Adwords Help - How do I improve my CTR? | Warrior Forum - The #1 Digital Marketing Forum & Marketplace

16 years ago

Hi Simon,

You need to make a few changes to avoid this.

I can't see your keywords for some reason but you need to start with a small campaign.

Try these things:

have one keyword/phrase per ad group in exact match.
write a unique ad for each keyword
test only USA
set your ads to rotate evenly
bid on two, three or four word combos rather than one word like 'hockey'
set your position to 2-5
overbid to get a good CTR
track each keyword to a unique CB TID

Try different ads:

"Hockey Secrets?"
Pro Hockey Player Confesses
Discover Pro Scoring Secrets...
YourHockeyTraining.info/confessions

"Hockey Pro?"
Read Urgently Before Playing!
Pro Reveals Hockey Tricks...
YourHockeyTraining.info/pro-tips

Turn off content and placement - it should be in a different campaign.

Thanks

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Simon Nicholls

16 years ago

Hi James,

Thank You! I've had a play around with the settings and keywords etc.
Hopefully I'll get a better CTR, I'll report back here tomorrow when I see some results!

Simon.

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James Schramko

16 years ago

Good Luck!

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Simon Nicholls

16 years ago

Ok, back earlier than I expected. I've had the campain running for nearly 5 hours, yet I've had just 7 impressions. I've added a screenshot to show you the keywords and settings.

Overview:

Advert 1

Advert 2

Hope this helps?

Simon.

Thanks

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James Schramko

16 years ago

You can see your bid is low and it is causing your ads to be in a low position. You also have your ads as broad.

Try splitting them into individual ad groups in exact match like [this] and bid higher.

Thanks

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onlineleben

16 years ago

Improve Your Hockey Fast

looks like one of the ebay ads that come up for each and every keyword.
I am not sure if you can improve a hockey. Shouldn't it read ... Hockey Play ?

implement the tips fromthe poster above. also try out dynamic keyword insertion.

Thanks

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Simon Nicholls

16 years ago

Ok, done all of that - but still only 11 clicks in the last 24 hours?

James, I've added you to Skype - Maybe we can talk on there?

I'm so confused, Hockey is a good niche! If I can get 1 or 2 sales I'll be happy!

Thanks
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James Schramko

16 years ago

Originally Posted by Ezy Dollar

Ok, done all of that - but still only 11 clicks in the last 24 hours?

James, I've added you to Skype - Maybe we can talk on there?

I'm so confused, Hockey is a good niche! If I can get 1 or 2 sales I'll be happy!

there may be some settings that need adjusting - budget is possibly one of them

Thanks

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JLP

16 years ago

Maybe I missed it somewhere but what's your daily budget? If too low, your ads won't show all the time.

Thanks

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Simon Nicholls

16 years ago

That could be it I guess, my budget is set to just £5 a day . . . I set it to this to test out the settings etc.

What budget do you reccomend? What's the optimum budget?

Thanks
1 reply

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dburk 16 years ago

Hi Ezy,

There is your actual budget and then there is your budget setting in AdWords. You should set your budget to at least triple your actual budget. If you don't do this then your ad will not be served all the times that it's bid merits.

You can control your actual budget buy adjusting your bids. This way you are not over paying for your clicks.

Keep in mind that the best CTR is not necessarily the highest, or the lowest, it's the rate that yields the most total profit for a given time period.
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- kah22 16 years ago
  
  A good thread.
  
  I'm in a somewhat similar situation: an AdWords newbie, advertising an affiliate product on my own review site but receiving a low quality score on the product I'm actively trying to promote via AdWords
  
  I took up the suggestions made by James paused all my keywords and then
  • activated one main keyword in each of four adgroups (exact and two word combo.) Keyword were found in Google's Keyword Tool and I used their headings as adgroup name. Active Keyword equals adgroup name
  • Increased my max bid from £0.05p to £0.65p per click
  • wrote a unique ad for each keyword
  • am testing in the USA only
  • and have set ads to rotate evenly
  
  But I'm now in a position where rather than increasing my quality score - they were originally 4 two of them have now dropped to 3!!
  
  Any suggestions as to what might be going on?
  
  Kevin
  
  Thanks
  
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stevecl

16 years ago

are you using a seperate landing page for each adgroup?

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kah22 16 years ago

Originally Posted by stevecl

are you using a seperate landing page for each adgroup?

No!

Question. Is it practical to have a seperate landing page for each adgroup, especially if you end up with 20 plus adgroups? Or do you only do it for the first 4 or 5 adgroups that you are testing?

Kevin
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James Schramko

16 years ago

Kevin,

I'm not sure what you mean by 3 or 4 for quality score?

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kah22

16 years ago

Originally Posted by James Schramko

Kevin,

I'm not sure what you mean by 3 or 4 for quality score?

When I look at my keywords Googles Keyword Analysis Tool gives them a Quality Score and markes them out of 10 e.g. 2/10, 8/10, 4/10 and so on.

Since reducing the number of words in each adgroup down to one the Quality Score of that keyword has dropped from 4/10 to 3/10 but the impressions are on the increase and the price per click seems to have fallen a little.

Kevin

Thanks
1 reply

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James Schramko

16 years ago

Originally Posted by kah22

When I look at my keywords Googles Keyword Analysis Tool gives them a Quality Score and markes them out of 10 e.g. 2/10, 8/10, 4/10 and so on.

Since reducing the number of words in each adgroup down to one the Quality Score of that keyword has dropped from 4/10 to 3/10 but the impressions are on the increase and the price per click seems to have fallen a little.

Kevin

Well that may mean that some of your keywords were better than others.

Having the keyword in the H1 tag and page title helps.

I have one page per keyword for big campaigns.

Thanks
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kah22 16 years ago

Originally Posted by James Schramko

I have one page per keyword for big campaigns.

One page per keyword!! that must mean literally hundreds of pages?

Are all the pages basically the same - text wise I mean? I ask because I'm just thinking what Google does about all that duplicate content.

Kevin
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stevecl

16 years ago

Kevin,

I use a seperate page for each adgroup whether its 5 or 10 adgroups.

It can be a pain in the ass but you need a good quality score to get cheaper clicks.

steve

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stevecl

16 years ago

kevin,

Take a look at this site Google AdWords | Super Affiliate Mindset (not aff link

This guy make 2.5 million a year using adwords and his blog has got some great advice.

steve

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JLP

16 years ago

This might have been mentioned, but under campaign budget set it to "Accelerated".

Here's the difference:

"Standard delivery distributes your budget throughout the day to avoid reaching your budget early on. Your ads will show periodically throughout the day."

"Accelerated delivery displays your ads as often as possible until your daily budget is met."

This works best if your budget is set high enough and you have a good handle on your campaign. You might want to test with your ads running throughout the day & night, unless you discover conversions mainly occur during certain time frame. If that's the case, you can adjust your campaign so that it only runs certain times.

Thanks

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Simon Nicholls

16 years ago

Good idea JLP, I'll have a little play around. I'm going to wait until tomorrow, James very kindly gave me some brilliant advice earlier with regards to setting up a new campaign.

We'll see how it goes!

Thanks

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James Schramko

16 years ago

Re accelerated - this is good if you have a big budget - I use it . If you are testing you may want standard delivery to get a more even trickle of your keyword over the 24 hour period.

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kah22 16 years ago

My two pence worth. As a newbie I avoid big budgets unless you're ultra careful or know what you are doing it could become very costly

Kevin
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Yetty

16 years ago

Be in a good position and dont make your budget too low. your ad matters.All the best

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James Schramko

16 years ago

Hi Kevin,

You usually end up with about 12 - 20 top keywords for what I call a big campaign.

Big in terms of revenue ($1- 5k a day in sales)

This is after you have pruned your list etc...

You want to milk the campaign for the best possible efficiency. I do this by splitting out the advertising down to one keyword - one landing page - unique image if required.

Doing this gets massive CTR as I have discovered..

The page name, title and meta tags and the H1 tag will have the keyword phrase.

You can put no index no follow tags to avoid duplicate problems.

Thanks

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GeorgR.

16 years ago

Ezy,

just dont give up, and watch your budget. Adwords can be a b***ch and the money is gone quicker than you can blink.

With certain markets and niches, especially in affiliate marketing a low conversion rate is actually "normal"....except if you would have ULTRA, ULTRA targeted keywords where every clicker already has a credit card in hands, ready to buy.

Conversion rates 20, 30, 50, up to 100 Clicks/Sale *can* be normal.

It depends on the pitch page., it depends on SO MANY factors.

Now let's assume a worst case scenario, 50-100 clicks == 1 sale. 50 clicks could cost you anything GBP10 and up, 100 clicks would cost you GBP20, this assuming that you pay 20p/click.

An alternative would be to focus on "higher prized" items and for the sake of this just promote more expensive items where you get more commission.

As we were talking on MSN already today...it's always good NOT only to depend on PPC. Get your articles and blogs out, wherever you can, too.

Thanks
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kah22

16 years ago

I followed James suggestions and set up five adgroups, one exact matched keyword in each adgroup; keyword equalled name of adgroup. Two ads to split test. Five different landing pages.

On a £10 GBP per-day budget I'm receiving about 15 click each day. Average CPC = £0.55p. No sales so far

Here's where I'm confused Google campaign summary tells me that all my Bids are below first page bid estimate of between £0.75 - £1.25 GBP. (I'm biding £0.65p GBP, however, when I look at the average position column it tells me that I'm appearing somewhere between 6.7 and 7.5 and in one adgroup where they want £1.25 GBP I've only offered them £0.50 GBP they actually say I'm at position 3.5

Confusing! I know Google knows what they are doing but why would some of the analysis be so far out.

Kevin

Thanks
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Rich Currie 16 years ago

Ad words is a steep learning curve and it took me a long time to figure it out. If this was not mentioned above, heres a few tips.

It's a good idea to turn the content network off when your first testing.

The other key point is your ad and you landing page must be a close match in terms of the keywords used. If not, your quality score will go down. It's also a good idea to get rid of the words that are not working as this will cost you more money.

Check out Perry Marshall he is one of the kings of adwords. He has some great stuff. Perry Marshall - Google AdWords and Guerilla Marketing

Hope this helps alittle.
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James Schramko

16 years ago

Originally Posted by kah22

I followed James suggestions and set up five adgroups, one exact matched keyword in each adgroup; keyword equalled name of adgroup. Two ads to split test. Five different landing pages.

On a £10 GBP per-day budget I'm receiving about 15 click each day. Average CPC = £0.55p. No sales so far

Here's where I'm confused Google campaign summary tells me that all my Bids are below first page bid estimate of between £0.75 - £1.25 GBP. (I'm biding £0.65p GBP, however, when I look at the average position column it tells me that I'm appearing somewhere between 6.7 and 7.5 and in one adgroup where they want £1.25 GBP I've only offered them £0.50 GBP they actually say I'm at position 3.5

Confusing! I know Google knows what they are doing but why would some of the analysis be so far out.

Kevin

Well done Kevin,

You may find that CTR improves as you go higher up the page. To do this you can set your position to say 3-5 and then you bid a little more.

It will show you higher but less often.

If you get better CTR then you should start getting rewarded.

The reason your stats are hard to work out is because there are many variables - like other bidders etc...

Your keywords, domain name, ads, landing page, offer, time of day, geo location, bid price etc... are all variable so the testing and tweaking phase is where the money is made.

Good luck!

Thanks
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Raych 16 years ago

Great thread. I'm watching with interest.
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semie

15 years ago

Recent Update Guys!

Everyone should be aware that position now is considered in the evaluation of CTR for QS. So gaming the top positions to just raise CTR, a very common technique, is becoming less effective.

adwords.blogspot.com/2008/10/improvements-to-ads-quality.html

Thanks
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Yetty

15 years ago

Originally Posted by semie

Recent Update Guys!

Everyone should be aware that position now is considered in the evaluation of CTR for QS. So gaming the top positions to just raise CTR, a very common technique, is becoming less effective.

adwords.blogspot.com/2008/10/improvements-to-ads-quality.html

Yes i think you are right cos atimes i wonder what is happening

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James Schramko

15 years ago

Great find.

Writing quality relevant ads for quality pages is still the way forward. This will weed out some of the less precise operators.

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John Hocking 15 years ago

If you are trying for high quality scores I recommend the following

1) One keyword/phrase per ad group.
2) Create a custom landing page for keyword/phrase that is optimized for it.
3) use the keyword/phrase in title or body of ad. (if it matches the search
term Google will highlight it and you will get better clickthroughs)

4) Go for quality keywords over quantity. (the more targeted the better)
You will get better ROI then using broad match terms.

5) Use LSI keywords on your landing page. For example if your main keyword was Gardening, LSI keywords would be like flowers, bushes, shovel. LSI are related keywords that support your main keyword and
will greatly raise the quality score of your landing page.

When testing ads, create two versions and change only one thing between them. Set them to equal display and track the results. When one becomes the winner, stop the other and create a new add with a new test. Keep this up until you are happy with the results.

Budgets are tricky. It is easy to get in trouble quickly when just starting
out. Keep it small until you have a proven ad.

I also recommend adjusting your bid until your ad appears in position 4-6.
You will get less overall clicks but I have found these positions tend
to generate the best bid to ROI ratio.
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Rich Rollend

15 years ago

Great Thread, I was going to start a thread on this but everyone answered my questions. I'm having the same problems, to improve performance bid more but I'm already at pos. 6. Just when I thought I got a handle on PPC something else comes up.
Thanks Everybody:
Rich

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James Schramko

15 years ago

One thing with Ad Words is it is a dynamic game. It never sleeps.

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Adwords Help - How do I improve my CTR?

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