Hi there, A couple of our high performing keywords got hit in the July 2006 Slap, increasing the minimum bid to $10 per click, fairly outrageous. So I decided to setup a page and mini website dedicated to some of those top keywords, for example if one of them was "banana split" I created a page dedicated to making the worlds best "banana split" filled with content and links to other relevant pages. After creating a new campaign targeting "banana split" I saw the minimum bid come down to 20c, except after 3-4 days it went back up to $10, now even if I delete the campaign and start a new one the minimum bid is $10. So I decided to create the exact same campaign in another Adwords Account and its working just fine with 20c per click... Any ideas how to get around this problem? Cheers
It sounds like the test you have done proves you have to work to do on your quality score which affects your minimum bid. Your test is really definitive if you used separate Google AdWords account as well. You likely need to work on your relevancy and landing pages. Check out this PPC resource. Improve Your Quality Score Good luck.
SO quality score is how relevant your ad and keywords are to the site? How can you tune it so that your site is ready for the keywords you want?
I'd send an email to AdWords support and check if your site is being affected by the quality score issue (they will also tell you some additional info in case your site is affected). The most common problem is the use of flash.
Here are the factors that go into Google's calculation of quality score. Keyword relevance Ad copy relevance Landing page relevance Click through rate Keyword performance history Other relevance terms Google will not disclose Your landing page and website should be a reflection of what you are advertising in your pay per click ads. If you want tips and help with your quality score go here. Improve Your Quality Score Because of all of the factors and the inclusion of your website, quality score can be tricky.
Thanks Huligan, Latesem and L:exa I've optimised the page for banana splits, it appears in the title, h1, paragraph etc, and there are other closely related pages on the site that should tell Google the whole website is about banana's. After reading that the CTR can be a factor I figured that was the answer, we were only getting a 0.5% CTR for banana split. However after looking through some historical data on the Adwords account I saw that one keyword (lets say it was "banana pie" had a CTR of 5.2% after 4,000 clicks it had relevant Ad Copy and Landing Page, good history and is closely related to banana splits but Google still slapped it up to $10 minimum cost per click. I've also been reviewing other Ads that appear when I type in banana split, I can see some are relevant but one Ad in particular is Wendy's promoting its "Make Your Own Burger Competition" no mention of banana's, and the landing page is a flash object?? This has really got me stumped, I'm going to try out the ideas from the website you posted Huligan, but I'd welcome any more comments or ideas, I'm sure there are still a lot of people suffering from this Cheers,
If you want to see what Google thinks of your landing page, use their Keyword Tool. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Click on the "Site-Related Keywords" tab and enter the URL of your landing page. The tool will return a list of keywords it finds on the page. Hopefully, this will confirm your landing page is relevant. Some pay per click advertisers don't want to wait on their quality score to improve as their history improves so they create new AdWords accounts. I can't tell you how long it will take since I don't know how long your history is. Before you do this (if you don't want to wait) just make sure all of the other factors that go into quality score have been improved. Good luck.