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Pause or Lower Bid on Low CTR, Low Quality Score Keywords?

by consultant1027
7 replies
  • PPC/SEM
    • |
in Adwords, if you add a lot of broad match search terms to an ad group (in many cases this can be a strategy, INITIALLY, to try to uncover the best performing 'long tail keywords'), and you know these keywords will have low QS because of being so broad they will have a very low CTR, does adding keywords with low QS have residual negative effects beyond just that particular keyword's performance in the auction? Is there an ad-group or ad level QS calculation that is factored in that can be negatively effected by having to many broad keywords in the ad group?

What I'm REALLY getting at is, so in essence, on broad keywords with very low CTR and QS, is it better to pause them or turn the bid way down so you still have a chance of getting a stray conversion from an obscure long-tail keyword once in a blue moon?
#bid #ctr #keywords #low #lower #pause #quality #score
  • Profile picture of the author ChrisBa
    If you do this, once you figure out the good keywords, I would personally start a brand new campaign to get a fresh start to get a decent ctr/qs on the keywords/ads..
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi consultant1027,

      In the past it did make a difference because it effected the initial QS when adding new keywords. Last year AdWords switched to giving every new keyword an initial QS of 6, so it is no longer as important as it used to be.

      Having said that, you do not need to suffer poor QS for those terms that you are explicitly targeting. Instead of adding a lot of broad match terms to a single ad group, split those terms into adg groups with small tightly focused keyword lists. Include both exact and phrase match, as well as broad match keywords to the same ad group. You will still trigger all those elusive long tail terms, but your exact match keywords will typically have better QS and lower CPC, which will save you a lot money over the long term.

      In case you did not already know this, Google does not ding your QS for low CTR on search terms other than those that are considered an exact match. The poor account structure, putting a lot keywords into a single ad group is what dings up your QS, because you simply cannot write ads that are specific enough to your ad group's keyword list. Keep those ad groups small and tightly focused, write highly specific ad text, and save yourself a bunch of money.
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  • Profile picture of the author consultant1027
    dburk, I already do exactly what you described. My question is, assuming you have very specifically targeted Ad Groups that have all exact and phrase match keywords already. If you have very poorly performing broad match (because you have constantly added uncovered new exact and phrase match long tail keywords) is it best to once the campaigns have matured and collected much data over time to pause the broad match with low QS and CTR or simply lower bid amount to reduce cost yet still leave active to pickup a potential conversion on very obscure long tail keyword once in a while?
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      I typically leave them active with a lower bid, but not if they have a poor quality score.

      You can get good quality scores on broad match terms if you analyze your search terms report and diligently add negative match keywords to prevent irrelevant terms, or terms with low commercial intent that don't match up with the ads in your ad group.

      You can consider placing keywords with low commercial intent into separate ad groups that have ad text and landing pages that are more suitable to the user's intent. That will not only improve the QS, but also help you to target the upper portion of your marketing funnel.

      The bottom line is that keywords with poor QS are not optimized, and there is almost always something you can do to improve the QS. You just need to decide how much time and resources you are willing to put into the task and decide if it is better to pause, or to optimize.
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  • Profile picture of the author Liam89
    Its good that you have conversion tracking set up - surely this tells you if they are worth keeping or not? If the cost per conversion is strong keep them!

    You would also look at putting them in another campaign if yoou feel they are low quality and want to control budget on these keywords.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by Liam89 View Post

      Its good that you have conversion tracking set up - surely this tells you if they are worth keeping or not? If the cost per conversion is strong keep them!

      You would also look at putting them in another campaign if yoou feel they are low quality and want to control budget on these keywords.
      Hi Liam89,

      Your replies on this post, and others, seem to be just very generalized and often randomly selected responses. It seems you haven't bothered to read the full thread before posting. And I noticed you dug up a lot of older posts and posted a bunch of 1-2 sentence responses. Makes me wonder if you are a bot preparing for a spam campaign?
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      * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
      *       Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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  • Profile picture of the author Dutko2385
    I would pause or delete the lower quality score keywords. They are mostly useless for your campaign and if you do get a click from it Google will be charging as much as they can from it.

    Continue checking your reports monthly or so and see what keywords people have searched to pull up for ads and clicked on the ads. Then keep adding those keywords in as Phrase and Exact.
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