AdWords for traffic?

is it worth it for most sites to do this?

[entropicus]

I have a site that gets an anemic amount of traffic (3500 page impressions/day) -- would it be a good idea to use an AdWords campaign to boost traffic, and would this benefit the AdSense revenues necessarily?

Is there a good, entry-level primer like an "AdWords for Dummies" out there somewhere?

[John3478]

Adwords for traffic good for promotion but will not do much to increase adsense. user who goes to the site by ads, most of the time will not click the ads again to go to another site

[sailorjwd]

Mostly depends on your CTR and EPC. Don't try to bid competitively for competitive words. Try the less competitive phrases that often contain 3 or 4 words.
It works for me.

[CalArch90]

It works very well for me as well. I find Adwords to be probably the best ppc out there because of its flexibility and lower cost when compared to Overture or other high priced ppc's.

The key, as others have mentioned, is to not bid directly on highly competitive words, but rather try to find related keywords or phrases that will not cost as much. Well written ads are important, because Google rewards ads that perform well by placing them higher while not increasing cost.

You also don't want to bid too high, I find the 5th to 6th position works fine, and if the ad performs well, it may move up higher as I said before due to smart pricing without increasing cost.

It will take some dedicated work as well as trial and error to get it to work effectively - It took me many months - but once you find what works for you, it can bring in good quality traffic and increase your Adsense earnings.

[YesMom]

I disagree with the contention that those who arrive at a site via clicking on an adsense ad will not then leave the site via an ad. I think they are more likely to be your clickers! They are already pre-qualified to click.

I've been seeing a nice degree of success in increasing traffic via 5 cent bids on keywords with AdWords. I'm monitoring daily to be sure I am earning at least 10 cents (for me this is a benchmark for ROI).

It looks to me like the Adwords traffic might account for 20% increase. I noticed a considerable difference when I took it off for a few days. BIG drop in AdSense revenue/clicks.

What really sells me on it is that my site has great content and visitors are highly likely to bookmark my site to return. Thus I should see an ongoing and increasing benefit by carefully budgeting AdWords to bring more exposure to my site.

Just my 2 cents!

[entropicus]

thanks lots for the advice! I guess, as with anything else, the best thing to do is to start off small,and try to find the best way to measure growth/change.

Is there a good place to find a good into into the basics of AdWords?

[mike schmitz]

Really depends on a number of variables most largely impacting is the landing page that comes from AdWords. If it requires a scroll, and the advertisement isn't front and center, you are going to have a hard time making up your AdWords money back in that 1 visit. Not always a bad thing if you site is worth visiting again.

Also, I noticed that when I started promoting the site in my profile and made back only 20% of my Adwords daily budget in Adsense, my other site's CPM went up nicely.

Best advice - experiment.

M

[thegreatpretender]

I have been doing this for 5 months now and been doing great until the last three days. My epc used to be not lower than 30c, now it went down to .03 to .05 so it's no longer worth it (using adword for traffic)in my site. Probably because of smart pricing!

[thegreatpretender]

... and by the way the ctr is consistently around 20%. Ninety percent of my traffic comes from adwords.

[edited by: thegreatpretender at 2:30 am (utc) on Mar. 21, 2005]

[stuartmcdonald]

I'd echo the above, I started off using adwords to boost traffic and revenue and was paying amounts to get by in the top four in the hope of increasing adsense revenue and traffic.

After a while I backed off on adwords, reducing all bids to the 5c level and saw a corresponding drop in traffic and adsense revenue -- they both continue to increase, but at a slower rate. I'd say there is definetly a correlation between adsense and adwords, as as another poster said, the users have already qualified themselves as a clicker.

Would also agree on bidding on cryptic word combinations -- that has worked well for me -- just be wary of the content network.

[doingthistoolong]

I've had good results from AdWords - again - as others have said, I stick to low priced keywords. On Friday, I was actually overdelivered - $8.00 or about 160 click throughs!

I am doing some other advertising right now, so it is hard to compare, but at the worst it is breaking even, and I have found that much of my site traffic generates referrals, and that is what I am most interested in.