How to Optimize an Adwords campaign (25)
Hey guys,
I recently finished a pretty big site of mine to promote a product in a huge niche that is accepted by Adwords (yay!).
However, even if the site has around 25 articles and even if all the articles are keywords rich, my QS isn't nice enough to reap the rewards of my work.
The niche isn't TOO competitive, there is some competitions but nothing I can't beat in terms of quality. The Adwords account is pretty much virgin as well.
The main keyword I'm bidding lands to a url that looks like this :
MyDomain.com/my-keyword/
This is the URL on which the user lands and this is the url I show on my ad.
Here is a screenshot of my campaign : 
Anyone know what I could do to improve this situation?
The first thing I would do is add the quality score column. So much easier to look at. The CTR is pretty low for a search campaign and that will play a big factor into QS. Your average position seems to be decent so I would assume the ad is not working great or your keywords are a bit too broad. I would split test some ads and shoot for a minimum of 10% ctr and niche down the keywords some. Use exact match if you are not already doing that. Exact is less traffic but for me, it's where I make most of my money. Without looking at landing pages etc it would be hard to say anything else about quality score. I would be more concerned about CTR right now. Good QS or bad is irrelevant if no one is clicking on your ad.
Pretty much, stop thinking having a "nice" site will get you a good QS.
If your page loads fast and contains the KWs your going after, your good to go and there is nothing more you can do that will raise the QS from the site's end ( trust me on this ). I have shitty ass LPs that get 7 or 10 out of 10 QS.
The only thing that really matters is CTR. Since your account is new/virgin and you dont have a history of running these ads ( even if the account wasnt virgin ) thats why your getting a QS of 4.
Once you get some history and some clicks, it will improve.. but only if you keep increasing your CTR thru your ads. Remember, QS is not only at the KW level, but the ad level, ad group level and campaign level.
Any KWs in your account that are not doing well, could hurt other campaigns/groups/ads/kws.
Generally on a virgin account, I focus on 1 KW only in 1 adgroup and 1-2 ads at first and build that up to a QS 7-10 and then move to the next....
Wow, thanks a lot for the details! I really appreciate it. I'm so used to promote on Facebook that to me 2% to 6% CTR was pretty damn good. OK so I'm gonna work on the ads, I think the keywords are good but I'll make my ads more interested, I might even narrow my geo targeting to get some boost! In terms of volume, I spent around 100$ in 15 minutes even if I have a bad QS so I'm eager to see what I'll be able to do once I get a better QS and a cheaper CPC. So, clearly, my goal right now is to reduce the CPC as much as possible, I aim for 10-20c clicks.
Here is another screenshot with the QS column if it can help!
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Hey numerouno,
How many keywords are in this adgroup? Consider breaking out the primary keyword and keywords with the keyword in the body into new adgroups.
Make sure your ad has the keyword in the headline and body if possible.
Are you coming in to the niche as a boss? If so, show Google your serious and bid top spot for awhile then start backing it down.
Is your page load time good?
<<< CTR is King with Google >>> For now, kill every key word that hasn't made you money and is getting a low CTR.
Don't pause and unpause, keywords and campaigns. Either pause the keyword for good or strip it out into a new adgroup.
If you need to pause your campaign don't go turning down bids on keywords and campaign budget (Google hates that). Instead set it to run for 15 minutes at like 4 am on a Monday morning.
I usually start a campaign with just the top 4 or 5 keywords. Huge lists of keywords will kill your CTR's thus your account favor-ability with Google.
Read - Craig Danuloff's 'Quality Score in High Resolution' and Bradd Geddes 'Advanced Google AdWords'
Ha, in the time it takes to write the post, 2 posts with the same content as mine show. Nice.
Wow guys, so many gold nuggets here, thanks a lot I really appreciate it!
So what I take from all your comments is basically to focus as much as possible on a few high volume keywords. Work on the ads and content to improve the CTR as much as possible until I reach 10%+. Kill all the keywords with low CTR. Bid for the first position in order to improve the CTR as well.
Anything else?
Would you guys completely delete the campaign I already did to create one with the tips you gave me?
Chilly, Quality Score in High Resolution is 150$, is it fully worth it?
Again, thanks a lot guys!
Mini bump just to be safe 
$150 zoiks it went up! Nope. Its just about QS.
follow what others have said.
Remember a few important tips..
-Don't test too many ads against each other. Work with a sample of 3-5 ads and gather data on which one performs best (CTR)
-If possible, use sitelinks
-Make sure that your adgroups are small and tightly knit. Try to create your ad for the adgroup based around the main keyword.
-Depending on your niche, use brad, phrase or exact match.
-Don't forget to use negative keywords.
Read http://blog.jumpfly.com/
For at least QS 7 try this:
-Put your keyword in separate adgroup
-Keyword in title and once or twice in body of ad
-Keyword in title, H1, meta keyword and description in your page, keyword with good density in article on the page of at least 500 words.
Great, thanks for the details. About the campaign, would you guys completely trash it and create another one?
Trash the campaign;
One main kw per adgroup, don't use broad at all unless you do advanced broad (where you add plus signs before each keyword). Start with exacts, no more than 3 per adgroup. Need phrase matches? Put them in separate adgroups - important - while adding exact negatives in phrase- matched adgroups. Test 2-3 ads per adgroup, evenly distributed. Steal ideas, be aggressive, talk benefits, go for the click. Pro tip: when testing diff. Ad copies, link ads to different landing pages, which pretty much repeat what ads say and see what conerts best. (it may not be the highest ctr ad, that's why in campaign settings you need to put even distribution of ads. Want more traffic? Make sure to set up "show ads as fast as possible". And do not touch broad match unless you know what you're doing, G will be showing your ads for synonyms that may have nothing to do with your ads, so only use broad in new adgroups, after you found profitable ads and only on very specific mid-tail keyphrases. good luck!
^^ this is good advice. many ways to setup your campaigns, but there is some gems in that post
I can share some more tips, this post was kinda short (typed on Ipad, don't really like it) - I've done thousands of campaign set-ups since early 2000-s (run my own search agency for smb's). And yeah - learn and use Adwords Editor, learn it's shortcuts, play it like a piano and it will save you days if not months of time. It has some neat features built-in such as keyword grouping and kw suggestion that can save you some time, too. You can clone ads and campaigns, set up all kinds of filters there.. It's a really nice tool. If you can afford it - get SpeedPPC, if not - there are free alternatives out there.
Watch your analytics, look at keyword bounce rate, isolate them or make them negative if bounce rate is too high: that leads to low quality score, too.
And test your landers religiously, you never know what really works for your setup. For me it's what makes this profession fun.. Challenges, discoveries, more testing, digging for the gold!
wow thanks for the tips. don't hesitate if you have some more ideas my client fixed one of their tracking problem and I'll resetup my campaign tonight using all the tips you guys gave, I'll keep you posted on the improvements I get in QS and CPC!
THIS IS A GREAT THREAD!
I'm just built some campaigns using the tips I read here. One thing I'm curious about: a lot of people are saying to use exact match only. It seems like it'd be really hard to get any volume if each ad group has only 1 keyword or a handful of keywords all set to exact match. Wouldn't phrase match be better? Or am I missing something?
I'll let you know how things turn out with the new campaigns.
I fully agree with nefig and eliquid. These have been the things I always do:
- start with exact match
- 1 keyword per adgroup
- shoot for real high CTR, its important for QS and relates to "relevance"
Google is a relevance engine, in a way.
edit: this is an awesome tip by nefig:
Watch your analytics, look at keyword bounce rate, isolate them or make them negative if bounce rate is too high: that leads to low quality score, too.
Quick heads up, did as suggested in this thread, my QS for my main keyword went from 4 to 7 Now let's see if I can get that to 10 and get uber cheap clicks now
Goddamn, it only lasted a few minutes, QS is back to 4/10. I just added an extra 150 words to my LP as my keyword relevancy as been noted as poor. I also improved my ads to 5-6% CTR, not 10% yet but we'll be getting there. Would you guys trash this camp and do it again with the new optimized content for the keyword? It sucks that Adwords think my keyword is not relevant even if my site is 2 weeks old and already in the 3rd page of Google!
Mini bump The QS is now slowly moving to 5.. Trash or keep on going? My keyword relevance isn't poor anymore.
Depends on CTR/position, but usually it helps to start over to refresh CTR/QS data on keywords. You can copy-paste the whole campaign in Adwords editor, change up a few things and there you go. Another tip: target main cities only (if it makes sense) and you may see much higher CTR + your ads will show city name attached under them... Try bidding high enough for top 1-2 positions for most important keywords to gain high CTR, then slowly lower bids when established some history and high QS. How's your hosting? Google loves fast servers.. Glad you're progressing, keep it up
This will happens, I see mine bounce from 10/10 to 7/10 to sometimes 4/10 and 3/10 and back up. When its new account/campaign/adgroup it will do that.
Make sure you add lots of negative ekywords. how do you do it?
i, Go to Search Terms and Keyword tool add everything to -> Shared library -> Make list and add keywords here
80% of QS depends on CTR, have high CTR and you are ready to go
ii, Use SiteLinks
iii, Use dynamic insertion on ads
iv, Use Adwords Experiments to quickly test different variables
v, Bid High initially to get cool ass CTR. then lower ur bids
v,Ignore that stupid "not in first page warning"
Home > Search / PPC (Adwords, Bing, etc.) >