I've got a new site and rushed to setup a highly optimized adwords campaign for it. In my haste however I failed to realize that since the site is brand new, most of my content pages haven't even been spidered by Google yet (I just confirmed this). I've been trying to figure out why my Quality Score for most of my keywords is just OK, and why I'm having such a hard time getting my ads to show even with super high bids. But this has to be the reason... I just went and created a sitemap and submitted it to Google. Hopefully they will crawl all my content pages pretty quick, and this will help my Quality Scores. Have I ruined this adwords account? Should I create a new one and start over once all my content pages have been spidered? Just pause all my ad groups until my content pages are indexed? The account is off to a horrible start since all my money keywords have horrible CTRs right now due to being shown on page 2, 3, 4 etc. Is there a way to come back from this without starting from scratch with a new account? I don't even know if opening a new account would matter. Now that I think about it, I assume Google will "remember" my domain no matter what I do... Help!
You wil be fine. It takes google a while to "figure out" what your site is about. Give it some time and it will work itself out.
Thanks for the reply. Should I at least pause my ad groups until they at least spider all my pages, or just let it go and keep racking up more impressions with bad CTRs and it won't matter in the long run?
You can pause your ad group if you want, but I don't think it will help. It doesn't take too long for google to start displaying more appropriate ads as long as you have used the approriate keywords wisely
The adwords bot and the 'regular' googlebot are different things - this is about blocking bots, but it states clearly that they are different entities http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40364 However it has been suggested that the bots 'talk' to each other, so if you're having trouble getting a page indexed, getting the adwords bot to visit that page will speed the process along - this is only a theory, though. Starting a new account would cause more problems than it would solve, unless you have a good reason in google's eyes to have another account, such as managing ads for someone else, you could get banned for it.
Well what I meant was one option would be to cancel my existing account and create a new one. I can't imagine they would have a problem with that.
google has its own adwords bot which spiders your site the moment you create a campaign in adwords, and then they grab general information like keyword density etc. to give you the first, initial keyword quality score. So..adwords campaigns are NOT dependant on the other google bots whch spider for indexing in the search engine. >> I just went and created a sitemap and submitted it to Google. Hopefully they will crawl all my content pages pretty quick, and this will help my Quality Scores. >> see above. this has nothing to do with quality score in adwords. what you NEED for good quality score: . A functional site without broken links which provides a good "customer experience" (eg. easy navigation) . Privacy Policy, Contact Us (and if you want a "Terms of Service) [i observe if you dont have privacy policy and contact us its IMPOSSIBLE to get the loweset bids!) . keyword relevancy on your page to what have in the ad ADTEXT: Adtext and keyword relevancy. Put AS FEW (best would be ONE) Keyword per adgroup and have this exact keyword in the Ad HEADLINE and repeat same keyword again in the third line. Eg. your site is about Acne. Now you could make an adgroup "Acne Cure", put adtext Acne Cure? We have the solution: Get our Acne Cure here! www.acnecure24.com keyword(s): acne cure [acne cure] "acne cure" (all three match types) Avoid stuffing too many keywords in ONE adgroup - consider, also for small varations ("cure for acne", "Acne treatment"...) making NEW Adgroups with EXACT keyword and mathching adtext. Monitor Adgroups a few days, delete KW with no clicks/few impressions. Each BAD keyword affects the whole adgroup, BASICALLY everything somehow affects your whle adword accounts performance. Thus..always delete bad performing keywords, adgroups and avoif stuffing 100s of keywords in ONE adgroup. This is (to my knowledge) ALL there is to quality score !
Thanks for the reply George but my extensive experience says that your initial comments are flat out wrong. All else being equal, there is a HUGE difference in Google's eyes between a single page site and a site with a lot of content on dozens or hundreds of pages. Irregardless of how well you have all your keywords on a single landing page (ignoring misc pages like contact, privacy, etc.) you will always be much much better off with a mini site or actual website that has various content pages. This is extremely easy to prove. Say we both had sites about dog training. You had a one page "site" (ignoring misc pages like contact, privacy, etc.) and I had a site with hundreds of pages about dog training. I would bet you any amount of money that my site would get a higher AdWords quality score.
limitup Relevance is KING in Adwords. George says, to have one keyword per adgroup, because then it's easier to write better ads. You can put the keyword many times in the ad, so it will be bold in search results. Ads are VERY important in Adwords. Even though if you have bad QS, but have good CTR(people often click on your ads) then you will rank higher paying less.
Sadly, you are wrong. a) According to your logic G would lose a LOT of money if anyone starting with an AW campaign would have to wait for Google let the page index first which coudl take WEEKS. According to your logic you would need to wait this time to even be able to make successfull adwords campaign. wrong. b) What you say/doubt defies the purpose and the FACT that G has indeed different bots. The Adwords bot will check your landing page and NOT scan your whole SITE for determing quality score. c) many pages are good for overall "quality" of a site in regards to search engine, PR and organic traffic but NOT for quality score in ADWORDS. Other factors are important, as i pointed out above. Indeed, from Gs point of view and fom a customer point of view G likes it if the customer has a "good experience"..that also includes being able to PURCHASE a product within two clicks upon landing og the page...stating the price clearly...etc...etc.. Adding 500 articles and links to "acne" does NOT do ANYTHING in regards to adwords keyword quality score. As said....if you have ONE proper sales page, good navigation, Priv. Policy, Contact Us, TOS...keyword relevancy and otherwise proper site structure it is actually HARD not to reach a great quality score....assuming that your KW you use and text ad matches. You can believe me or not.
I do a lot of PPC and I have tested, tested,tested and Re-tested. Here's what works for me and gets me a GREAT QS every time 1) Always develop a lander for your affiliate offer - never direct link. Beyond improving your QS, a lander allows you to pre-sell with targeted copy 2) Design your lander as a “mini-site†- include a contact page, a privacy policy, about us page, a couple of outbound links to authority sites (wikipedia), and 3-4 pages of original article content (optional, but helpful in my experience) 3)Insert your keyword into your Adwords title and ad body - If you have several prime keywords, create several adgroups. 4) Don’t stuff an adgroup with too many keywords and make sure all the keywords in an adgroup are related 5)Serve up fresh content - try to add a block of text, better yet a new page every couple of weeks to your “mini-site†(optional, but helpful in my experience)
to start afresh you can open a new Adwords account however be rest assured google will not remember you domain and penalize of overbidding on other accounts..
giftchaos You can't "screw up" a campaign. If something is wrong, just correct it or change it. After some time, if you made right changes everything will be fine.
you can screw up an adgroup (i am ot sure about a CAMPAIGN)...lets say you create a page with insufficient keyword densitiy, missing contact us etc..etc.... then you start an adgroup and get bad quality score. Then you remember that your site is actually not finished and you need to work some more on your site. It takes google some time to re-check the page (this can take a few days)....so you "screwed" the campaign for the time being.