Concern about Traffic Increase

Google Adwords and Traffic Increase

[Cyndee]

My concern and I am looking for some insight on the following:

For the past couple of years, my budget for Adwords was $1 a day as I was skeptical about CPC marketing. It was working OK in that I was definitely making enough profit to justify continuing CPC marketing. I never really could figure out if it was truly coming from my ads or just organic placement in the search engines.

A couple of weeks a go, I decided to spend a little more ($1.50 per day) for CPC marketing and every penny (and then some) gets spent every day. There has been no change in the minimum CPC from my $1.00 budget to my new $1.50 budget. My concern is that there has been NO increase in traffic to my site. In fact, there has been a decrease.

Can anyone explain?

[Planet13]

Hi there, Cyndee and welcome to the webmaster world forums.

I never really could figure out if it was truly coming from my ads or just organic placement in the search engines.

You absolutely MUST set up an analytics program on your site and figure out WHERE your traffic is coming from. Google analytics is the most common and it is FREE.

If you don't know where your traffic is coming from, then you are just guessing blindly.

I hope this helps.

(Also, if you are doing adwords, there should be conversion tracking reports in there IF you have the adwords code set up correctly on your site. If you are hosted on a site that DOESN'T allow you to install analytics / adwords tracking, then move to a different host.)

[Chrispcritters]

How does your site generate revenue? Do you have a product that you sell?

[Cyndee]

Yes, I sell products. I'm not ranked in Google, but on the first page of Yahoo and Bing. I have the code on my checkout page for conversion tracking, but in the past three years, I have had no sale according to Google adWords. That is why I am not sure if the tracking is actually working. Is there a way I physically check that it works?

[Planet13]

Is there a way I physically check that it works?

Well, you could do a search on google that will display one of your ads, then click that add to go to your site. Then place an order and see if it shows up in your adwords account. (I think it takes about a day to show up - not 100% sure.)

Do you also have a google ANALYTICS tracking code on your site? If not, then you should. Or at the very least, you could use statcounter.com but you should be tracking your traffic.

Hope this helps.

[LucidSW]

I'll echo about the tracking. You need to know if your campaign is profitable.

Next, we have to get our terms straight. When you say a decrease in traffic, do you mean CTR or the actual number of clicks? I'm guessing the latter. You also say no increase in minimum CPC which to me is the minimum being asked, not the actual CPC you are paying, but that may be what you are talking about.

So here's what I think is happening based on my assumptions. Your budget is likely too low. You are likely not showing ads for every search on your keywords. This is a report for that (impression share) and it would probably show less than a 10% share. This means you are getting shown only when competitors are not active for whatever reason, either by design or their budget exhausted.

By increasing your budget, but really only a modest amount (although it is 50% higher), it doesn't really solve your share problem. But it may have shifted your ad serving to other times when conditions are even less favorable. For example, your ads are showing later in the day when the tendency may be that people click less on ads. Another possibility is a larger share but at a time when you'd be paying more thus actually ads being served less often.

My question is, has the positioning improved? You say the CPC you pay is the same. Has the CTR increased? Given the low budget and low number of impressions and clicks (presumably, unless your bid is really low), this may be inconclusive. What does your stats show week by week on CTR, CPC and positioning? It also assumes you have not made changes to keywords and ads.