It's been a while since I came here and at least 3 years since the last time I tried (and failed) Adwords.
This time i'm determine not to fail so I learn a lot about Adwords lately by reading a few ebooks, learning tips on Adwords, seminar from Perry Marshall etc.
So here's what I found so far and you guys can tell me if i'm missing something here since I don't want to fail again and make it right this time.
- Go to overture keyword tool or wordtracker to find the best keywords
- Never use 1 word generic terms (ex: insurance if you are in this field).
- Use plurals (ex: Life Insurance quote, Life Insurance quotes, etc...)
- Use sub categories and more defined keywords instead (ex: Car Insurance, Life Insurance, etc...)
- Make an Ad Group for each one of those sub categories, each one with it's own set of keywords.
- Find all the keywords under those sub caterories (ex: Car Insurance quotes, car insurance deals, etc..)
- Never use broad match like car insurance (with no quotes and brackets) and use phrase match with quotes (ex: "car insurance") and exact match with brackets like (ex: [car insurance] ) to get a higher CTR.
- Capitalize The First Letters On Each Adwords Ad (even in the 2 description lines and URL).
- Use the sub category names in your Ad Title (ex: Get Car Insurance Quotes Here) since the category names will make the keyword BOLD in Google's search results and attract more attention to your ads and therefore boosting your CTR.
- use the "Peel & Stick" Method Which means to look at all the keywords under each Ad Group (Ex: Car Insurance) and Peel out those keyords who have a high CTR (Ex: Car Insurance Quotes) and Stick them into their own Ad Group and find more keywords for this new Ad Group (Ex: Free Car Insurance Quotes, Car Insurance Best Quotes, etc..).
- Create a landing page for each Ad Groups with the Ad Group name in the Title of the page (To make Adwords Quality Score system happy) and enter it in the URL (ex: Insurance.com/FreeCarInsuranceQuotes).
- Start with $5/day per campaign and 10 cents for Max CPC.
Hummm, that's it I guess.
So...Am I missing something here or will I Crash & Burn again?
Thanks a lot in advance for your comments and advices.
Rick
[edited by: Mtlinfo at 8:17 pm (utc) on Feb. 17, 2007]
That should get you good traffic in a lot of niches (but not all of them with bids and budgets that low).
The question is: what do you do with the traffic when you've got it?
What do you suggest in terms of CPC value to start with?
I'm in the work at home market (Yeah, I know, i'm # 2,123,456 in this over saturated category).
Would you recommend to start with 10 cents a click to see if I get too much traffic at first or go with a bang with 1-$2 per click and hope that my CTR does the work to lower it after?
It's kinda funny because you talked about the only question I think I've got left before launching my site.
I don't have a clue if I should start with $5 per day or $100 per day and how much to use in max CPC so that Google can at least rotate my ads enough time to get some clicks.
On the other hand, I don't want to wake up with my CC charged $1,000 of clicks here.
You get the idea?
RIck
In terms of AdWords campaigns, whenever in doubt, I start bidding low and increase my bids as necessary once I start to get some data. Bidding too high can cost you a lot of money before you can correct it.
As you say, the work from home niche is pretty crowded, so I wouldn't expect your suggested bid to be too high, it may well not be high enough to get any impressions.
How much you can afford to bid will depend on what your site does and how well it does it. If you're providing information and selling advertising space, there will, at best, be a very narrow margin in this niche, where you can make any money. On the other hand, if you are selling genuine, legitimate opportunities for people to work from home, your return will, of course, depend on the take up rate, and how much you will make per "new recruit". Only you can know this.
It's not very difficult to monitor and edit your bids. Start low, keep an eye on what's happening and adjust as you need to. Note that the performance tends to improve over time (especially once content kicks in) and there are natural variations over a weekly cycle.
[edited by: Pengi at 9:52 am (utc) on Feb. 18, 2007]
Good point, start bidding low and increase them later. Btw, when you say low do you mean 5 cents or 25?
Also, regarding the number of ads inside each ad groups and the number of keywords for each ads. What would you recommend on those?
Would you write 2 or 4 (or more) different ads in rotation?
Regarding keywords, I heard to start with only 10 keywords per ad groups and add some more later, would you agree on this too or would you paste all your 2,000 keywords at once for example?
Rick
The numbers of keywords will depend upon your pages.
Set up one AdGroup for each target landing page.
See what keywords the AdWords tools suggest and select all those keywords that are relevant for the landing page (and not more specific to a separate adgroup/landing page).
If this gives you more than about 70 or 80 keywords for a single AdGroup, then consider creating separate pages and groups to cover sub-topics.
I have an average of 40 keywords per AdGroup - I'd prefer this to be lower, but I need to find the time to creat more pages.
As for the Ad variations, I'm not good on this, but I'm advised that you should set up a minimum of 3 per AdGroup and rotate them to see which performs the best. Personally most of my AdGroups just have the one.
Good Luck
[edited by: Pengi at 12:05 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2007]
See what keywords the AdWords tools suggest and select all those keywords that are relevant for the landing page (and not more specific to a separate adgroup/landing page).
It's just that I heard that in order to have a good CTR, the ad (ex: Free Car Insurance Quotes) MUST HAVE the name of the keywords used in the search (ex: Car Insurance) otherwise there will be less bolded text and lower CTR.
So now you tell me to use keywords that could be targeting many different Ad Groups. For example maybe using more generic keywords like "Free Insurance Quotes" under both "Car Insurance" and "Life Insurance" Ad Groups?
Is this what you are talking about here? If not then please give us a simple example using this insurance example so that I and others here can understand better.
Rick
