for google adwords, some people think that better creative leads to a better CTR, which leads to a lower CPC for the same position or higher.
would you agree?
There's no gettin' round it anymore - ya pretty much have to be able to rite gud to succeed with AdWords.
...ya pretty much have to be able to rite gud to succeed with AdWords.
Agreed! Have you Netmeg, or any others, worked with good SEM copywriters?
I've been more than a little surprised at the lack of resources posting for work in this very niche, but lucrative space... Sure, most SEMs have gotten proficient with practice, and some agencies can write copy fine... but, good, independent consultants in this space would sure be helpful!
Adwords doesn't know what the hell they want.
Take a site full of original content that is in the top 5 of all three search engines that matter and it gets slapped, yet take a fresh minty domain, throw up some template junk and use the same ads, words from slapped domain and it gets great scores with low bids until the next slap.
What did they accomplish. NOTHING....
The good site still gets great traffic from the free search, and now they have one more crappy domain on the web just to please their QS.
If that's how you have to play the adwords game, so be it, but it sure does not make a bit of sense.
Guess that's what happens when you get to many PHDs together in the same room.
Agreed! Have you Netmeg, or any others, worked with good SEM copywriters?
Umm, no, not to toot my own horn, but I actually consider myself to be a reasonably good SEM copywriter. Although I'm sure there are better to be found.
Arizonadude - when all else fails, you might want to think about getting a fresh pair of eyeballs looking at your site or your campaigns and ads - it might help. Can't hurt.
I have always wondered if good graphics, layout, font selection, etc
helps or is that only effective with those that are doing the searching?
The end user so to speak?...KF
Any opinions on the amount of lift possible there?
"Buy Widgets Online" CTR 3.55%
"This Site Installs Adware" CTR 6.33%
OK, so assuming better copy eventually leads to a lower CPC for the same (or higher) positions, how about referencing the searcher's area? And I mean much more specifically than by MSA... since Google allows you to target by zip, theoretically you could target your copy by the name of that zip. Ex: instead of "Find a Los Angeles Widget", you could use "Find a Hollywood Widget" or "Find a Santa Monica Widget".
I don't do it by zip, but I've had a lot of success with my event site with this and DKI. I put a list of 931 cities from my state, plus the type of event:
{KeyWord:Events in MyState} as the first line of text.
Then the keywords are:
City1 Event
City2 Event
City3 Event
Now, I do not get a great quality score on all 931 cities (I don't actually have events for all cities and villages, although I usually have something that's *near* something else) I don't want to pay any more than $.05 for any click in the entire ad group, so out of 931 keywords in the group, at any given point, I have maybe a hundred that are inactive for Search. Most of them are inactive because they have QS of OK and minimums of ten to twenty cents, and maybe ten have POOR QS for some reason (usually cities with three word names) with a minimum of .40. But the hundred at OK are so close to the edge on QS that some of them seem to drift in and out between OK and Great, and so I just leave them there. The vast majority of them are active at .03, .04 and .05 bids. This has worked for me for three years now on this particular site, and it didn't get slapped this week, so I have to think Google's ok with it for the moment.
I'm not entirely convinced that high CTR is all that beneficial to an ad's quality rating (and thus CPC). If there is a connection, it doesn't seem to be a strong one. As arizonadude points out, there are plenty of incidents that seem to show a bit of a disconnect, anyway.
