I am curious about how the bidding works as far as long and short keywords. I am trying to market for the word fall protection, which is pretty much a $4.00 keyword (for top spot). So I tried alternatives like fall protection harness, fall protection equipment, fall protection safety. All of those in quotes for a more exact match without being exact. My question is I am still paying the same amount I was paying for fall protection. I am assuming I pay for fall protection no matter if I have a 10 word phrase or not. And if that is the case where is a good resource other than the adwords tool for finding alternatives with search numbers? Thanks JJ
it all depends upon how much your competitors are bidding for the same keywords. if your competitors are bidding less your cost goes down automatically plus depends upon ctr and quality of your keywords
Competitor bids are not really the biggest factor. The biggest factor is your ctr and quality score. If you can get a higher ctr then your competitors, you will be rewarded with lower minimum bids for the same ad spot.
I don't think I worded my question right. I have the keyword fall protection equipment. Am I paying the same keyword rate for that phrase as I would with any part of the phrase. Meaning am I paying for the keyword fall protection or protection equipment also? Even though I only come up as an adwords ad with a search for fall protection equipment. I guess what I am assuming here is, long phrases are only good for raising relevalancy and not lower cost. Structured Settlement is the highest keyword in adwords. If someone bids for the phrase "how to apply a structured settlement to a trust fund", and someone actually types that in, I am assuming they still pay for the keyword structured settlement in its full amount. Is that all accurate? JJ
Thank you for the information. I was just about to make a topic regarding how adwords work but now I don't need to. I will be using pay-per-click campaigns a little later on in my business, once it grows a little bit. Not right now, though. I will take all this to heart for the future! Kyle
There are hundreds of free ebooks that will explain it better than we ever could.just search at google
anyone have an recommendations as to what books are the best for adwords? I am starting to get my CTR up (>5%), but my conversions are almost nothing. thanks JJ
"If someone bids for the phrase "how to apply a structured settlement to a trust fund", and someone actually types that in, I am assuming they still pay for the keyword structured settlement in its full amount." I'm new at this also and would be interested in the answer to this (rather than go and buy a book)...my understanding would be that if you had the term [how to apply a structured settlement to a trust fund] added as an extact phrase keyword then that would be cheaper than the term: structured settlement Be interesting to hear what others say?
Indeed you are accurate. Example: You bid on "how to apply a structured settlement to a trust fund", you decide to bid $1 Your competitor is bidding $50 on 'structured settlement' as a broad match. Conclusion : because he is set on broad match you will both appear when someone types "how to apply a structured settlement to a trust fund". Thus you will have to compete with his incredibly high CPC. Google used to treat these things seperately so that you wouldn't end up competing. But it has changed to the scenario described above. Finding longtails is no longer as advantageous as it used to be. However, you will still be able to tailor your advert more specifically and thus achieve a better CTR and hopefully outrank your competitors this way. Either way, you must never make getting a better rank your primary concern. Sure its great to appear higher and get more exposure, but this is a bonus. Your primary concern is to make sure you don't bid so high you don't make an ROI on your sales.
Here's Google's explanation: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68095 So if you bid on "fall protection" and [fall protection], the two are equivalent from a Quality Score perspective, if somebody searches for fall protection. But if you are bidding on "fall protection" and [fall protection equipment] (or "fall protection equipment), and somebody searches for fall protection equipment, then the keyword that exactly matches the keyword will receive a better Quality Score (clickthrough rates, advert relevance etc being equal). You should explicitly list every keyword that is relevant. Though the match type does not impact your Quality Score, using Phrase Match will allow you (when you run a Search Query Report) to identify more keywords that you should be bidding on explicitly. You can then add these in (and negative matches, if there are some you don't want). Getting back to the original question of cost per click, it's more complicated than that. A better Quality Score may increase your actual cost per click, as it pushes you in a higher position (so you have to outbid somebody higher up). But if your average position doesn't change, then the cost per click should fall as your Quality Score improves. Bear in mind, though, that your competitors are probably bidding on the same keywords that you are looking at. The long-tail is better for two reasons. 1) You may find keywords your competitors haven't thought of. Less competition = lower bids in general, though your keywords may still be too generic for this to be relevant (particularly if your competitors use Phrase Match). 2) Long-tail keywords often convert better. Somebody searching for fall prevention may be looking for advice. Somebody searching for fall prevention equipment is looking for a product. And somebody searching for rf profi full body harness knows exactly what they want, and if you've got one at the right price, they'll probably buy. Since the conversion rate determines how much you can afford to pay per click, you can often bid more per click on more specific keywords. And splitting them out allows you to bid more on the better-performing keywords.
Thanks CustardMite that is what I thought was reality, just wasn't sure. I am having a heck of a time getting my adwords stuff to convert. I do well with google base listings coming up when someone search organically and the google base is at the top, but for some reason I cannot get adwords to convert. I turned it off for now, going to work on my landing pages and do more keyword research, mainly negative ones. Then try again in a month or so. JJ