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Quote:

Originally Posted by matthewd (Post 496823)

I am running a profitable campaign as an affiliate in which
I receive about $24/sale.

The thing is that my average CPC is $0.52... so if I could
get this lowered while still keeping the same amount of
traffic, I could get my profits up a lot.

So, I am wondering what the best way to lower the CPC is?

One thing I have in mind but am not too sure of is setting up
the Ad Groups for each keywords.

For example I will the weight loss market (it's not my real market).

Currently I have one Ad Group with quite a few keywords in it.
They range from being like "weight loss guide" to "losing weight guide"

So, would it be better to have 1 Ad Group for "weight loss guide"
and a totally different Ad Group for "losing weight guide" and also
do this for every different little variation?

What else would work for lowering my CPC?

Hi Matthew, ok bottom line , lowering your CPC is about providing relevence and a lot of it. The better your quality score, the lower your CPC, the better your ROI. I'm gonna give you a little guide here which condenses the basics.

Your groups are not tight enough, follow this basic A-B-C approach, and you'll see some solid CPC lowering almost overnight.

Let's make a case study, say the keyphrase your currently working on is.. " "pink leotards", then you need to ensure that :

A) Your ad group only contains variations with that phrase in, so for example:

Buy pink leotards
pink leotards
my girlfriend walked in on me wearing a pink leotard
small pink leotard
(you can keep the phrases short of go more long tail, doesn't matter much, just keep the phrase in it, your PPC testing s/w will let you know what's ultimately converting)

The next stage is making sure your advert is relevent to your adgroup so..

B) For the phrase pink leotards" your advert must contain the phrase so..

Pink Leotard Expert Reveals
Amazing Seductive Experiences
Be Hot in Pink...

Finally (C), make sure your landing page is relevent to the adgroup and the advert, it all has to be tight as fcuk and relevent throughout the entire A-B-C process.

Your LP, needs to focus on your keyphrase, so your tags, especially, TITLE, Description , keywords ideally and body text all need the "pink leotards" phrase in it. Don't over do it or try and cram it in 8 times in a non sensical fashion, but get it in there and make sure the keyphrase is first in the Meta Title tag and the Meta description tag.

Make sure the keyphrase is added to the body , don't overdo but make sure it's naturally occuring.

If you need to create a landing page for each adgroup, then so be it, that's fine, do it, and watch your CPC drop, also feel free to link each of the LP's together, they all have a common focus , link juice is always a winner as far as Google is concerned if the content is relevent.

So after following the A-B-C guide you now have:

* Your keyphrases tight and relevent in the Adgroup.
* Your keyphrase tight in the advert related to the Adgroup.
* Your keyphrases in the correct places on your landing page.

You have now told Google, that whatever advert they put in front of their visitor, that it's relevent to their search and that the page they end up on is relevent and matched to their search, this is what Google wants, relevence. Ignore the above and they will hit you with what a Google Insider once called "The Stupid Tax". The more relevent you are, the better your QS, (and your CTR ) and therefore the lower your CPC.

If that doesn't achieve your goal, and it all depends on your market and competition etc you'll need to go further, you should (and I always do) the following:

* Slap a blog on your landing page if your LP isnt' already a blog.

* Slap a few pages of keyphrase laden articles on to the blog.

* Slap the obligatory privacy, about us, contact us , terms of use, pages up.

* Slam a few "articles" (translated means any old shit content with your keyphrases in) into some article databases .

*Add links in those "articles" back to your landing page and make sure the keyword is prevalent in the actual links, so for example :
www.myqssucks.com/pinkleotards.html

To continue dropping your CPC by improving your QS, go and buy 100 quality backlinks, and the emphasis is on quality.

Set up Squidoo pages, Facebook, Google Answers , Youtube pages etc, basically keep emphasising to Google that your page is the absolute shizz as far as that terms concerned, that premium virtual real estate links to you.

Go to high PR blogs, forums, yahoo answers etc and add your "helpful" posts about your pink leotards with a link back to your site, (remember to keep the keyphrase in the actual link) If it's HTML, include the keyphrase in the URL and the description.

Another way to keep that CPC down is to make sure your CTR rocks, shitty ads won't get clicked on, and the lower that CTR goes, the higher your CPC, Google thinks you suck and people don't like your ads.

Go read Perry Marshall's free guide about writing ads. Make sure you feature on what's in it for them, the benefits, talk to them, not at them. Don't give features, people ****ing hate features, they want to know what it's gonna do for them "allow them to sit by the beach all day, allow them to get girls, allow them to be the super hot stud , allow them to look great in a bikini, etc etc.

In other words, people don't give a shit that your pink leotards are 99% high megaweave fireresistant graded lycra" they do however give a shit that you leotards are the smoothest sexist figure slimming leotards in existance.

Next , go and type in your keywords, see who else ads come up , then go to keywordspy or similar tool and see exactly what terms they are bidding on, how much they are paying etc, basically spy and steal your way to success. Dont' reinvent the wheel, if somebody has an advert running for ages using the same keywords it's highly likely they are making an ROI. Steal the keywords, slap them into highly defined adgroups, beat them at their own game, it's amazing how bad 95% of all PPC'ers are , they don't have a clue, steal their hard work then improve on it.

Critically, install some decent tracking s/w and weed out bad keywords, make sure you know exactly what's getting you a ROI and what's not. Almost all CB vendors will allow you to put your adwords code on their thank you page, just ask.

Keep modifying your bids, don't get hung up on being number 1 either, positions 2 and 3 are hugely profitable. Bid high early on to improve your position and CTR telling Google people like your ads, then you can reduce later on once you've bid up early.

Use buy words, to many folks waste gazzilions of dollars on non specific keywords, if somebody types in "Sony TV" they are unlikely to be a buyer, but if somebody types in "Sony SXRD5138-4" they have already done their research, they are almost guaranteed a buyer. Not only will you not waste a ton of cash on generics but you'll find laser targeting like that reduces CPC as the competition is less .

"Buy Sony SXRD5138-4" or "Sony SXRD5138-4 cheapest price" etc will be even better. You can go wide if you like, personally I don't mind wide but follow the same rules .

There are other tricks you can apply but I'm buggered if I'm stating it here, especially as they can get you canned fast, and don't PM me please.

Hope that helps, can't stand PPC really and It's not my forte, but when I have to, that's what I do.