Sphinn - PPC Triage Now! Emergency Action Steps for Dying AdWords

43
Sphinn It!

PPC Triage Now! Emergency Action Steps for Dying AdWords

Went Hot: March 16, 2008 - 10:26 pm
Posted By: aimClear 478 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://blog.searchenginewatch.com)
Category: Google AdWords

Prospective clients have colorful & eerily similar Google PPC disaster stories. Skyrocketing costs, plummeting conversions, difficult or impossible to attain paid rankings threaten PPC viability. Show this post to clients.

17 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from Kalena 475 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

LOVE this article. Was nodding all the way through it and will be sending a few clients and students in it's direction. Nice find Marty

from aimClear 475 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

@Kalena: That's a lovely comment to wake up to. Thanks :)

from DarkMatter 475 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

I would add a #3...Go back and re-examine your keyword research. Go for the long tail! Using the Adwords tool I have found many high-conversion terms with almost no competition bidding on them, resulting in lower CPC and higher conversion rates for me.

Scrap the expensive, high traffic keywords and start with the long tail, get your CTR up (and with it your quality score), then gradually reintroduce some of the broader phrases.

from DanThies 475 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

Marty,

As I understand it, load times will only affect the landing page quality, which won't have much impact on search advertisers. Have you heard something different? Your post seems to imply that landing page quality affects search ad rankings, while Google's been telling us that it doesn't, except for the possibility of minimum bids.

from Doubleohd 475 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

I've been hearing more about people getting creamed in PPC lately, but it's usually due to the "set it forget it" mentality the post is talking about.

It seems that when things start going downhill, you need to go back to the basics and stick what seems to have tested the changes in SEM:

Tighter and more relevant ad groups
Better relevant ad copy for those groups (minus dynamic insertion), with a strong call-to-action
Opimal landing pages for the keywords that minimize the number of clicks needed to make the quality conversion occur.

I've also seen a lot of people obssessed with the "bleeding edge" and the newest ideas to try and get a competitive advantage. But living on the bleeding edge will at some point start to really hurt.

from SlightlyShadySEO 475 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Heh sounds like I've picked a bad time to get into PPC. That being said though, it's incredibly addictive, and I'm still doing quite good.

from aimClear 475 days ago # - show/hide this comment

Votes: -1 | Vote:

+ -

@Dan: "Even if the algorithm does need read a particular SEO attribute, results could be affected as pertain to human behavior if not Q-Score."

from Jeremy 475 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

"load times will only affect the landing page quality, which won't have much impact on search advertisers."

Dan, LP load time can potentially impact your min bid. To most this won't have a huge impact, to others it could. If your bidding is in line with the min required and that jumps 10% due to a slow LP your out of pocket costs just jumped overnight.

from theGypsy 475 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Marty could it be related to more usage of user performance metrics? I covered a patent a while back relating to this; Ad Serving and User performance metrics

From that page

"The method discusses taking a core set of candidate documents that are determined by ‘(at least) keyword targeting information’ as well as further scoring is also achieved via;

Ad performance information
advertiser quality information
ad price information
an information retrieval score.

In many ways it is not only using the data to decide which Ads are to be placed in a given setting, but the order (ranking) of them as well assigning a ‘relative preference attribute’. The content of the target page is established via concept with a ‘concept vector’ attribute. Delivery of the Ads is based on understanding the delivery page concept and assigning Ads based from the similar concept attributes mentioned earlier. "

Just something to consider.....

from szetela 475 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

Dan etc. - re: Marty's landing page comment - I think he's referring to this recent announcement from Google: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/07/landing-page-quality-update.html

from Jeremy 475 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

szetela - that's from 2006. Is that what you meant to link to? Just asking because you called it "recent".

If you play to close to the min in terms of bidding and get hit with increased mins because of a slow landing page it could really sting.

Example -

You have 1,000 keywords in account with an average $0.10 minimum bid. You bid an average of $0.12. Your actual average paid cpc is $0.12 as well. You get hit with slow LP min bid increase and now all your min bids go to an average $0.20. Depending on the account and margins that could be a real killer.

from DanThies 474 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

Here are some more recent references:
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6111
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/11/landing-page-quality-update.html
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10215

All of these pages say that "landing page quality" is not part of search ad rankings.

This could change, and on my blog I mention the possibiity of minimum bid impacts, but Marty and others keep writing about "quality score" as if this phrase had a single specific meaning. It doesn't - the context matters.

Marty and many others have specifically related this landing page scoring change to search ads. So far, we have no indication from Google that it will impact anything in the search ad auction except minimum bids.

from aimClear 474 days ago # - show/hide this comment

Votes: -2 | Vote:

+ -

@Dan: "Even if the algorithm does need read a particular SEO attribute, results could be affected as pertain to human behavior if not Q-Score."

from DanThies 474 days ago #

Votes: 2 | Vote:

+ -

Marty, you've repeated that twice now in this discussion, and I read it in your post too. It's remarkably insightful.

from szetela 474 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

sorry all - this is the more recent refernce: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/03/landing-page-load-time-will-soon-be.html

from aimClear 474 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

@Dan: No need 2 be snarky dude...we're all on the same team.:) How's THAT for "remarkable insight?"

So to be clear, you do not recomend optimzing PPC landing pages for usability when individual attributes are not significant ranking factors? Ok then...

from DanThies 474 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

+ -

Marty, I'm not trying to tweak you like that, you statement IS insightful. My point was probably as poorly made as yours, since we both think it's fun to make others read between the lines... so let me be more clear.

Your statement was equally insightful a year ago, or a month ago, before Google said anything about landing page load times. If something about your landing page affects human behavior today, it would also have done so in the past, and it will in the future.

Your post was one of a long string since Google's announcement, where the writer either ignores or misstates Google's actual methods of using landing page quality.

SEW, SEL, SER... over and over, I see noted experts treating the term "quality score" as if it means one single thing, and tying landing page quality to search ad rankings.

I'm absolutely in favor of optimizing landing pages for human factors. I'm also in favor of putting the landing page load time issue in the correct context.

Optimizing landing pages was important a year ago, it was important a month ago, and it will be important no matter what Google actually does with landing page load times. What Google does is likely to have minimal if any impact on the majority of advertisers.