One in the Ads and One tied to the many keywords.
Does One of these take preference over the other?
Can't find a definite answer on Google.
Thanks Much!
Say my ad url pointed to a page for widgets. But one of my keywords was blue widgets, and I have a page specially for blue widgets - I might want to send traffic for THAT keyword to the blue widget page, but all the rest of the traffic to the overall widget page.
Since I have tight ad groups with very focused keywords having duplicate urls for ads and keywords won't hurt or effect anything. Correct?
As a newbie, I've been operating under the assumption that the keywords in ads are only for appearance, and that they don't need to actually exist. For example, I've been using BlueWidget.company.com in an ad, as I seem to get better click-through with that than www.company.com/BlueWidget. Should I be making that the ad URLs actually exist?
I am a bit confused by your post, slotown, since you mention keywords in the first sentence, but URLs in the second and third. I am a little slow today, though.
However, if you are asking if it is OK to use a "fake" URL as your 'display URL', then the answer is 'No, that is not OK' - since it creates a very poor user experience.
Essentially a user must be taken to the site that you tell them they'll be taken to, in your display URL. If they are instead taken to a different site, then they may not particulary trust you as business with which to do business, or AdWords as a program whose ads are trustworthy enough to click-on in the future.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld, by the way. ;)
AWA
I am indeed asking about using a "fake" URL, in the sense that a particular page may not exist. With the display URL BlueWidget.company.com, the domain company.com certainly is part of the actual destination URL. As well as being deceitful, using anything other than the real domain name would waste a branding opportunity. And I assume a domain name difference between the display and destination URLS would be caught by Google's ad approval process.
But the specific URL might not exist. Using www.company.com/{KeyWord:BlueWidgets} as the display URL is a supported construct. In this case, even if I wanted to, there seems to no way to insure that the actual page exists for phrase URL matches.
I'm not sure if what I'm describing is in violation of the intent you describe. User's are certainly taken to the site described in the ad - same domain/company, same product focus. The display URL is different than the destination URL; but then, I would think that this is almost always the case.
I often use a display url such as
widgets.com/Keyword
where Keyword isn't necessarily an actual existing subdirectory.
so if i did Clowns.com/Makeup as a display URL, I'd put up a redirect for it so it resolves to the actual, full URL.
i do this sparingly - i think automating it to spread to too many vanity URLs would hurt your credibility, plus slow down your site (with a bloated htaccess or other redirect mechanism to parse for every visitor). i suppose i could put up a redirect file to avoid the bloat impact, but like i said, i have other reasons for doing this sparingly anyhow, so i don't granulate it out of my htaccess.
