Increasing my PPC bids lowers my conversion rate

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ubaidabcd

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I have a few campaigns and the cost for keywords is .10 cents a click. I started to see a consistent pattern of conversions. So I increase the cost per click anywhere from .20 to .30 cents a click. Hoping to get more sales.

That doesn't seem to make any difference, I'm just getting more unwanted traffic and my conversion rate goes down and the pattern of sales stays the same. I figured if the campaign is performing well at .10 cents a click, means that people are interested in the product or service the merchant is offering, so I thought more money I put in = ads higher up and more visible= more click-throughs = more sales. Although this isn't what's going on with my campaigns. I do see an increase in traffic, but the sales pattern doesn't change.

Is this since there isn't much difference between .10 and .30 cents. To see results I should raise to a $1.00 a click? Or could it be that I need to target my keywords? My campaigns usually have about 1000 keywords, some have more. They're created in a keyword program and I just keep the relevant keywords. Even then, most of these keywords I don't get anything, there's only a select few that bring traffic regularly.


Any other suggestions?
 


Man, I would track your keywords. Find out which ones are leading to conversions. Then, you can cut back on the crap keywords that aren't consistent with bringing in converstions and increase the bid on the ones that are.
 
How can I find out which keywords are converting? I'm linking directly to the merchant, I have a landing page for one of my merchants but it doesn't do that well, but even then I can only see what keywords people came from to the site. I can't tell which keyword made the conversion.
 
ubaidabcd said:
How can I find out which keywords are converting? I'm linking directly to the merchant, I have a landing page for one of my merchants but it doesn't do that well, but even then I can only see what keywords people came from to the site. I can't tell which keyword made the conversion.
Click to expand...

There are a few simple ways to track it. If your merchant allows you to pass through a subid you can use the google {keyword} template variable to pass the keywords to your merchant in your tracking link and that should allow you to get a report on which keywords are converting. Or you can ask your merchant to place your google tracking script on their thank you page and then you can track conversions in your account.

We've definately seen issues before where increasing cpc's get more traffic but less qualified traffic as well so its not just you. If its a very competitive vertical it may be that if you're higher up in the results people are clicking, hitting back and then going to the next adwords link and converting there.
 
I'm on an affiliate network, and one of them is a CPA offer so they couldn't put my google analystics code on the thank you page. My affiliate network let's me pass through a subid, but I don't understand how to use this google {keyword} method to get reports on which keywords are converting.


Thanks
 
no no no don't do it through subids you don't want to give your affiliate manager and company what keywords convert best and from what networks. store your kws in database and use php to pass generic id or something.
 
jened said:
no no no don't do it through subids you don't want to give your affiliate manager and company what keywords convert best and from what networks. store your kws in database and use php to pass generic id or something.
Click to expand...

Damn right. Don't forget that some AMs will share any insight you give them with other affiliates, and that most networks promote these campaigns themselves as well. Guard the secret sauce.
 
AdWords now has a 'bid for position' feature, if you find conversions are better in lower ad positions. Take a look under Campaign Settings.

Oh, and if you are getting a lot of untargeted traffic, I'd get cracking on the negative keywords.
 
I don't think that keyword method work anyway, since I know which keywords are bringing traffic, I just don't know which ones are converting. Even with negative keywords, I have a few keywords that are too broad and not specific enough, but could be converting.

I might just have to go about this a complicated way, and pick about 5-6 top keywords that are bringing traffic, create individual ad campaigns with 1 keyword each and see which one(s) are converting. I'll pick 1 or 2 keywords with the highest conversion rate then I can just raise my ppc bid on the keyword(s) that converts the highest and I wont' be wasting money on unwanted traffic.
 
Negative keywords can filter the buyers from the browsers. Try adding negative keywords like 'free', 'refund', 'cashback', 'repairs', 'warez', 'hack', 'fix', 'spares' - you get the idea. People searching for those keywords aren't looking to spend money.
 
ubaidabcd said:
I don't think that keyword method work anyway, since I know which keywords are bringing traffic, I just don't know which ones are converting. Even with negative keywords, I have a few keywords that are too broad and not specific enough, but could be converting.

I might just have to go about this a complicated way, and pick about 5-6 top keywords that are bringing traffic, create individual ad campaigns with 1 keyword each and see which one(s) are converting. I'll pick 1 or 2 keywords with the highest conversion rate then I can just raise my ppc bid on the keyword(s) that converts the highest and I wont' be wasting money on unwanted traffic.
Click to expand...

To figure out which keywords are converting, you can pass the triggered keyword to your destination url page. From there, you can use the passed in keyword as a subid in your offer url.

In adwords, your destination url would look something like this:

http://www.mydomain.com/index.php?keyword={keyword}

Then in your landing page, you would use code to retrieve the keyword parameter and place is in the subid of your offer url.

Your offer url would look like this

http://ekmas.com/ez/sdasdfasd/sub=keyword
 
If you are not tracking each keyword individually you are leaving money on the table. Amazing (and lazy) that you think you can put em all in one adgroup and expect to make money. Take the time to do things right.

To address the original question:

You probably have some leaks that dont convert. Get rid of - be it through negative matching or just turning off the bad keywords. Go a step farther and only buy exact match keywords to start with then expand out from there.

Some explanations as to why higher bids might be lower Conversion. Your ad is now seen more on junk search network sites - some sites only show 3-5 ads. Your ad is not well written to let people know what they will get when clicking - curiosity clicks. You might have activated some really junky keywords with higher minimum bids. You might have moved into 1st place on terms that are just getting people to click on the first listing, but the keyword was not well targeted to your ad.

Could be a million things, but until you take the time and energy to care about tracking nothing anyone offers here is going to help you.
 
At the very minimum you should be breaking down data for tracking by --

keyword
ad
source (sometimes a place like, say myspace, will send you a shitload of useless traffic)
 
I'm still kinda confused as to how to track my keywords. I'm sending traffic directly to the merchant, my merchant won't let me add my google's analytics code on their "thank you page".

Even if I use a sub-id as a keyword that's not going to help, since all my traffic is coming from Yahoo, so I can just login and see which keywords received traffic on the day I had a conversion. Which does help, but I would like to know exactly which keywords are converting. The only way to do that is to find out which user got to the thank you page.

EDIT: Nevermind if I use my keyword I think azoogle will display a report saying which sub-id's converted. Although I'd rather not do this, due to what people posted about AM's knowing your converting keywords. Although I don't think I really have another option and this is really important.

EDIT #2: I don't have to use my actual keyword, I can create a list and use codes. Although it's going to take too much time creating an affiliate id for every keyword, but atleast I'll know which keywords are converting.
 
ubaidabcd said:
EDIT #2: I don't have to use my actual keyword, I can create a list and use codes. Although it's going to take too much time creating an affiliate id for every keyword, but atleast I'll know which keywords are converting.
Click to expand...
This is something that you could easily automate in, say, Excel. If you're not using the Adwords Editor I'd look into that, since that makes this kind of thing really, really easy.

Alternative, pass through one of your own pages and redirect straight to the merchant. That way you can pull out the keyword and put in your own tracking id. Much cleaner, and it gives you much greater granularity for your tracking (down to the individual click).
 
So you need to figure out which keywords are converting but you can't place the conversion code on the target site because you don't own it.

In this case you need to create your own conversion code links.

Here is how to do it:

Create a directory for your target affiliate program. For example you are promoting a ringtone program so you make a directory "ringtones".

In this directory you make an index.php and place the following code:

<?php
?>
<!-- Google Code for pageview Conversion Page -->
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
var google_conversion_id = 12345678;
var google_conversion_language = "en_GB";
var google_conversion_format = "1";
var google_conversion_color = "666666";
if (1) {
var google_conversion_value = 1;
}
var google_conversion_label = "pageview";
//-->
</script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js"></script>
<img height=1 width=1 border=0 src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/1066563900/imp.gif?value=1&label=pageview&script=0">
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
window.location.href = "http://www.targetdomain.com/clicks/someaffiliatelink.html?a=affiliateid";
-->
</script>

So the first bit is your conversion code and the last bit is the redirect containing your hidden affiliate link.

Then on your site you make each affiliate link point to the folder you created for that exact affiliate program.

What you will then see in your adwords account for each ad group is the number of times your affiliate link gets clicked (conversions) and the amount of clicks you are gaining for that affiliate program.

This will then give you some data to work with for how many clicks you are gaining at what cost to how many people read your compelling copy and go on to click through.

Your affiliate program can then give you the data you need to determine how many clicks you are sending at what cost to sales revenue.

This way If you increase your bids and get more traffic you can determine if the extra cost is being channelled into more clickthroughs or whether you are just generating more "tyre kickers" for the extra cost.
 
Storebuilder said:
What you will then see in your adwords account for each ad group is the number of times your affiliate link gets clicked (conversions) and the amount of clicks you are gaining for that affiliate program.
Click to expand...

How is that google code showing which keywords that converted to a sale? The clicks I get on my affiliate link aren't counted as conversions. Anybody can click my link, read the page, and leave. I can get that information from my PPC reports. What I need to know is which keyword is converting to sales. I need to know which keywords were used when customers completed the order form, and placed their order.


That sub-id technique that was mentioned isn't going to work well, since I can only have a 100 sub-id's in azoogle and I have thousands of keywords.


Any other suggestions? I can't be the only person that has noticed this problem with sending traffic directly to the merchant, and being on a network I can't ask the company to put my code on the merchants page.
 
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