Ad Words Newbie - Questions

[RhawnJ]

I apologize in advance for being super clueless, but thats exactly what I am. That being said, hello all, name is Rhawn.

I run an affiliate site, a 1 page site that forwards traffic to a myspace promotion product. I started using adwords the day I put the site up. I used a set monthly budget and used google's optimization.

The problem I am having is my click through rate is a joke. .1% or less. And my add placement is very high, average of #5.

My first month was about 3x as profitable than this month is going to be. How, I have no idea.

Today I did the following: I switched from monthly optimized to maximum crc, which then set a daily budget on me. I upped my daily budget by a about 30%, still under $10 a day. I also turned position preference on. I set my popular key words from 1-4.

I feel my keywords are right on time, but I am not using any of the "" or advanced settings, per say. My ad description is right on. Both of these facts are my opinion, but I am a newbie.

To my point, or rather questions. What can I do? Am I just not spending enough money? Any clues, hints or pointing in the right direction is appreciated. Any reliable, free AdWords guides out there? Thanks in advance.

[Pengi]

Hi Welcome

You clearly have much to learn and have come to the right place. Look through some of the threads here to start to get a feel for some of the issues - from what you describe of your site there will be many pointers for you.

[RhawnJ]

I believe I made huge progress yesterday with my changes. The problem is I had content search on. Which is prob good for someone with a huge budget, but not for me. I turned content search off, and I my CTR has gone way up. I also turned on Position Pref as

I still would like to read up on the basic and advanced concepts of AdWords.

Any good, free links on AdWord info? Everything I found has been a paid for-ebook type offer.

[RhawnJ]

Somehow my sentence about Position Preference got cut off. Is this a good idea? I have it turned on from position 1-5.

My impressions are really lacking, my CTR rate is great, I just have under 50 impressions for the day as of noon.

[Pengi]

A one page Affiliate Site does not sound like the type of site that would perform well with Googles Quality Score - this means you will probably need to pay very much more per click to achieve a good position than a site that has good value content relevant to a user searching on the key word.

My experience is that I've yet to spend as much as 20% of my daily budget for any of my campaigns - but I don't pay anything like what you are paying.

I would strongly recommend some good quality content on your site - and possibly split it into more than one page.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Any good, free links on AdWord info? Everything I found has been a paid for-ebook type offer.

Although I understand that you may be looking for information particular to the use of AdWords as an affiliate advertiser, I'd still advise that you not forget about the free resources on the AdWords site itself. In my opinion, these are often under-utilized by newer advertisers.

Honestly, I don't much like reading Help content on various sites myself, so I understand why this is so. On the other hand, when it is your money at stake, it really pays to know what you're working with. ;)

A few that come immediately to mind:

The searchable AdWords Help Center:
[adwords.google.com...]

Demos and Guides:
[adwords.google.com...]

AdWords Learning Center:
[google.com...]

I wish you the best of success, RhawnJ. And welcome to WebmasterWorld!

AWA

[RhawnJ]

Thanks for all the help all, I believe I am headed in the right direction.

Pengi, you make a great point. I have plans for the site which include more information, keyword related topics, multiple pages. And maybe even a blog pointing to the site. Would sure be nice to get indexed the real way, but I am no where near that skill.

Thanks again.

[Pengi]

Good content isn't just about getting "indexed the real way", it's essential if you want to avoid getting hit with by the dreaded Quality Score alogorithm.

You also want tomake sure you have a privacy policy and contact page.

[magicdan]

Just a quick point about a few options you have used there. You may have misunderstood how the position preference tool works, it will prevent your ad from showing if the performance of the advert falls below position 5. Therefore your ad may not be showing very often at all particularly with that low ctr.
The content network CTR also shouldnt be pulling down the search performance side's score despite looking as though it is on the interface. The content network is a different beast so its worth seperating out into a new campaign anyway imo.

Good luck

[RhawnJ]

Thanks for all the advice, with messing around with my options I have improved the quality of my clicks by quite a bit. I'm getting very specific traffic it seems, and my click through rate from my site to my affiliate merchant has gone way up equaling more sales.

I am still working on improving my site for a good quality score.

One question, once I make the changes to my site is there a way to get Google to reassess my quality score?