Total Noob Adwords Question

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jooles

jooles

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Aug 4, 2007
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Let me see if I understand this correctly.

Let's say I'm bidding on the keyword: "wicked" and place a bid for $.10.
If I don't get any clicks, does that mean my bid is too low and I need to increase it? Is that how it works?

If so, would a strategy for bidding be to start at $.01 and each day increase your bid by a penny until you start getting clicks, at which point, fix your bid and get clicks at that price?

Am I understanding Adwords correctly?

Thanks.
 


If your bid is too low Google will let you know by raising your minimum bid price to an outrageous sum. The thing to watch is your clicks to impressions ratio. If the ratio is too small then Google takes it to mean that your ad is not relevant to your keyword and will thus raise your minimum bid to a higher price.

The basics to the whole AdWords thing is to have a landing page that is relevant to your ad which is relevant to your keyword.

As far as bidding strategies go, I like to start off with high bids so as to experiment and collect statistics on what works. After I figure out click-through rates and conversion rates I can then figure out what ROI I'll receive at what bids.

The key is to constantly experiment and adjust the whole mix.
 
painperdu said:
If your bid is too low Google will let you know by raising your minimum bid price to an outrageous sum. The thing to watch is your clicks to impressions ratio. If the ratio is too small then Google takes it to mean that your ad is not relevant to your keyword and will thus raise your minimum bid to a higher price.

The basics to the whole AdWords thing is to have a landing page that is relevant to your ad which is relevant to your keyword.

As far as bidding strategies go, I like to start off with high bids so as to experiment and collect statistics on what works. After I figure out click-through rates and conversion rates I can then figure out what ROI I'll receive at what bids.

The key is to constantly experiment and adjust the whole mix.
Click to expand...

That happened to me on one of my campaigns, something like 5.00 a click. Is there anyway to ever lower it again, or do you just need to delete the campaign and start over again?
 
jooles said:
Let me see if I understand this correctly.

Let's say I'm bidding on the keyword: "wicked" and place a bid for $.10.
If I don't get any clicks, does that mean my bid is too low and I need to increase it? Is that how it works?

If so, would a strategy for bidding be to start at $.01 and each day increase your bid by a penny until you start getting clicks, at which point, fix your bid and get clicks at that price?

Am I understanding Adwords correctly?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

it could also mean your keyword simply gets no traffic. instead of adding $0.01 a day you need to just start high and lower it as you go. or simply start with a decent amount and move up.

also it depends if you're using content network or search.
 
turbolapp said:
That happened to me on one of my campaigns, something like 5.00 a click. Is there anyway to ever lower it again, or do you just need to delete the campaign and start over again?
Click to expand...

It doesn't necessarily mean you should start all over again. Objectively look over your landing page, ad text, and keyword and see if either can be refined. Sometimes it's as simple as a too generic keyword.

If I have a landing page for 'old VW bugs', for example, I may be tempted to use 'old bugs' as a keyword, which would perhaps be too generic. I could refine this further by adding to the keyword by using 'old Volkswagon bugs' or 'old VW beetles'.

Just try to be as precise as you can be with the three parts of your campaign.
 
painperdu said:
It doesn't necessarily mean you should start all over again. Objectively look over your landing page, ad text, and keyword and see if either can be refined. Sometimes it's as simple as a too generic keyword.

If I have a landing page for 'old VW bugs', for example, I may be tempted to use 'old bugs' as a keyword, which would perhaps be too generic. I could refine this further by adding to the keyword by using 'old Volkswagon bugs' or 'old VW beetles'.

Just try to be as precise as you can be with the three parts of your campaign.
Click to expand...

I see what you mean, Pain but I really don't know how to apply it to my campaign. I think there may be a bit of a difference. My campaign and product are modeled after a famous person's occupation. But I think it's the name of this person that is throwing my campaign in to the crapper. For example let's say my person's name is "Sun" and she's a cook and my add is for a product that teaches you how to cook like Sun. I say this in the ad, I say it on my site. I have keywords like "cook like Sun" and "Sun the cook" but I'm thinking Google just see's the word "sun" and thinks I don't have a relevant campaign because I should be talking about skin cancer, or renewable energy or something. Any ideas?
 
Pain's right, you just have to keep going over those steps until you lower your minimum CPC. As a rule of thumb, if you've got a minimum over $1.00 you're not as relevant as you could be and over $5 you definately aren't (not that you have to bid a dollar to show up, but that Google says you have to bid a dollar to stay active).

That said, you're also right that the actual keyword plays a part in it too. For example, Google knows that the word "tree" has a terrible CTR and doesn't convert. So They up the min bid regardless of who you are or how much your site is about trees. In these cases, you have to prove to Google your campaign rules, bid high, get a rockstar CTR and work the bid down.
 
It probably doesn't hurt to rock the campaign as hard as you can too. Go nuts trying to be relevant. Build hyper specific ad groups (ie "sun the cook" and "sun the chef" are different groups). Write ads that target those words, and don't use Keyword Insertion. Add a negatives like crazy. Neg anything that has to do with skin cancer, suntan lotion, or planets. If you're running content, try and block a bunch of sites, whether your ads show up there or not. The more info you feed the machine, the better.
 
Ok well I just talked to google and this is what they had to say


'I understand that these keywords are important for your ad and website, but our system may recognize them as irrelevant keywords, because they do not really match the content you are advertising. If you believe that these keywords are necessary for your ad, you may enable them by increasing your maximum CPCs to the minimum required bids. However, I suggest that you optimize your keywords by adding more relevant content, so our system can re-evaluate your keywords and lower the minimum bids."

...and she went on to say how I should use more relevent keywords like "how to cook" instead of "cook like sun" (she was saying that when people do a search on google for "Sun the cook" they are looking for showtimes or dvd or whatever) I can understand that, but I also think there is a poplulation out there who idolize Sun the tv chef personality and want to cook like her damnit (I'm almost forgetting in my rant that "sun" is a made up character, heh) Some helpful advise she did offer was to put it all together in one phrase and see how google feels about them apples. I guess something along the lines of "how to cook cook like sun" which seems redudundent to me but I guess it's worth a try...
 
I'd try two things:

1) Make a page with dvds and show times and a whole damn profile of Sun just like Google says to, right there with your stuff featured too (maybe in an linked image so the robots don't worry about it).

2) Get tricky with your adwords account. Get it hyper-focused. Then bid the outrageous price and see if oyu actually get charged it. Sometimes, you can call their bluff and the real CPC is way lower, esp. if there isn't a lot of competition.
 
One of the biggest mistakes I see advertisers make is to put together keywords without considering how a searcher would naturally conduct a query. 'Cook like Sun' for example, just doesn't sound like something a searcher would enter into a search field.

If I just saw a show with chef Sun cooking something up here are a few search phrases I might use:

-chef sun's biography
-how did chef sun learn to cook
-chef sun wiki
-chef sun's recipes
-chef sun how to
-is chef sun married
-chef sun veal (chicken, beef, fish, vegetable . . .)
-sun cooking show on cnn
-chef sun italian food
-how to, how can i, how do i, how hard is it to, (cook like sun)
 
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