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I'm in the <widget> industry in California so the bids are very cutthroat as you can imagine. I just started overture 2 weeks ago and hadn't really changed any bids till 3 days ago.
I really sat down for a few hours and was honest with myself on bids. I decided to cap my budget to ~$7-$10 per day and focused on specific California areas/cities. The only bid that could potentially lock my account for the day (according to my service rep) is one vital key term I decided to cross my fingers for in hopes for a golden lead off that one hit. Other than that, some of the more valued words would clean my daily budget from 4 to 100 clicks.
As a result of tightening the market area noose, bids on certain phrases were much lower seeing how they weren't on the national scale. Out of 77 words I have 26 in the top 5 and about 15 of those in the top 3. On most of the popular, higher price terms like "Sacramento <Used Widgets>" I wanted to place myself in the right margin on the second page of a yahoo search. I have done so with about 10 words ranking between 8-12 with reasonable bids.
Now when I look at my statics I see nothing. Is this normal? I think I have one click showing on my record and it’s when I wanted to see if the links were working. It was on a insignificant word too. Did I forget to activate something? I know my searches are working because I tried everyone without clicking them.
Personally, when I look for specific items I always hit the CPC ads and know people that do the same. Given the <widget> market boom, I find it hard to believe that someone in the United States isn't curious about "<widgets repair in souther california>" -or- "<red widgets> bay area" etc. Not the most traditional phrases to search for but certainly probable.
Any advice is greatly appreciated,
-Eric
[edited by: werty at 7:49 pm (utc) on Mar. 12, 2005]
[edit reason] Removed search query specifics [/edit]
the yahoo local service will provide good leads BUT you sacrifice alot of traffic using it.. the google system seems to work better for localized searches although my conversion rate with google is far less than what i get with overture..
-qwik
What's a respectable amount of impressions? Basically someone in a smaller, regionally focused area like myself?
Here's my 7 day impression trend:
[img.photobucket.com...]
Again, thank you for your time.
also, make sure you arent including location when using the local service.. just use (red widgets)..
-qwik
I know all my listings are in the 'Precision Match - Manage categories' directtraffic center toolbox.
How do I get the local service activated? Is that an entirely different beast that will require more money? ;)
Does this mean that they actually had my ad within their screen?
Or does it mean that they had the opportunity to see my ad given the search criteria. Regardless if they never actually saw my ad seeing how I was ranked low on that particular word and my ad was on page 7.
Regardless, how can you attract consumers to hit your ad if it's visible on their screen?
Are promotional offers with "FREE" this and that a good starting point within the body of the ad?
