Good Start - but where do i go from here?

Discussion in 'Google AdWords' started by Nerz, Mar 6, 2006.

  1. #1
    Ive recently started an adwords campaign...four days ago now. Its my first time using it so Im very much the newbie.

    Ive set it for $10 a day, hoping to offset that with the earnings from adsense on my arcade.

    Ive set up a couple general groups, and a few that focus on particular games for my arcade. A couple of the games ones are doing ok, and ive managed to get the overall cpc down from 0.13 to around 0.11 and 0.10. So i think its heading in the right direction....Im also maintaining a decent position of around 2 to 3 on average.

    Where do i go from here though, do I weed out the lowly searched keywords...some are like only 40 times a day..and do I concentrate on 1 particular ad for each group. Im using optimization...but i guess its too early to tell if the system is working well or not.

    Ideally i wanna get the cpc down to no more than 0.05, cause this particular niche isnt a niche where i can make $2 on an adsense click. Im hoping to maintain a status of revenue neutral (ie Im earning as much in adsense as Im paying for advertising) for a while until my site starts getting some solid backlinks...and more general traffic starts coming in, hopefully with PR increase in the future and a jump up the SERPs for Google....Only MSN is doing anything for me search wise atm...all my other uniques are basically coming from advertising, so i have to optimize that as much as possible.

    So thats the dilemma...whats the best method for getting the CPC down while maintaining my good position. Also some of the ads have quite low CTR...around 1.0...do i get rid of these and concentrate on the higher CTR ones...Does a higher avg CTR per campaign help drive your overall CPC down?

    Just wish I knew a bit more about the mechanics.
     
    Nerz, Mar 6, 2006 IP
  2. Gerardas Norkus

    Gerardas Norkus Guest

    Messages:
    39
    Likes Received:
    1
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #2
    Hi Nerz,

    here are some notes: the highest ad positions are not always the most profitable, however since you earn revenue by adsense, you want to drive as much as possible low cost traffic.

    To increase the CTRs of your keywords, try to add negative keywords to your campaigns, always run at least two ads in each adgroup.

    You should also keep track of what you spend and what your revenue is.

    -Gerardas
     
    Gerardas Norkus, Mar 6, 2006 IP
  3. Discreet

    Discreet Guest

    Messages:
    550
    Likes Received:
    92
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #3
    Just a quick note - you said that a CTR of 1% is low, actually that's not bad considering your ads are in the top position.

    Some things I would suggest:

    Add more keywords. How many do you currently have? Most of my adwords campaigns have a minimum of 1000 keywords to experiment with. On average I have closer to 10,000 keywords for each campaign. This gives you alot of leeway for experimenting and finding the right keywords over time. You'll also find alot of terms that conver and have low cost :)

    Good luck :)
     
    Discreet, Mar 6, 2006 IP
  4. Nerz

    Nerz Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    588
    Likes Received:
    16
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    128
    #4
    Thx for the replies :) Ya i definately need to increase my keyword count...overall i probably have a bit over 100...with the game ones, probably 10 in each on average...Thats nowhere near enough I guess. Ill get onto that today.

    In terms of how many ads in each ad group. Im running with 2 in most of them, some have 3 or 4, although in couple of cases its becoming more clear as to what works well.

    Im running with about 75 negative words atm. I could easily have several hundred i think If I really concentrated on weeding out the bad searches.

    I think the main thing is keywords..I need to build that up massively, theres gotta be more cheap traffic somewhere! ;)

    If anyone has some more ideas...I need your input.
     
    Nerz, Mar 6, 2006 IP