Google adwords is getting tough?

Small dings like that typically mean Google is not liking something about your landing page. Not enough to kill your Quality Score to poor, but enough to levy some "fix it" penalty.

It can get really weird on the really cheap end of the click scale. I've had Google change it's mind about the minimum bid amount several times a DAY for keywords with very little competition (that absence of competition can often be an indication unto itself that Google is finicky about that keyword).

It's been widely discussed that QS is largely a function of how Google views your entire DOMAIN, but obviously factors an individual page level score. Having your campaign and ad group structure right has now become mission critical.

I would suggest you take a good look at the relevance and match up between Ad Group > Ad Copy > Landing Page and make sure that they are all optimized and congruent.

Link to a blog from your landing page with 5-10 unique articles.

Be sure to put a small footer section in with links to a privacy policy, "about" page, and a contact page.

Having done all that... You have completed Google's requisite Voodoo dance and must now resort to sacrificing small animals at Midnight on a full moon.

Hope this helps,

Brian

I find keeping your page clean and uncluttered also helps but you need to be careful not to over do the keywords as that is as bad as not using enough. The fact is Google is a law unto itself so sometimes there are no clear cut answers sorry.

Google Adwords is making advertising overly-complicated for the advertiser.

Offline classified-ads is so simple

I can write the ad I want and as long as its not breaking any obvious copyright or decency laws it will be placed for the minimum of fuss. The journal / mag is happy and thankful to relieve me of my cash.

@ JustVisiting: LOL!

I love it! I'll be trying this very soon. Thank you for reminding me.

Adwords has been slaying me since Day1!

Clearly I'm doing something wrong, but for the life of me I just cannot work it out. I've followed all the guru advice, but nope, the BigG just wants to keep slappin' my keywords' QS even when I've done the aforementioned requisite dance and split my landing pages so they have a "thread" from keyword group name --> the ad itself --> title tag --> LSI-considered text on landing page... and have Privacy, Sitemap, About, HelpDesk/Contact links, plus some external links to other sites, plus relevant articles and other pages on the site...

(Maybe I should buy a marmoset and some ginzu steak knives or something, eh, Brian?)

It makes me crazy to know what I'm doing wrong when I get emails telling me how some squeeze page pulled $Xmillion from PPC and when I go and look at it, it's this ridiculously "thin" landing/squeeze page.

In fact, I just made a follow up comment on Marlon Sanders' blog about this: Marlon’s Marketing Minute Blog Archive Squeeze Pages — How To Create A State-Of-The-Art Squeeze Page

Anyone care to comment? What gives?

Adwords can be tough if you let it be.

LoudMac hit on most of it pretty clearly.

You have to realize that Google functions mostly on relevance. It will eventually check your page, from your ad headline, to your link, to your keywords, to your meta tags, to the rest of your page content, to the keywords you are using, and everything in between.

My best success from PPC has been from writing irresistible ad copy, and separating each keyword into EXTREMELY focused groups. For each campaign I have, I probably have a thousand or more individual groups within it, and yes, software is a must have for this.

$0.01 clicks still happen when competition is low and
site content is unique.