Improving Traffic Google PPC

creamybrother

creamybrother

New member
Feb 7, 2010
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So I'm still in the process of learning and testing. I figured I'd never learn anything unless I actually spent a couple of bucks getting real data. At least I thought so. I am currently marketing a hair loss product.

Now, I started out by getting those long-ass keywords, three to four words, phrase match. As I was collecting my keywords I noticed that the keywords including "natural" got a lot of traffic. So I created two different adgroups, one with "natural" ads, i.e "Natural Hair Loss Remedy" with the keywords including "natural" in there, in total about 100. The second adgroup contained the rest of the keywords, about 500. I created a total of 12 ads, 3 "natural" ads and 3 "regular" ads, with two different offer, one clickbank and one from my affiliate network, direct linking the offers. I started the campaign and have had it active for nearly 36 hours now. The most expensive keyword I added, according to the Google traffic estimator, was about $0.71 with the majority of the keywords costing around $0.10 for a #1 spot.

The results were far from great. About 700 impressions, 5 clicks, 0 conversions. The best ad had a 2% CTR. But the worst part was, all of my ads were getting an average position of 5-6 with almost 1/4 of the keywords not even hitting the first page even after I raised my CPC max. bid to $1.40. The keywords were costing far more than what I estimated.

My questions are: is the hair loss segment way too saturated? Obviously I need to improve my ad-writing skills seeing I got such a low CTR but what role does the positioning of the ads play here? Obviously I would get a higher CTR if my ads were positioned better but how much a difference are we talking about? And maybe the most important question: how can I increase traffic? Gather even more long-tail keywords or am I forced to raise my bid? Should I delete keywords with a low QS in order to improve the overall QS of my ads?

Any input much appreciated, customary boobs:
Longhairlongboobs.jpg
 


Its not recommended to have 500 keywords in one ad group, you have to put your keywords in different themes and than create one adgroup for each theme and than for each adgroup create 2 targeted ads.

You can include lets say 5 keywords up to lets say 50 keywords or even more in your themes as long as they are relevant within the theme.

Also make sure you are tracking everything you do, because when you get more data, you are going to want to know which keywords are most profitable.

I would suggest you bail on the expensive keywords for now or get your CTR & QS higher so you can get them cheaper.

Good luck and hope you make few sales in the next 36 hrs.
 
It's now been 24 hours since I sorted my ads in order of their relevance, making different ads and keywords in every group and guess what? My CTR has gone up almost 4 times! It's still not a lot of traffic but I'm going to try adding some more keywords today. Still no sale though :/ Anyway, thanks a lot for the help OpenMind, my QS is still pretty low on many keywords even though they seem very related to both my content and landing page. Should I get rid of the low QS keywords even though they get some traffic to improve my overall QS?
 
answermarketing said:
WTF.......!!! Why have you pasted an image of boobs? Is this allowed in Wickedfire???? Guys answer please.
Click to expand...

Are you gay? What would you prefer?

If you're female, post some sexy wedges, gladiators, strappies, whatever works for you. See how that goes...
 
Since the last time we parted there's been some action. I moved from adwords to adcenter, went through another round of sorting of keywords, BOOM impressions went up even more. However CTR is bad to horrible. The only conclusion I can draw is that my ad copy sucks. So after about 5 changes CTR is still low with one of my adgroups hitting a solid 0,04 CTR even though the avg. pos. is 2!

Now if I try to analyze why this is I can't really come up with a good answer other than that I've got no methodology whatsoever. I feel like all I do is throwing random pieces of shit at the wall seeing what sticks. I'm getting relatively cheap traffic, relatively good placements(~2, ~3) but after about 30 clicks still no sale. And maybe the lack of method and more acts of random is the reason to why this isn't working.

As of now I do the following:
1. Lookup about 200-300 keywords in the google keyword tool.
2. Sort these in excel after type of word, i.e all keywords including the words "stop hair loss" in one adgroup and all keywords including "prevent hair loss" in one.
3. Writing ad copies to the ad groups including the keywords to make them as relevant as possible.
4. Launch the campaign, search only.
5. Get's a shitty CTR, good impressions, tries to change the ads without success.

I actually regard my ads kinda clever, especially if you compare to my competition: "int'l awards, 85% success -NY Time hair follicle regenerate testimony"(no offense). Once again I've got troubles finding what to make of my data. What should I be looking for? Am I sorting my keywords wrong? Should I be sorting them according to buyer mood? I checked most of my keywords up in the adcenter tool and a great majority of them are "non-commercial" i.e people are mostly searching for information, not bying a hair loss product. Fuck, I'm gonna make this work.
 
creamybrother how is things been
working out for you lately.

Anyway should aim to get a couple of
hundred clicks before making a decision
on your campaign.

That is why when you start if you have
a limited amount of keywords for example
50 keywords and you get about 200 or
300 clicks or if you can afford it, up to
500 for each campaign than you will have
some good data to play with.

Also get red of the keywords that are
non-commercial if possible and see how
you go.
 
OpenMind said:
creamybrother how is things been
working out for you lately.

Anyway should aim to get a couple of
hundred clicks before making a decision
on your campaign.

That is why when you start if you have
a limited amount of keywords for example
50 keywords and you get about 200 or
300 clicks or if you can afford it, up to
500 for each campaign than you will have
some good data to play with.

Also get red of the keywords that are
non-commercial if possible and see how
you go.
Click to expand...

Hey openmind, thanks for your reply. I've been working hard on improving my CTR and have been doing a lot of keyword-tracking. Good news: I'm seeing a huge improvement, both traffic-wise and CTR-wise. So far only 1 lead though but still enough to pay for my expenses so far. The most important thing is I'm progressing and I don't expect myself to make a profit yet. I've been pushing some freebies and zip-submits on the side to get the hang of keyword-tracking and the importance of it.

juntao65 said:
So you had both content and search in the same campaign? You were wondering why your CTR was so bad?
Click to expand...

No, what I meant with search only was just that, that I was using search _only_ and had content bidding of. As I still have. Sorry if I wasn't precise enough.
 
Did you get rid of your non-commercial keywords and, if so, did that make a difference in your CTR?
 
jody_w said:
Did you get rid of your non-commercial keywords and, if so, did that make a difference in your CTR?
Click to expand...

Actually, my non-commercial keywords are providing the biggest source of traffic so I'm still using them, I've rather been focusing on split-testing actual ad copy and I'm close to finding a copy that I'm happy with CTR-wise. My plan is to get rid of keywords once I can see what converts and what does not. As of now, I'm simply generating too few leads to be able to draw any real conclusions as 2 leads aren't really statistically relevant.

I'm also having a problem with a second campaign of mine. I'm pushing a simple zip-submit offer($250 free grocery gift card) and after a couple of days I've been able to make it profitable. Now to the weird part: my first copy gets a great CTR but not enough leads. Avg. CPC $0.14, EPC $0.08. My second ad gets a 0.1% CTR, $0.06 Avg. CPC and a EPC of $0.08. WOHO $0.02 PROFIT PER CLICK FUCK YEAH! I'm selling the easiest product on earth and my best campaign has a mere 6% conversion rate. Is this all due to my ad copy? I was expecting a <50% conv. rate for this kind of offer?
 
Wow 6% conversion rate is pretty
good depending on what you are
promoting.

I have never heard of 50% conversion,
I am not sure if its even possible.

Maybe if you have a list and than, it
might be possible because I think with
a list you'd get higher conversions.

But than again I never had a list so
can't be sure.
 
You should have a standard list of negative keywords to apply to every campaign and adjust each time you use it accordingly. My negative lists have well over 150 keywords listed. You need to cut out the freeloaders and lookie-loos. They do serious damage to your ctr and your budget.
 
A-Bomb said:
You should have a standard list of negative keywords to apply to every campaign and adjust each time you use it accordingly. My negative lists have well over 150 keywords listed. You need to cut out the freeloaders and lookie-loos. They do serious damage to your ctr and your budget.
Click to expand...

I've been giving this a lot of thought recently. I've paused my hair loss campaign while I'm trying to get a new landing page done. I've started promoting a simple name/adress/phone-submit offer with a great payout while I'm designing.

Now, I started out with two ads, first one had a 80%(!) conversion rate the first night promoting it but with a 0,6% CTR. Now I know I shouldn't have been excited over a mere 2 conversions but still, it gave me hopes for this campaign. Now, I'm at a good 30 clicks, same 2 conversions and I haven't started sorting my keywords yet. Since I can't make any decisions yet on which keyword is the most profitable since the 30 clicks ain't really statistically relevant, I figured I'd start out making, as you said A-Bomb, a bunch of negative keywords. I also want to sort my keywords by in what "mood" the user is in but this proved to be quite difficult in my case.

As I felt that everything is so saturated over at adwords and bing I decided to give 7search, an alternative search engine, a shot. Good news is I'm getting the same if not more traffic at 20-30% of the CPC cost of the bigger search engines. The (very) bad news is that my keyword research is very limited. First and foremost, you can only bid on broad matching keywords. Secondly, I've found that in every niche there are around 7-10 keywords getting A LOT of traffic while the more specific ones get close to none. This means that I'm currently bidding on broad, short, no long-tail, keywords with a lot of traffic. But it's dirt cheap and I've got virtually no competition.

What do you guys think I should do?
 
creamybrother said:
I've been giving this a lot of thought recently. I've paused my hair loss campaign while I'm trying to get a new landing page done. I've started promoting a simple name/adress/phone-submit offer with a great payout while I'm designing.

Now, I started out with two ads, first one had a 80%(!) conversion rate the first night promoting it but with a 0,6% CTR. Now I know I shouldn't have been excited over a mere 2 conversions but still, it gave me hopes for this campaign. Now, I'm at a good 30 clicks, same 2 conversions and I haven't started sorting my keywords yet. Since I can't make any decisions yet on which keyword is the most profitable since the 30 clicks ain't really statistically relevant, I figured I'd start out making, as you said A-Bomb, a bunch of negative keywords. I also want to sort my keywords by in what "mood" the user is in but this proved to be quite difficult in my case.

As I felt that everything is so saturated over at adwords and bing I decided to give 7search, an alternative search engine, a shot. Good news is I'm getting the same if not more traffic at 20-30% of the CPC cost of the bigger search engines. The (very) bad news is that my keyword research is very limited. First and foremost, you can only bid on broad matching keywords. Secondly, I've found that in every niche there are around 7-10 keywords getting A LOT of traffic while the more specific ones get close to none. This means that I'm currently bidding on broad, short, no long-tail, keywords with a lot of traffic. But it's dirt cheap and I've got virtually no competition.

What do you guys think I should do?
Click to expand...

Hello,

Actually, you can bid on exact, phrase, and/or broad match with 7search. Take a look at our online tutorial found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqoXPd0lsQI for a step by step on how to change them.

Feel free to contact me here or at cleo@7search.com if you have any other questions.

Best,
Cleo
 
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