A little puzzled on ad grouping. In my first ever ad campaign I thought i did everything right. I created ad groups based on themes. as an example an ad group consisted of the following: widget service widget services widget company widget professional I go OK and POOR results for the quality score and then tried to use the adwords editor keyword grouping tool which totally grouped the keywords differently. As an example, It grouped "widget services" in a separate group from the "widget service". Anyone know whey or what principles of keyword grouping i may be violating?
It may not be your keyword grouping that is the problem but the landing page itself. Did the Adwords tool give you any specifics? That keyword grouping seems OK but you could try tighter adgroups or 1 keyword per adgroup. Are you targeting search or content?
Make sure your landing page relevant. Link themed adgroups to custom made landing pages where possible. Allow the ads to run for a while before diagnosing a problem. I find there is a delay between starting up and account and G giving you an accurate QS.
Click on the magnifying glass next to your poor keywords, and see what Google recommends. It may be a landing page issue (lack of relevance, or lack of key links like a Privacy Policy), slow loading time, a low clickthrough rate or poor advert relevance...
most likely your problem is a combination of landing page and poor text ads. Grouping your keywords properly is also important but does not make a dramatic impact on QS, but could mean going from 6 to 7 or 7 to 8.
From the magnifying glass, I get the following message fro all my keywords: "The Ads Diagnostic Tool "quick test" does not work in this campaign because the campaign's geographic targeting is not supported. To see whether an ad is showing for this keyword, use the full Ads Diagnostic Tool. " When i run the Ads Diagnostic Tool, I get the "No ad is being shown for the keyword 'widget contractor'" message.
About Relevance, it isn't possible to have every phrase in the landing page. For example, wouldn't "widget professional" be relevant to a landing page with "widget service" and "widget company" in the landing page?
yes you do not need every keyword to appear on your landing page. its just needs to be related. However your landing pages need to have a strong call to action, and not be long sales letter style pages. Your footer pages should include home, about us, contact us, privacy, terms, sitemap
Here's one of my landing pages: http://backyardquotes.com/AM/Landscaping/ For the keyword "landscaping services" which I got a POOR score, it is included in the meta keywords tag and an H1 tag. The ad's title is : {KeyWord:Landscaping Services} This seems quite relevant doesn't it? Then where's the problem?
It could be your domain rather than your landing page as such. It doesn't appear as though you have much content on the site. You could try adding some articles to flesh it out. You could also look at some Landing Page software that can create a dynamic landing page for each keyword. LPGen is a good option: www.lpgen.com
After looking at lpgen.com where they mention the Google Slap, I'm wondering if it's happening to my campaign as well. I am paying something like 1.75 - 3:00 per click. Is this what they call a a Google Slap? or are these CPCs realistic?
Continue on targetting that keyword and create modifications on your landing page. And check which works best.
It used to be that if you got hit with $10 or $5 minimum bids then you'd been Google slapped for those keywords. Haven't been slapped recently so I'm not sure if that's still the case with the new way Google calculates things. Maybe someone else can verify that. The price you quoted could be a reasonable bid for a competitive keyword. But higher relevency on your site and landing page should decrease that bid (although you may need to change your landing page and then put up a new adwords campaign to see how Google views it). The bids quoted are also affected by the CTR on your campaign and more generally for your overall account.