Am I Not Playing The Game Right? (AKA, Bad Quality Score Due To "Relevance")

Callous · 02-03-2010, 11:58 AM

K... so I'll lay out the story here. I've been "playing" with adwords for a few weeks now. My website is approximately 3 weeks old and I've had several attempts at ad campaigns for it, all remarkably unsuccessful. I've been researching the adwords requirements both from google and from other sources (here as an example) and attempted to include many of the suggestions I've read. It boils down to this. I've had no luck and have gotten so frustrated I've almost written adwords off as junk. Which is a foolish move given the search volume. So I figured I'd drop my example by the experts.

My website is callousgreetings as a dot com (I'm not trying sneak in spam backlinks here, which I assume is the reason for the min 15 posts for linking. I need to post some kind of url so people know what I'm talking about). I sell heavily sarcastic, mean, insulting type greeting cards. no e-cards. These are physical products mailed to customers. I create the art, pick the quotes, print the cards and lick the envelopes (actually I use a wet sponge, but it illustrates the point). As brick and mortar as an internet offering can be. The website is done with the Magento Open Source shopping cart.

My most recent experiment with adwords is as follows.

Campaign Name: Mean Greeting Cards Canada
Adgroup: Mean Greeting Cards
Keywords: (Phrase and Exact Match, no Broad)

mean greeting cards
mean cards
mean card
mean greeting card
buy mean greeting card
buy mean greeting cards
buy mean cards
buy mean card
send mean cards
send mean card
mean greetings cards
mean greetings card

Ad:

Mean Greeting Cards
You Wont Find These Cards In Stores
Mean Greeting Cards For A Laugh.
callousgreetings as a dot com

Landing Page:

My usual callousgreetings as a dot com with /mean-greeting-cards

So now that I've inundated you with my story, here's the crux of the matter.

I've got a 3/10 QS for every keyword. They all state that my keyword relevancy is poor. Landing page quality and load time show no problems. If you pick through the source of my landing page you'll find the keyword mean greeting cards in my url, title, H1 tags, body, header, footer, img alt text. I've got privacy, copyright, terms and contact pages linked.

I am at an absolute loss. I know that CTR has a heavy impact but a CTR of 0 with 0 impressions at the start of a campaign cannot be a deciding factor in the initial bidding.

Am I not paying the game right?

Lucid · 02-03-2010, 02:44 PM

I think you are playing the game right. It's just that recently, Google seems to have made some changes in their algo. I went through the same thing with new client. The response was "wait until you get some clicks". Once the campaign did, all was back on track.

Now in your case, I don't know if you'll even show up or if you'll be profitable. You see, even if you bid on "mean greeting cards", you are also competing for those bidding simply on "greeting cards". The cost may be higher than what you're willing to pay to get on the first page, especially since you sell them for just $5. You may have to jack up your bid just to get on page one and a few clicks to get your keyword irrelevancy unstuck.

I also notice that out of 11 ads, all but three mention "get free cards", most of them are e-cards. I wish you luck but it's going to be a rough road.

Callous · 02-04-2010, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucid

I think you are playing the game right. It's just that recently, Google seems to have made some changes in their algo. I went through the same thing with new client. The response was "wait until you get some clicks". Once the campaign did, all was back on track.

Now in your case, I don't know if you'll even show up or if you'll be profitable. You see, even if you bid on "mean greeting cards", you are also competing for those bidding simply on "greeting cards". The cost may be higher than what you're willing to pay to get on the first page, especially since you sell them for just $5. You may have to jack up your bid just to get on page one and a few clicks to get your keyword irrelevancy unstuck.

I also notice that out of 11 ads, all but three mention "get free cards", most of them are e-cards. I wish you luck but it's going to be a rough road.

I hadn't considered the idea I'd be competing against greeting cards itself with the "mean greeting cards" keyword. Thought exact match would have ranked better. hrrm. As far as the free cards and e-cards, yeah, I knew that was going to be an issue.

I've looked at e-cards and my site infrastructure makes it a bit prohibitive unless I want to get into manually spamming people with e-cards, which I don't. Free cards I can do, but driving paid cards with free card advertisements isn't going to convert. It'll just bring people who will download the free cards and leave.

Is it best to start with long haul keywords, or a big campaign with a ton of keywords that you begin to narrow down to the ones that are cheaper or have a better CTR?

Lucid · 02-04-2010, 02:17 PM

You will have an advantage since your keywords will be more in line with the search query. But you are still competing with the plain greeting cards bidders. Some may even have thought of bidding on "mean greeting cards" (hope they don't read this and give them ideas). You'll have to get your QS up to 10 for any chance at a reasonable position. I would investigate using the content network and target specific sites where your buyers are likely to be in your case.

R. Shawner · 02-04-2010, 04:52 PM

Another problem you may face is your account history. If you have had, like you say, some remarkably unsuccessful campaigns running, this definately gave your account a quite bad account history. Due to this fact, your initial Quality Score with any campaign will be rather bad, no matter how well you optimized your Keywords/Ads/Landing page are.

You can only change this by running a campaign with a good CTR over some time. However, if you're targeting keywords with some competition, and in your case it seems like it's fierce (gift card industry), You'll lose a HUGE amount of money until you'll get there. I know what you think, and yes it's definately a vicious cycle.

Here's some more information (an experiment) about account history you should consider checking out: Google Adwords Account History

Please note that I had to find out all of the above written the hard way first so I know what I'm talking about.

- R. Shawner

Lucid · 02-04-2010, 07:19 PM

The link you gave to that experiment proves nothing unfortunately. Not a scientific test at all. I don't believe you get penalized on a new campaign just because other campaigns had poor quality. I've gotten good results on new campaigns many times when clients had very poor results themselves. Also, think about it. Why penalize you with poor quality just because of previous poor quality on campaigns which may not even be related to your new one? That's comparing apples with oranges and Google is not in the habit of doing that.

02-03-2010, 11:58 AM	#1
Callous Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 6 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts Social Networking	Am I Not Playing The Game Right? (AKA, Bad Quality Score Due To "Relevance") K... so I'll lay out the story here. I've been "playing" with adwords for a few weeks now. My website is approximately 3 weeks old and I've had several attempts at ad campaigns for it, all remarkably unsuccessful. I've been researching the adwords requirements both from google and from other sources (here as an example) and attempted to include many of the suggestions I've read. It boils down to this. I've had no luck and have gotten so frustrated I've almost written adwords off as junk. Which is a foolish move given the search volume. So I figured I'd drop my example by the experts. My website is callousgreetings as a dot com (I'm not trying sneak in spam backlinks here, which I assume is the reason for the min 15 posts for linking. I need to post some kind of url so people know what I'm talking about). I sell heavily sarcastic, mean, insulting type greeting cards. no e-cards. These are physical products mailed to customers. I create the art, pick the quotes, print the cards and lick the envelopes (actually I use a wet sponge, but it illustrates the point). As brick and mortar as an internet offering can be. The website is done with the Magento Open Source shopping cart. My most recent experiment with adwords is as follows. Campaign Name: Mean Greeting Cards Canada Adgroup: Mean Greeting Cards Keywords: (Phrase and Exact Match, no Broad) mean greeting cards mean cards mean card mean greeting card buy mean greeting card buy mean greeting cards buy mean cards buy mean card send mean cards send mean card mean greetings cards mean greetings card Ad: Mean Greeting Cards You Wont Find These Cards In Stores Mean Greeting Cards For A Laugh. callousgreetings as a dot com Landing Page: My usual callousgreetings as a dot com with /mean-greeting-cards So now that I've inundated you with my story, here's the crux of the matter. I've got a 3/10 QS for every keyword. They all state that my keyword relevancy is poor. Landing page quality and load time show no problems. If you pick through the source of my landing page you'll find the keyword mean greeting cards in my url, title, H1 tags, body, header, footer, img alt text. I've got privacy, copyright, terms and contact pages linked. I am at an absolute loss. I know that CTR has a heavy impact but a CTR of 0 with 0 impressions at the start of a campaign cannot be a deciding factor in the initial bidding. Am I not paying the game right?

02-03-2010, 02:44 PM	#2
Lucid Senior Warrior Member Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 1,096 Thanks: 10 Thanked 121 Times in 115 Posts	Re: Am I Not Playing The Game Right? (AKA, Bad Quality Score Due To "Relevance") I think you are playing the game right. It's just that recently, Google seems to have made some changes in their algo. I went through the same thing with new client. The response was "wait until you get some clicks". Once the campaign did, all was back on track. Now in your case, I don't know if you'll even show up or if you'll be profitable. You see, even if you bid on "mean greeting cards", you are also competing for those bidding simply on "greeting cards". The cost may be higher than what you're willing to pay to get on the first page, especially since you sell them for just $5. You may have to jack up your bid just to get on page one and a few clicks to get your keyword irrelevancy unstuck. I also notice that out of 11 ads, all but three mention "get free cards", most of them are e-cards. I wish you luck but it's going to be a rough road.
	Learn to do PPC the right way.

02-04-2010, 02:17 PM	#4
Lucid Senior Warrior Member Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 1,096 Thanks: 10 Thanked 121 Times in 115 Posts	Re: Am I Not Playing The Game Right? (AKA, Bad Quality Score Due To "Relevance") You will have an advantage since your keywords will be more in line with the search query. But you are still competing with the plain greeting cards bidders. Some may even have thought of bidding on "mean greeting cards" (hope they don't read this and give them ideas). You'll have to get your QS up to 10 for any chance at a reasonable position. I would investigate using the content network and target specific sites where your buyers are likely to be in your case.
	Learn to do PPC the right way.

02-04-2010, 04:52 PM	#5
R. Shawner The "Techie" Marketer War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Switzerland Posts: 34 Thanks: 14 Thanked 3 Times in 3 Posts Contact Info	Re: Am I Not Playing The Game Right? (AKA, Bad Quality Score Due To "Relevance") Another problem you may face is your account history. If you have had, like you say, some remarkably unsuccessful campaigns running, this definately gave your account a quite bad account history. Due to this fact, your initial Quality Score with any campaign will be rather bad, no matter how well you optimized your Keywords/Ads/Landing page are. You can only change this by running a campaign with a good CTR over some time. However, if you're targeting keywords with some competition, and in your case it seems like it's fierce (gift card industry), You'll lose a HUGE amount of money until you'll get there. I know what you think, and yes it's definately a vicious cycle. Here's some more information (an experiment) about account history you should consider checking out: Google Adwords Account History Please note that I had to find out all of the above written the hard way first so I know what I'm talking about. - R. Shawner

02-04-2010, 07:19 PM	#6
Lucid Senior Warrior Member Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 1,096 Thanks: 10 Thanked 121 Times in 115 Posts	Re: Am I Not Playing The Game Right? (AKA, Bad Quality Score Due To "Relevance") The link you gave to that experiment proves nothing unfortunately. Not a scientific test at all. I don't believe you get penalized on a new campaign just because other campaigns had poor quality. I've gotten good results on new campaigns many times when clients had very poor results themselves. Also, think about it. Why penalize you with poor quality just because of previous poor quality on campaigns which may not even be related to your new one? That's comparing apples with oranges and Google is not in the habit of doing that.
	Learn to do PPC the right way.