I use adwords to promote our mailing and polywrapping business and most of the keywords could never have been described as cheap. For example to be position 2/3 for Mailing House might have been £1.50 per click. However in the last few weeks or so I have seen a significant increase in the Bids in some cases to the levels of Motgage / Finance / Holiday rates. For example Direct Mail Campaigns (not an ideal 'fit' for our business) is now telling me that Bid is below first page bid estimate of £5.00!!!!! £5.00 per click just to be one page 1 - however much is #1 position paying?? My theory is that due to the recession businesses are getting increasingly desperate for business leads. What are your thoughts and have you got any similar 'tales'? CW
Is this something you noticed in the last 2 weeks or so? Maybe it is a result of this change: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/11/update-on-improvements-to-ads-quality.html Our CPC is actually going down and our rank has increased along with our CTR. I am in the software industry though. Also, have you noticed any changes in your quality score? Maybe Google reviewed your account and as a result you were hit with a lower QS... Just some thoughts.
Like jyoung above my performance and CPC has improved since the introduction of the new QS system but it took a few weeks to stabilise. The bid may well be below the estimate but where are you actually showing? Since its introduction the 1st page estimate has been notoriously unreliable and you are far better judging your performance and bid on actual results rather than Google's suggestions. I have many keywords that I bid below the 1st page estimate yet get average positions on page 1, some as high as pos. 2. It has been speculated on that the 1st page estimate has led to CPC inflation as some advertisers blindly follow Google's advice. Poor relevance and QS seems to be the the most significant factor in exaggerated 1st page bids.
There are a lot of great things about long tail keywords, but one of the best things is that it drives a lot more people to your web site. Not only that, but long tail keywords are a lot easier to rank high in the search engines results. Thus you can end up being ranked higher than other sites in a short time frame. Knowing just how to word the keyword phrase is really the art behind long tail keywords marketing. After you find out just how to word things then you are going to more than double your sales in no time. There are a lot of different ways to go about adding keywords to your web site, but some ways are always better than others. The long tail keywords just so happen to be one of those ways. You should use it to increase the number of visitors that are coming to your web site and get people who are more interested in your web site to visit you. Whether you are using pay per click advertising or organic search engine optimization you should take advantage of long tail keywords to increase your site traffic but most importantly, your sales!
I'm still learning about PPC but can't you choose to show QS per keyword? Or no? Sounds like it could be a QS situation too. For those of you (jyoung / bjewelled), what do you guys do to get a good QS for your pages? Basically is it keyword matching from ad to landing page etc. Thanks in advance