Lots of Clicks. but NO conversions

[skuba]

We started with Google ADwords and we are getting a lot of clicks on the ads. But so far, 4 days and 500 clicks, but ZERO sales.
I was wondering about some reasons:
- Let's say we are targeting certain products that are placed in specific categories of our site. Should we link the ad to the category page or to the home page? So far, we are just linking to the home page.

- Is it bad to be ranked #1 on the ads, cause you get a lot of unqualified traffic?

- Any ideas on how to get more qualified traffic and conversions? I believe we did a good job with keywords to avoid unqualified traffic.

Thanks for helping.

[roitracker]

Should we link the ad to the category page or to the home page?

Link to the specific page that corresponds to the keyword/product.

Is it bad to be ranked #1 on the ads, cause you get a lot of unqualified traffic

Not necessarily. But if you end up getting unqualified traffic, then probably.

Any ideas on how to get more qualified traffic and conversions?

Everything you need to improve your campaigns is in this forum.

[skuba]

I just noticed that the campaign was set to display also in content sites. So I unchecked that option and left only on search sites. I believe that content sites bring unqualified traffic.?

[ByronM]

I just noticed that the campaign was set to display also in content sites. So I unchecked that option and left only on search sites. I believe that content sites bring unqualified traffic.?

I don't think that is correct at all. Content sites are usually more ontopic than some of the search engine result pages.

Your issue is your just bringing people to the home page when they expected to find what they were looking for by clicking on the ad.

Relevency is your friend. Bring people to *EXACTLY* what they clicked on.

1. Make sure your sales policy, return policy and SSL/Security stuff is in plane site.
2. Make sure your site is easy to navigate, easy to shop from and pleasing to view.
3. Make sure your site is professional and curteous. Offer a contact #, live support or soemthing to keep people coming back or feeling secure about the transaction.

Most importantly make sure your ads are on topic. If you have broad search enabled and sell "shoes" your going to get a bazillian clicks before you get a single purchase - use exact match and come up with precisely every keyword you can think of that would draw people to what you are selling

[my widget]
[order widgets online]
[widget shopping]
[affordable widgets]
[cheap widgets]
[buy widgets]
[where to buy whidgets]
[how to buy widgets]

and so on and so forth.

Don't discredit the content sites. It sounds like you need to define/refine your campaign and stop waisting your cash until you make a precisely managed campaign.

[skuba]

Thanks for the advice.
Our site is already very well strutured and we get hundreds of sales a day. We are only new with Google AdWords.
I only turned broad search on, because I wanted them to show results for plurar/singular of my keywords.
So, you think I should turn it off, and then have my keywords with all combinations of plural and singular?
Do I need to write for instance shoes and shoe?
Or even with broad search turned off, it would show results for search shoes, if I just used keyword shoe?

Thanks

[MaxedOut]

You won't get great results if you just link to your homepage. Definitely link to the product page or create a landing page that will reel the customer in.

[eWhisper]

If you sell a large variety of products, it can be much less time consuming and almost as effective to use broadmatch IF you make good use of negative keywords.

I'm a fan of broadmatch and will even use it for a several other reasons as well.

There comes a point where adding 300 negative keywords can make an account easier to manage and optimize over adding 10k exact searches and related ads. Especially when you factor in the hours spent optimizing exact matches compared to broad match and what you make per hour.

If you think broadmatch is the way togo, I'd recomend starting with phrase match and checking the logs and sandbox to start making an extensive negative KW list before jumping back into broadmatch options.

[ByronM]

True, you can use negative keywords to fish out what you dont want - a good way to build a list of keywords, but why not just save cash and use tools that tell you how many clicks a phrase gets so your not waisting cash to begin with :)

[skuba]

Tools that say how many CLICKS?
Like which?

[internetguy]

You can try Overture's free tool at inventory.overture.com

It will give you the number of searches for a particular keyword/phrase in the last month.

[skuba]

yes, I know about keyword search tools, but not CLICKS like mentioned above.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

The 'Traffic Estimator' within your AdWords account will give you an estimate of clicks that you might receive for a keyword, per day.

You can find the Traffic Estimator by going to any Ad Group and clicking the 'Add Keywords' link above the stats.

I'd take the information it provides about Clicks/Day with a grain of salt, however. The number of clicks that you will actually get is highly dependent on how well targeted your ads are to your keywords - and the estimator has no way of knowing this.

AWA

[ByronM]

You can use the estimation tools from Overture for free - that shows how many clicks keywords got over the previous month and that translates pretty good to google.

There are also several businesses that do this for cheaper then "Experimenting on your own".

[richardsi]

It is important to test the content targeting...

For some industries it does not perform and can deliver unqualified traffic. Other industries do very well with content targeting.

[OddDog]

link to the relevant product page.

simple.

come back adn tell us how the change went for you.

[cline]

Pardon the stupid question, but do any other visitors convert?

Your problem may have nothing to do with Adwords and everything to do with your site and your offer.

[skuba]

Sure they do. We're in business for a long time and sell hundreds of products every day.
We advertise on magazine and distribute catalogues.
Actually since I posted this message we had some sales.
And profits are already higher than google expenditure. ;-)
But just a bit higher so far.

[cline]

Is your product an impulse item or a considered purchase? If it is a considered purchase it can easily and normally take days or weeks between the click and the purchase.

I've started PPC campaigns for clients and watched the sales numbers flat-line for days in the face of serious ad spending and huge traffic increases. Then, a week or two later, the sales needle starts moving nicely up.

We may be on internet time, but buyers still purchase things in real time.

[andye]

These increase conversion for us (but they decrease CTR):

State price in ad text

-free (etc)

Also suggest you take into account the delay cline mentions.

Best wishes, Andy.

PS Don't bid too high to start with. Tune your ads, then work up.

[ajwebmaster]

1.
Make sure you put your tracking code in correctly. This may result in you seeing no conversions. (Keep in mind not all traffic will be tracked due to javascript off/on, cookies off/on, proxy servers etc.)

2.
You should definitely watch your traffic closely and try to determine your non-Adwords conversion rate then compare it to your Adwords traffic conversion.

3.
I too am concerned about the quality of traffic from "Content sites". As the owners(publishers) of the content sites are making their daily updates or simply checking out their web sites they *could* be motivated to click your link a few times a hour, day or whatever to increase their monthly checks from Google. Obviously, they would have to keep the volume low or they would easily be detected and removed from the program.

The problem here is that if your links are showing on several hundred content sites, then 1 click per day by each publisher would cost you mucho $$ and you would see absolutely no sales and the Google AI would not "see" anything wrong with this scenario.

CJ.com and most other affiliate programs are pay for performance, not pay for traffic models. My guess is that eventually Adwords content providers will move this way and Google should only pay publishers for conversions, not clicks. Google has the tools already in place to move to this model so we shall see. Meanwhile be very diligent to measure the quality of your content site traffic.

4.
Testing is the only real way to know. Run your campaigns for a week with content search on (Sun-Sat) then a week with content search off(Sun-Sat)and compare the weekly results. The Google reporting tools are just great so you can easily measure the trends,hits, conversions and you should quickly see what's working.

Good luck,
AJWebmaster

[colinirwin]

I'd like to add a caveat to the idea that deeplinking is the best way to get sales conversions.

Imagine you are walk into a room and a guy offers you a cd player for $50. The price looks right, but who's this guy? He isn't wearing a uniform and he's selling the cd players out of a suitcase.. ..and he's insisting on cash payment.. ..I'm not so sure.

Now imagine you walk into the room and there's a nicely fitted showroom with uniformed staff. There's professional shop signage, they have 'official dealer' certificates on the wall, they take credit cards, they have a no quibbles returns policy and the cd player costs $50.

Which one would you buy from?

You must ensure your deep linked page communicates key information about your product and the quality of your company for the best conversion rates to be achieved.

Col