Adword links to Blank Page!

[Steveboy]

Hi, I'm a newbie to AdWords and want to ask your opinions about this.

I have been advised to set up some AdWords campaigns for 10 separate domains. The keywords being the domain names.

Each AdWords links to its corresponding url. At the end of a week, I look at what ad was clicked the most. Whatever has the highest clicks means that its the best domain name to go with.

So after one week of AdWords, out of 10 domain names, I now have one that I will use for my main site.

Does this sound like a good idea?

There's one problem, the 10 sites will be blank pages as we dont have a finished site as yet and definitely dont have 10 separate sites. What I want to know is would I risk that domain getting penalised or even blacklisted by Google?

Thanks in advance guys. Remember Im totally new to this so be gentle :)

[KFish]

Good way to go if you really have 10 different domains and the sites are live. Also it will be of no use if you use the keywords same as the domain names.

Testing is good but you need to know what you want to test and how. Remember that testing is costly too.

Here I see you don’t have an “right” aim. Later when you promote your products you will use many keywords and not just the domain name (until it’s a popular brand).

I hope you get the idea. Test what you really want to test.

Dude you don’t even have domains and pages for them. Google will not approve your ads anyway.

Hope that helps.

[Steveboy]

Thanks for the reply.

Ill explain a little more.

I have 10 domains, all hosted seperately but with blank pages only showing as no designs have been made yet.

All the 10 domains have similar names, mainly the keyword we want for the name of the site, but with the addition of extra words, similar to how someone may search for us, for example:

keyworddirect.com
keywordadvice.com
keywordinfo.com
keywordmag.com

Then in the adword I was going to use the words that are in the domain name, in the title and description. Example using Playstation.

Playstation Direct - Title
Playstation Direct - Description
playstationdirect.com - URL

Now, after a week, or a limited budget, we look at out of the 10 sites, and adverts, which got the most hits. If it was keywordinfo.com, then that becomes the main site. We stop the adverts and we do a 301 redirect from all the other domains. And start an adword campaign just for that 1 domain.

What you think?

BTW This idea comes from the book "Four Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferris. Has anyone read it?

p.s. Your help guys is very much appreciated, Im up to my eye balls and any help is greatly received

[KFish]

No I haven’t read this book. But try to do so.

I have clients for whom I do testing (for 3 years now) and sometimes some really interesting results come. ;-)

Now I your question is clearer.

Just a piece of advice. Since you are testing anyways why not test a few things more?

If you have your product/service ready, you can test what works and what doesn’t work – for example,

1.headline
2.sub-headline,
3.price,
4.content,
5.order now button / text
6.testimonial / no testimonials
7.short copy / long copy

etc.

This will give you an overall idea of what to do with your website rather than just know a domain name which gets a high CTR. Remember a high CTR not necessarily means high sales.

Also this will save you some money since you will do 2 tests in 1 test.

But if you can’t wait - go ahead and test.

[Steveboy]

mmm interesting. Are you saying o put things like "order now" on the adword description, or on the website rather then just a blank page?

One idea was to have the index pages of the 10 sites to have a form saying "register your interest" with the form askig for email addresses only. Would that work? Ive read that google will not like such websites!

[KFish]

Whatever I told you to test was for the website. But of course when you are testing why not open up and test “whatever possible”.

I repeat testing is costly. Test late, but make sure you test everything possible.

One idea was to have the index pages of the 10 sites to have a form saying "register your interest" with the form askig for email addresses only. Would that work? Ive read that google will not like such websites!

You mean Squeeze_pages.

Yes, Google does not like Squeeze_pages. (That applies to SEO. I am not sure if that applies to PPC as well.) But you can make the page informative and still get leads.

For more info on Squeeze_pages and how to get around them please read the following:

[en.wikipedia.org...]

(I hope moderators won’t delete it, I am not promoting my site.)

These are some of the important things we keep in mind before we start testing:

1.What we want to achieve and why? (In the long run)
2.What we want to test and why? Will this test stand good in long run?
3.Budget
4.Time frame
5.What we should consider a statically significant result?
6.Is it technically possible to test?
7.When to test? Weekdays or weekends?

Don’t be in a hurry. You might get wrong results. Get everything in place and then test.

[Steveboy]

thanks for your help. I hope others can give their opinions.

This site is full of info, im going to be overwhelmed with it all

[Steveboy]

Ive just read the link about squeeze pages. Interesting.

Okay so these are my problems then.

1) If I create a squeeze page, google may effect my PR
2) If a create a suitable accepted squeeze page within a site then google will like this. However, I have to do this for 10 sites, so if i duplicate it, google will see duplication and then also reduce my pr.

Im guessing that to do the basic 1 test of finding the best domain name, then I keep it simple and all adwords link to a blank page.

The test will only be one week long. What do you think?

[Steveboy]

Anyone done something similar?

[buckworks]

all adwords link to a blank page.

Google is nuts if they let you run ads that land on a blank page.

[Steveboy]

Are you saying it isnt a good idea then? I know nothing really about adwords so sorry if i sound thick, THe whole idea came from a book, so I am looking into this.

Would it not be a good idea? Even for a week to find the best domain name?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[buckworks]

It might be an okay idea if you had something real on the landing pages so you weren't wasting users' time.

[Steveboy]

but if im testing 10 urls, I will have to create 10 unique sites wont I, else Ill get punished by google for duplicates if i just use the same site,

Confused and a little afraid!

So Im getting the impression that this afterall isnt a good idea. Tim Ferris thought it obviously was. ;(

The site is going to be a legit company website offering a good service. The idea of running blank pages for 1 week was just to test what urls and keywords attracted the most people.

Any other ideas on how to do this...find the best domain name that is

[buckworks]

Ill get punished by google for duplicates

Block the pages from the regular Google spider until your testing is done.

[Steveboy]

mmmmmm, okay so Ive i got this correct.

I create 1 website.
Duplicate it on 10 different urls
Block the google spider on each website
Run a different adword ads for each url for 1 week.
after 1 week, remove all ads and 301 redirct all the 9 urls to one site!

Im excited! I think this sounds great.

One question, should i set up analytics for each of the 10 sites? Or would this bring the google spiders knocking?

p.s. Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it

[Steveboy]

Would google not like this option. I create a htaccess 301 redirect for each url that links to one site. But I still run adword campaigns with different urls. And the one thats clicked the most use that domain as the final one?

Can you see any probs with that?