and thanks for all answers so far, indeed!

>>When you say “rarely trigger ads” is there a quality score issue there or do they just receive a few impressions a day with a good CTR? A few impressions a day with a good CTR is fine. Question: Are those few impressions and good CTR from page 2 of search results?

No, it’s all page 1, 1.3-1.7 position. So/but when one could sum this up as “slow, but harmless”, I can well live with that :)

>>However if the CTR decreases for long enough there is the possibility that the keyword could become inactive asking for higher minimum bids.

To your questions:

1. No, it’s all Google search (without search partners option, to be precise). Content net (with/ without keywords) I run in separate campaigns.

2. A breath-taking 1.05%. For comparison, a year ago (also 7 day period) it was 5.20%. I have to add that some 3 weeks ago I changed root URL to a new website throughout the account, which surely had some impact; but this would not explain this painful decrease over months, I guess.

3. Avg. pos. was 1.8, QS being 10/10. (a year ago: 1.3; QS back then was not really bad, either; maybe 7/10). CPC was around 6€, and is now about 10 per cent higher, but this is probably because of changing the URLs and the loss of history.

4. Basically yes, broad. I am running this keyword in (ad groups in) several (regional) campaigns, and just for the fun of testing in one out of six campaigns I put it in in all 3 matching options in ne adgroup some weeks ago. Broad gets around 1%, phrase brings appr. 2.5, and exact more than 3.5 (last 7 days again). Despite the low CTR, the broad variant alone gets us some 50 per cent of the ad group’s total impressions, phrase plus exact together not more than 15. The rest of impressions is triggered by >400 variations of this keyword (again, all broad), most of which have never been triggering anything :)

This specific keyword I will never touch, btw., as it covers our key product. But I find that among its 400 variations there is plenty of keywords with poor CTR, and kicking out these could help (at least to built up a new account performance after changing the URLs). Since they are all so near to the major keyword anyway I don’t think we might loose that much relevant traffic.

Best regards,
Frank

I would not worry about keywords with low search volume. They are not hurting anything and when/if traffic picks up for these keywords they will become active. Once they start accruing impressions is the time to watch their CTR – a o% CTR hurts nothing.

>>- keywords which rarely trigger ads, but where CTR is basically allright? (these were not performing great, but only in terms of lots of traffic)< <

Let me clarify something on your above question...When you say "rarely trigger ads" is there a quality score issue there or do they just receive a few impressions a day with a good CTR? A few impressions a day with a good CTR is fine. Question: Are those few impressions and good CTR from page 2 of search results? If you are on page 1 in a good position and the keywords just have slow traffic AND you are broad matched there is not much more you can do. As long as the CTR is good you are doing the best you can.

>>Finally, what about keywords with ridiculously low (and constantely decreasing) CTR for their ad groups, which are nonetheless crucial to be kept in for their conversions etc. These are needed, yet are they not helping to ruin performance in a way?<<

You should be somewhat concerned about that. If it was not for the possibility of keyword QS decreasing so much I would never mess with keywords that converted well. However if the CTR decreases for long enough there is the possibility that the keyword could become inactive asking for higher minimum bids. I have seen accounts where the keyword min required bids jumped from .30 to 15.00 due to poor CTR history. There are a few things that I would like to know. As always with adwords it is not a cut and dry thing :)

1. is the low CTR from the search or content network? I am only talking about search network CTR here.

2. What last 7 days CTR for the keyword in question?

3. What is the average position for the last 7 days for the keyword?

4. To confirm is the keyword Broad Match?

Let me know about those things and I can give you some advice. Especially if it is a broad match keyword :)

Thanks for visiting with us Frank!

Kim

MrsC- cutting the fat, so, kicking out low performing keywords- what does that mean precisely? I could think of:

- keywords with status “Low search volume”? (does it make sense to keep these in, hoping that MAYBE one day ppl. might be looking for them?)

- keywords that have never been showing at all (in 6-24 months)? (they should not have built up any CTR score at all I reckon, but when it comes to calculating the ad group- (or account-)CTR, couldn’t they have any influence, since they nonetheless enlarge the amount of data, don’t they?)

- keywords which rarely trigger ads, but where CTR is basically allright? (these were not performing great, but only in terms of lots of traffic)

Finally, what about keywords with ridiculously low (and constantely decreasing) CTR for their ad groups, which are nonetheless crucial to be kept in for their conversions etc. These are needed, yet are they not helping to ruin performance in a way?

(All examples come from an account using broad match only, daily limits rather high; neg. keyword list as elaborate as possible (if one considers that 95% of all search terms are summed up under “Other search terms” and therefore cannot be analysed); well set up categories, relevant landing pages with keywords; quality score for most major keywords generally good)

Thanks and best regards,
Frank

Thanks for visiting AdWords Help Experts.

I think that it is important for you to use keywords in your ad text. Aside from increasing the relevance by tying your keywords to your ad text it also helps your customer identify with you.

If a person searches on “coffee makers” and your ad title has the work “coffee makers” in the text your customers will immediately identify with you vs. ad text that says “enjoy delicious coffee”. It will be clear that you have what they are looking for.

If you follow the steps in the setup outlined in the article above it should not be very hard because you will have a group for each section of your business.

The experts here would be happy to provide you a quote to optimize your account. Visit the your adwords experts page http://www.adwordshelpexperts.com/your-adwords-experts/ to contact us directly for a quote.

Kim “MrsC”