Will setting Max CPC work with bad quality and no competition?

They won't give you the click for 5 cents. You could start high and gradually lower your bids, but you wouldn't get that low. They'd just stop running your ads.

About the quality score being like a credit rating, there are kind of 2 elements to the quality score. There's a quality score based on your campaign, and there's a quality score that takes into account the history of your Adwords accound and all its compaigns. So you can get a good quality score right off the bat if your first campaign has well targeted keywords, your ads are optimized, the landing page is relevant and looks like a real site (not some one page spam blog). Then if you get a high click through rate your quality score improves more and you can lower your bids.

But if your first 10 campaigns look spammy and you get a terrible click through rate, then it will take a lot of effort to change Google's impression of your account, because your low quality score is historical.

First, Adwords keyword tool is an estimate. The cost it reports for the top positions is based on all advertisers. Now, since the vast majority of Adwords advertisers (in my opinion) do things so poorly, they pay more per click than they need to. Hence, Adwords reports those high figures.

But again, they are estimates only and your mileage may vary.

> If you set a max cpc of .05 on a keyword without other advertisers will google post the ad for .05 even if you have a bad quality rating through them?

It doesn't matter if there are other advertisers for your keyword or not. That would be a rare thing for starters and you can't really say there are no other advertisers. There are many factors why you don't see any yourself.

The short answer is that Google likely won't show your ad (or at least not very often) if you have poor QS and says you should pay more than five cents. They are effectively saying that it has poor quality and if you insist on showing it, you'll either have to pay the going rate or improve your campaign to an acceptable level and then we can lower the cost.

> Building a good quality rating is kind of a catch 22.

Not really. Google calculates a QS when you add a keyword or ad. This is based on historical data, your ad, landing page and other factors. They also recently started to calculate for each search. Your QS can go up and down without you having to do anything to your campaign.

The key is to try and make an ad that will get immediate high CTRs. When I say high CTRs, that is compared to your competitors because your QS is an indicator of how well you are doing against them.

Study the other guys' ads. Which ones would you click on? Try to come up with something better. Emmulate the best ones. But mostly, test, test and test again with different ads.

Thanks for the help...

But that sucks!

I've found many keywords that have little or no competition.

These are keywords that would indirectly be seached by people who would be interested in the product I offer.

Let me ask you this...

What if I build a good quality landing page with useful information and keep my
max set at .05 will google keep reviewing it?

I believe if i was to get my ad shown for these keywords the CTR would prove
my ads quality.

The problem is that these are indirect keywords.

For example, lets say i was promoting an ebook on how to save money on car repairs (not my product:-) Then I do a search and find that the keywords of my competition like Midas Sears auto repair etc. Have little or no ads on the first page but have high search volumes.

This is where i c a huge opportunity to capitalize on keywords with high volume and little or no competition. It's relevant because people searching for those terms will be interested and click through.

I also don't understand why google would turn down money if there are no other ads.

yes i know it an algorithm and it helps the ads be more relevant but is there anyway to prove that people searching for these terms will be interested without paying a high CPC?

I mean I'm talking about some CPC's as high as 5 bucks with only 2 ads on the first page!

Thanks in advance for any further help you can give me on this subject.

I'm just starting out but i believe i could hit this one out of the park if i could just
get google to see that people want and need this.

> What if I build a good quality landing page with useful information and keep my
max set at .05 will google keep reviewing it?

Google reviews your landing pages periodically. But having a better page will not by itself give you a better quality score. The biggest component of QS by far is CTR. Therefore, improve your ads and keywords.

> I believe if i was to get my ad shown for these keywords the CTR would prove
my ads quality.

Yes, improved CTR improves quality. But that won't happen keeping the same ad. You have to test different ads.

> The problem is that these are indirect keywords.

An ebook on car repairs, you should bid on keywords (from top of my head) such as "car repairs book" and variations and synonyms on those words such as truck/vehicle, fix, manual. Bidding on "car sales" would not be. You have to use specific keywords. If you want to bid on what I call secondary keywords, in hopes of getting more traffic, your ads will have to be different and a different landing page better suited to them would be best.

It doesn't mean that CTRs will be high however. In fact, they may be low. I've seen it too often where an advertiser bids on a very general, highly searched keyword but offering something different. CTR are low and even those who click don't buy. You really have to make a great ad for high CTRs and have your page close the sale with something they can't resist.

> I also don't understand why google would turn down money if there are no other ads.

In a word, as you said so yourself, relevancy. They have a brand to protect all based on relevancy.

> is there anyway to prove that people searching for these terms will be interested

Yes. Create a relevant ad to your landing page and keywords. High CTRs will prove people are interested. Then Google will allow your ad and reward you with low CPC.

> I mean I'm talking about some CPC's as high as 5 bucks with only 2 ads on the first page!

You don't know the actual CPC and how many advertisers. See my response in other thread addressing this. If they are paying that high, it may be normal for that keyword or more likely, they are not relevant.

OH, what a nice coincidence.

I am working on a new WSO, and i did some testing the last few days and its VERY related to your question.

To answer your question:

If you get a BAD QS, and i am talking "really" bad like 1/10...your bid will shoot up to unbelievable heights. This is directly proportional to the search-volume the keyword has.

I have seen a site shooting to 54 EURO (approx $70) for a VERY popular keyword.

And there was only ONE other ad.

So..how you turn it...your QS will decide whether your ad will show or not.

The problem is that Google has "other" criteria to "adjust" your QS.

This means: Your SITE and your AD might indeed be fitting the keyword and you get a GOOD quality score to start out with. However, depending on popularity of keyword it happens they are "adjusting" your QS so it can happen your QS drops from 7 ---> 0....and i notice this especially with *extremely* popular search terms.

I am sitting at this right now and i have some tests running and new sites, will monitor this.

If your site is NOT related to the search term with bad QS - and even if there is only ONE other ad...you will very, very quickly see how Google "adjusts" your quality score because they dont see you "worthy" to appear for this very popular keyword.