Archive for the ‘Improving CTR’ category

Improvement Quick Tip 1: Organizing Ad Group Themes

February 25th, 2009

An effective AdWords campaign usually will undergo major changes in its life. It is often difficult to build a perfect account from the start, for many it is a learn as you go process. This series of Improvement Quick Tips are designed to take an account that is performing OK and take it to a new level of performance. The incentives to improve an account include a higher conversion rate and higher quality scores which equate to lower costs per click. The question becomes how do we make quality score great. Is there a way to continue to refine an account to further increase the quality score, increase conversions and reduce costs? Answer = Yes.

Organizing Your Account – Ad Group Themes

Organizing your account into tightly knit ad groups around a specific theme can increase relevance and account quality. When ad text is directly related to keywords, customers identify better with the ad because it so closely matched their search query. This results in a higher click-through-rate (CTR) which will increase quality score.

For this example I have setup an account for a door repair service. The keywords I selected for the service were: door repair, commercial door repair, storm door repair and entry door repair. The ad text is generic with “Door Repair” as the title.

Sample 1

Keywords in NON Specific Themes

A New Approach

I decided to reorganize the ad groups into themes. This example outlines the ’Storm Door Repair’ theme. I created a new ad group labeled ‘storm door repair’ and created ad text with Storm Door Repair in the title. Keywords were selected to focus strictly on storm door repair. The CTR increased and the Cost per click (CPC) was greatly reduced. The original cost, $2.19 average CPC to $1.14 average CPC.

Sample 2

Theme

Why the Improvement?

The improvement is directly related to the relevance of the ad text to keywords. People can identify with the advertisement. The relevance in the theme is stronger. Setting up an account this way can be time consuming; starting with a setup like scenario 1 and work to identify what keywords deserve their own group may be a good approach for someone that does not have a lot of extra time.

When are we done improving?

Never really. I find that I am always looking to improve an account, finding ways to increase quality score, reduce costs and ultimately increase conversions. My next step on this account will be to include specific keyword matching options such as [Exact] and “Phrase” match. This will increase the CTR even further. I will also test different ad variations of the Storm Door Repair ad text to find the most compelling ad text possible.

Sample 2 does not reflect a change in quality score yet, but in time it will. While we wait for the new quality score to be reflected we can enjoy that lower CPC.

Future Improvement Quick Tips will include: Keywords, Ad Text, Bidding, Tracking Codes, Reading & Understanding Account Data, The Reports Center, Implementing Changes, Optimizing Websites and More.

Article by: +Kim Clinkunbroomer

Clinks Web Service a Google AdWords Partner Company

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Posted in Getting Started, Improving CTR, Quality Score

Do Some Advertisers ‘Ruin’ a Keywords Initial Quality Score for Other Advertisers?

February 4th, 2009

Answer = Yes.

I have looked at numerous accounts this week and am so surprised to see keywords that just don’t belong in their accounts, with a poor Quality Score (QS) and horribly low Click Through Rate (CTR). Not only does this drag their accounts down, it also wreaks havoc on the keywords’ CTR performance for every advertiser that should be using the keyword.

For instance, I recently looked at an account for a personal trainer. The account held keywords like ‘beach’, ‘weight watchers’, ‘excercise equipment’, none of which he offers, but are somewhat related. Of course you want a good body to go to the beach; “weight watchers” is another option to a personal trainer and when you visit this personal trainer you will use excercise equipment. Now, all of these keywords have a poor quality score and terrible CTR, and of course they should! This account has been running these keywords for months accruing a terrible historical CTR. Eventually this account may grind to a complete halt due to these keywords’ low CTR alone. Before that happens though, he will damage these keywords for other advertisers who do sell ‘excercise equipment’. This is why Google considers quality score important. A poor quality score is a deterrent. An indicator that something is wrong, that perhaps the keyword should be seriously re-evaluated and possibly removed all together. Google want’s you to stay relevant. It is the building block of adwords. It keeps things in check. It also keeps advertisers happy and ultimately keeps the end users of Google happy when they are provided with search results that are relevant to their query. If I wanted to find a weight watchers meeting in my area I would not expect to see ‘personal trainers’ in the search results. If Google can not keep their end users happy by presenting them with relevant search results then people will stop using Google and the end result will be the advertisers using AdWords not reaching the largest audience available on the internet.

How this effects you.

When an advertisers sets up an account and selects their keywords they receive an initial quality score based on the historical performance of the keyword on the AdWords system. Advertisers that have misused keywords have lowered that historical performance for other advertisers.

Can You Fix it?

Yes, If you find a newly added keyword that is truly relevant to your product or service has a poor score work on the CTR. Once you add a keyword to your account you can increase it’s quality if it is relevant to your ad text and landing page and achieves a good CTR. It make take time to accrue positive CTR history.

Notes:

Don’t use keywords that are not directly related to your product or service.
If you see a Poor Quaity Score or very low CTR (aside from the content network) something is wrong and needs to be addressed immediately.
Don’t freak outwhen you see a low Quality Score on a keyword that you know is very relevant, it is just that the keyword did not get a good performance history on the system, likely due to other advertisers misusing the keyword. If you are getting a good CTR with the keyword it’s Quality Score will improve.

Article by: +Kim Clinkunbroomer

Clinks Web Service a Google AdWords Partner Company

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Posted in Getting Started, Improving CTR, Keywords, Quality Score

Tags: poor keyword quality poor quality score

Remember The Exact Match Option

January 7th, 2009

Starting small is golden therefore newbie’s performance numbers are usually not big enough. I mean say hundreds of or a few thousand impressions a month, and much much fewer clicks. If you have ever tried to ride a bycicle you know that while it can be pretty easy at a reasonable speed, as you are slowing your vehicle down, balancing might get more and more difficult. A newbie may be in a similar situation if he wants to investigate the relationship between the CTR of a broad or phrase match keyword and its Quality Score. (It’s common knowledge that CTR, or Click-through-rate, is the most important factor considered by the AdWords system in the calculation of your Quality Score. Now we are supposing that the beginner wishes to monitor in his account how his improving CTR will lead to better Quality Scores.)

Paradoxically, he may experience a considerable increase in CTR associated with a worsening Quality Score or vica versa. The reason for it is that the AdWords system only gathers Quality Score data when a user’s query exactly matches the keyword in your account. E.g. in case you have the phrase match keyword “holidays” in your ad group it may happen that 10 users keying in the search query *summer holidays* see your ad and click on it. Say that 10 other users key in the exact search query *holidays* but none of them clicks on your sponsored link. In this scenario your phrase match keyword’s Click-through-rate is a fantastic 50% (10/20) while your exact match specific CTR is 0%. The consequence is that though you have a really high overall CTR, your Quality Score is pretty bad.

It may be frustrating and resulting in a distorted picture. It’s perhaps even more lamentable that you get the least information in this respect in the most sensitive first stage of your learning curve. For this reason I’d advise every newbie to list their broad or phrase match keywords as 2 match types — broad & exact or phrase & exact. That way at least they are likely to grasp more quickly what is happening and why to the relationship between the CTR of their broad or phrase match keyword and its Quality Score.

Note that if the performance numbers are really huge, the above scenario is practically out of question. In such cases when you are improving the CTR of the broad match or phrase match, you should be statistically improving the underlying or embedded exact match CTR as well. However, this post is meant for newbies with low performance numbers.

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Posted in Improving CTR, Quality Score

Tags: exact match keywords improving quality score

High Minimum Bids Without Competition?

December 30th, 2008

All my former keywords (bids of a few cents for each click, #1 position) were suddenly doomed “poor quality” and “not relevant”. The minimum bid was raised to almost 90 cents though there is no competition.

It’s a complaint we hear most often from newbies to the Google AdWords advertising program.

You should see right away that the amount you bid is not the amount you pay. Google AdWords uses a so-called second price auction model the effect of which is that while you may bid 90 cents, the paid amount will probably be much less. The bid in this case indicates your seriousness, how much you *could* be paying. Of course, you can’t know for sure before you accrue clicks. However, based on general experience we may state that the price will be really lower since you have few competitors. Try to get a good click-through-rate and the actual CPC will go on lowering down to $0.10 or so. It should be noted that some savvy advertisers are known to have bid around $100.00 and paid $0.01. Generally speaking, your short-term competitors may increase the average CPC temporarily their actual costs, however, will get them to leave finally.

What you should achieve is to have a nice CTR in the region of 5% or higher, keyword search only. The Google AdWords system is considered to assume a cca. 2.5% CTR until you build up a meaningful history specifying your own actual CTR. Specialists argue the system seems to have a price goal for the space which is in fact a lower limit. In case your landing pages, ads and keywords are fine you may receive a good initial minimum bid. AdWords, however, modifies the minimum bids in stages. The second stage is the very first visit by the AdWords bot exploring your landing page quality and various relevance factors. If the bot results are poor you may see a sudden increase in your minimum bids which newbies are often upset with. Now you need to discover what the problems might be, create a new ad group and cancel the former one.

If the above remedies don’t cure the situation you are punished by a poor account history in the course of the AdWords auction. Established online businesses often rehabilitate such keywords by moving them to a new Google AdWords account. Small ventures, of course, are often unable to follow suite and have more difficulties with solving the problem. All in all, we may state that if you have few competitors you will not have to pay high costs per click for extended periods of time. Precondition is, of course, that you need to build up a meaningful history with acceptable CTR values so as to lower the actual prices. It’s plenty of work to do for any new advertiser.

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Posted in Improving CTR, Quality Score

Tags: historical CTR improving quality score

Low Competition, Still High Bids?

December 19th, 2008

Many new Google AdWords advertisers complain that though they have managed to identify low competition keywords the AdWords algorithm assigns very low Quality Score to their keywords which leads to pretty high bid requirements for them. It defies logic – they argue since market forces are considered to ensure that low competition is coupled by low prices. In this article we discuss cases where the keywords are far from being popular among users.

1. “The system appears to be optimized for people selling goods of interest to millions of people, to huge marketers no matter what they are selling…” – this is an excerpt from a blog entry often cited by newbies. In some sense, it is true. It is much easier to advertise appropriate products using popular keywords searched for by hundreds of thousands of people especially if Google is *optimistic* about these keywords. However, Google is a profit oriented mass media and not a charity. Which mass medium would make life easier for someone with extremely uncommon keywords? Would TV commercials be helpful in marketing LaTex, a physics related “equation editor”? A new brand of shampoo is much more suitable for TV, isn’t it?

2. The problem is twofold.

- a. Historical CTR is a very important factor in your keyword’s Quality Score.

- b. Lack of previous history makes Google cautious.

(Google has good reasons for a./ and b./ and that boils down to *relevance*. However, this question is beyond the scope of this short article.)

Now, if your fellow advertisers used your keyword poorly in the past, Google is pessimistic about this keyword. If they did not use it in the past or just a few times, again: Google is pessimistic about this keyword. Google’s pessimism is, of course, reflected in your keyword’s low Quality Score which in turn means high bids for you.

3. Someone has recently asked me “Can only commonly-used search terms be used for keywords?” They are probably much easier to use due to 2.b. So what can advertisers affected by 2.b./ do?

First off, what would the equation editor’s seller do in regard to offline advertising? He may perhaps try to identify a periodical on physics which is read mostly by research team members and place an ad in it. Similarly, he can identify a few physics related websites allowed for placement targeting within AdWords and only run his ads there.

Others might be more interested in a general audience so they need to bid for keywords and the equation editor’s seller may also decide to bid for keywords in regard to his specific placements. The issue of 2.b is still to solve. Actually they need to alleviate Google’s pessimism about their keywords and as everything else, it costs money. If Google misses a good history, they have to create one themselves.

Though the bid is relatively high initially, they need to run the ad for some weeks. The turning point in regard to Google’s mood is believed to be around 2.5 CTR. If they can persuade Google through their results that they can produce a CTR above that value in the long run, they may expect the bid to fall drastically and remain low or even very low for the rest of the time. However, whether or not it’s worth the investment should be considered by themselves.

AdWords Help Experts