Hey guys, just thought I'd write up something a little more informative. I actually think this is my first real thread here. (Other than in the B/S/T section) But I've been frequenting DP for over a year now, and think I'll give something tiny (very tiny.. this time ) back. My adwords cliff-notes #1:Never bid more than 0.10 per click, unless you have a special reason for doing so. The only time I ever do this, is when Im promoting review sites or landing pages with bonuses for CB products. #2:Stay away from googles BROAD content network, and instead use their site-target function. If you didnt know, this is the only way to advertise on DP forums. You can grab a spot in the newsletter (well THE spot) for something like 9k(nine thousand USD) or just pay .25-.50 a click for that adslot in the upper right of your screen right now. This is of course assuming your quality score is stellar. #3:Always use the adgroups function, and when you see a keyword getting a huge number of impressions, but a low number of click delete the keyword. In addition, when you see a keyword is going to cost more than .30 a click-delete it. Google seems to like nice streamline campaigns, and I usually wind up with 50-100 low impression, high CTR keywords instead of thousands of high impression low CTR long tail keywords. The long tail keywords worked great in 2005-they dont work so great in 2008. #4:Keyword sniping-I love to do this. Alot of products and landing pages hide their keywords, but for the vast majority you can simply click View>View sourecode (in firefox, and in explorer) and find your merchants landing pages keywords. This provides me with some awesome adwords material, but only sometimes. Half the time the merchants who dont cloak their keywords, are also silly enough to go after insanely saturated words like affiliate marketing and work from home. Every now and then I'll find a gem of a merchant who really does his research though-then I'll cackle maniacally while I plug his hardwon keywords into adwords and promote with a twisted adcopy (almost always a review in this situation) and suck in the traffic hes expecting to get from his PR1. so their you have it-my "cliff notes" highly condensed, and certainly not complete. But theres sure to be a few nuggets in their for some of you. -Novos
Uhh not bidding over $0.10 a click is a very limiting note. There are more niches that dont have any clicks below $0.10 then there are niches that have clicks under $0.10.
Kinitex is right - there's no rational reason to limit yourself to $0.10 if you're selling $100,000 holiday properties, $50,000 cars or even $2,000 televisions. Your cost per click should be determined by the value of a conversion to you, the conversion rate that you are getting and the number of clicks you would expect from different bids. From these, you can work out the most profitable position for you to advertise in. The Content Network can work even when set to be very broad, or it can be hopeless, depending on your business. I'd recommend trying it, if you believe that there is a reasonable chance that people who aren't searching for your product/service may turn into business. Limiting yourself to 50-100 low impression keywords will result in very low levels of traffic - fine if you've got a very limited budget, but not too sensible if you're General Motors. The long-tail of very specific, low-traffic, high-ctr keywords are important, but if you have the budget to do it, and can generate a reasonable ROI, there's no reason not to target more mainstream keywords.
Why delete it? It could be something to do with your ad(s). What I do is if an Ad has received 150+ impressions without a click, I think about changing the ad - depending on my average position, but don't delete the keyword as it it might not be down to that. Also think of natural listings - if there are good natural listings, that can be another reason why the CTR is down.
Good point. Maybe try to break down the keyword into more keywords and run as separate ad groups. In this way you will increase relevancy with more relevant keywords and increase CTR. Example: Bidding on "used cars" may not have a high CTR as your ad will be too general. Try breaking down by model ie. used honda cars, used mercedes cars etc.
Funny that, next day I got a client who is promoting new and used cars through Google and I am taking my own advice. This had no relation to my earlier post however.