05 to 10.00. On the new domain prices went back down to $0.05 or lower. The first site was newer, second site was about 49 years old in Internet or dog years.
Older established sites that rank in the index and have some links coming in and out will do better then a brand new domain. I guess they consider the older site to have less of a chance of a fly by night spammer running it.
Well I am speaking specifically to the suggestion you made in terms of keyword grouping. However, I do agree that Google Adwords is complicated. It seems purposely done and without any real rhyme or reason because as I said a lot of what has been suggested here I've implemented and still got ridiculous prices for the keywords I was targeting. Oh well... forget Adwords I'm done with it lol.