google maximum cost-per-click advice
 

Never bought adwords before.... Will I get any traffic with the minimum (5 cents) ?

Thanks

Keep it at a nickel until you get the hang of it. Don't use more than a few keywords to start with either and make them kind of obscure so you don't piss away your budget in 5 seconds.

You might. It all depends on the word you decide to bid on. Google rates your word not only on how much you pay, but also on the click thru ratio.

And, if your keyword is not getting a good click thru...usually .5% or less, then they will slow delivery of your ad and probably disable your ad as well.

I have one word, which shall remain nameless, which has about 5 other bidders. I only bid 5 cents, but my decription has resulted in my keyword being clicked on more then any of the other bidders. The result..my ad is shown as number one, not only on Google, but also lycos, hotbot and a number of others. And I still pay only 5 cents.

Keep your max bid and your daily max low, real low, and then experiment with doing higher bids on certain keywords/phrases and increase your daily max as you see fit.

Just remember whatever you're promoting, there's a whole lot of people out there doing the exact same thing, for longer.

Don't go nuts right off the bat or you'll lose your shirt.

It's better to keep you cpc as low as possible until you discover an angle. That's when you make your move.

:2 cents:

Yes you can get traffic even at $0.05. In certain niches that even will be a decent amount of good traffic. Verified.

Cool because they are kinda obscure.


Thanks guys.

Isn't the general consensus that it's more worthwile to have an ad that is located near the bottom?

apparently they reward you for relevency, if you CTR is 10% and your competitors is 2%, and they are bidding 50 cents and you are bidding 11 cents, you will go above his ad.

Ev

Yep, spot on :helpme

why?

The ROI is better... Even with less click-throughs, you are still faring with a better conversion ratio.

Mr Joe Surfer who has no intention of signing up to anything will randomly click at anything he see's hoping to get off..

Someone who is actually looking for something will search through links and you'll get someone who knows what he's looking for. Hopefully you'll give it to him and get your signup.

Quality over Quantity.

But when your bid is low, you risk getting your campaign frozen because of a too small CTR, like 0.4%.

I see a lot of absolutes being suggested. ie. Ad at the bottom is better. But the truth is, this is very much dependant on the keywords you are bidding on.

If you are bidding on something like Sex, Milfs, or other very general terms, then yes, a lower position could be preferable. But, if you are bidding on very specific terms, such as the actual name of a site, i.e. Adult Friend Finder, then you want to be at the top. The surfer knows what he is looking for. He will find it with the first listing...and his search will be over long before he gets to your listing.

And that's all the free info you get. As a dedicated user of keywords, I think I've shared enough trade secrets for one night.

Do you offer paid adword consulting? :Graucho

No you didn't... post more :Graucho

Anyone have any more tips?

O.K. a few more tips....

I do mainly mainstream advertising, so chances are pretty good that no one will step on my toes. And, I'm going to pepper this reply with affiliate codes for the tools I use and swear by, so I might even make a buck or two.

My first plug is an aBook by Perry Marshall, a respected expert in the adwords field. Even for seasoned SEO veterans, he will definately give you some valuable pointers. Adwords is a tough game. If you fail at the start, it makes it much harder to keep google from disabling your keywords in the future. And, it's also easy to burn through money with bids that are to high or for ineffective keywords. Even if you are just testing the waters, thisAdwords eBook is a must have and is very well written.

Now for some Free pointers.

First, to use a cliche, think outside the box.

Say you wanted to bid for "out personals". Now, if you are like most people you will bid for exactly that term, "out personals". Now, let me tell you why that is the wrong approach. Do your own search for out personals on Goggle. You will see 8 Adword responses. Plus, refresh your page a few times. You will see the ads will change, which means their are a lot more then 8 advertisers competing for this phrase. Plus, at the time when I did the search, there were also 3 out of the 8 with the term Out Personals in their heading. Again, competition that will bury you. To compete with them you need both a high Click Thru Rate and a high Cost Per click.

Now, enter the term "outpersonals". Guess what, only 3 people are bidding on this one. You are still getting highly targeted customers looking for your niche and you can get in at a much cheaper bid.

Bet you are saying, yah, but I bet Out Personals gets more hits then Outpersonals. Nope, you are wrong... Out Personals gets 70 request per day while Outpersonals is looked up approx. 723 times a day. So, not only are you getting an inheritently cheaper cost per click, you will be getting more qualified traffic.

Now, you are probably asking, where did I get the clickthru numbers.... with the absolutely critical tool Wordtracker. Whether you are using adwords or any type of Search Engine Optimization...this service is crucial.

Wordtracker will provide you with not only impressions for each keyword, but also provide a ton of keyword combinations and variations that you may not have thought of.

Another tool that I use extensively is Adword Equalizer. I could just use it alone, instead of wordtracker, but the one downfall of Adword Equalizer is that it uses Overture for it's initial search data. I find Overture's search data to be notoriously inaccurate. So, I often use wordtracker to fine tune the numbers and get a realistic search count. That said, Adword Equalizer saves hours and hours of work, and gives insight that you won't find anywhere else.


Anyone want more...

Sweet! Best post in a long time! :thumbsup

terrific thread indeed! thanks for all the information :thumbsup

keep them tips coming :glugglug

O.k. I'm not immune to flattery..so here is some more...

Unless you are the OWNER of a large program, do NOT bid on general terms, like Milf, sex, bukkake, and so on. I guarantee, you won't make your money back.

So, why can the big boys do this. Really, it's simple. Say they pay you $40 for a sign-up. That means you have to spend less then $40 to make the sale, or you are in the red. On the other hand, you can be rest assured that if a program pays you $40, they are making probably 3 times that, through rebills. And with the shadier programs, even more, through tricky trials and cross-sells. They can afford to throw more money into getting a sale. You can't.

So, what should you bid on. Again, using programs like Wordtracker and Adwords Equalizer find variations and combinations on these words. An example might be instead of milf, use "Milf Cruiser". You are competing against 5 other bidders, plus I can guarantee the surfers who know enough to enter "Milf Cruiser" isntead of just Milf, are 100's of times more sure of what they are looking for. So, you are reaching a much higher targeted "Customer" at a lower cost, and with much less competition.

To put it in simplier terms, "It's not the quantity of clicks that matters, it's the quality.

Next...if anyone wants it....more Adword specific advice

Hmmm, instead of more advice, first let me show you the valuable of working "smarter" instead of "harder". I will take the first keyword suggestion posted in this thread. I will then enter the keyword into Ad Equalizer and post the results here. You will be amazed at the variations on the keyword, and the potential un-tapped traffic.

thank you 49thparallel! highly appreciated information. :thumbsup

Although I swear by Perry Marshall's Adwords eBook, here's another little known hint that you will only get from me.

Much to the surprise of many Americans, there is a rather vibrant country next door called Canada. This is a land where the per capita Internet Use is the largest in the world. So, what does this mean to you...there are millions of Canadian internet users, who are not shy to purchase online.

Now, how does this relate to adwords. Well, as luck would have it, many of the above mentioned Americans have not clued into the simple fact that Canada does indeed exist. So, when given the choice of where they want there Google Adwords to appear, they automatically choose only United States.

Now this is good for you for a couple of reasons. First, if you choose Canada for your campaign, chances are very good that you will be competing against fewer bidders. Second, that means you will be able to get a higher CTR at a lower CPC.

Now, here's the really valuable hint....

Not even Wordtracker or Ad Equalizer will break the keywords and impressions down to a country level for you. So, here is how you do your research.

If you are in the U.S., go to www.google.com to check out how many bidders are competing against you for a specific keyword in the United States.

Now, comes the tricky part, to determine how many bidders you would compete against in Canada, you have to do 2 things...
First, find a "public" proxy located in Canada. Through tools & connections, change your Lan settings to the Canadian Proxy. Now, go to google.ca, and enter your keyword phrase. You will see how many people are bidding against your term for anyone searching google from Canada.

Simply going to google.ca isn't enough. Google is smart,and will still determine from your ISP's ip address that you are in the states. You will need to change your proxy as well, as outline above, to get true Canadian results.

Often you will find keywords that are worth bidding on only in Canada, and not in the U.S.

Oh yah, got to remember to make this advice worth while for all of us...again, here's the tools I swear by...
Wordtracker


Adword Equalizer

O.K, now that the commercial is over..use the "Canada" suggestion above. You won't find it anywhere else, and it truly is worth it's weight in gold.

An update on the above advise. Before going to google.ca, be sure to clear your cookies and files.

best thread ever, good infos..

some good tips thanks

O.K. Here's another tip:

In the Adwords game, relevancy is EVERYTHING. In fact, if you have a highly relevant keyword, you can be paying 5 cents per click, while the people beneath you are paying much much higher.

I have one example, where one of my keywords is top of the page. I pay 5 cents. The listing below me also advertises on Overture. He/she pays $1.05 for the same term there. So, although I don't know what they are paying on Google, I bet it's more then 5 cents.

So, how is relevancy determined? First, and foremost, you have to write headlines and body copy that solves whatever probelm the surfer was surfing for. This, in itself will most likely increase the number of clickthrus to your site. Which in turn will move your keyword up the ladder..and so on and so on.

But, just getting people to click isn't enough. You have to make sure that your destination page also gives the surfer what they want. This is for 2 reasons. First, if it doesn't deliver on the promise presented in your ad...then you have just wasted your money. The surfer will see that he has been had, he will hit the back key and you lost the surfer and your money.

Second, just like your webstats can tell you the path a surfer takes from your entry page to other pages on a site, so can googles cookies. (At least, this is the theory). So, if a surfer clicks on your ad, and then hits the back key right away, google's cookie system registers that the site most likely wasn't relevant. And you start your downward spiral.

Some people will tell you what I said above is true..others will say it isn't. But either way, if your site isn't delivering on the ad's promise, then your conversions are going to be low anyways.

It's not enough to just use Wordtracker and Ad Equalizer Use common sense...a skillful marketing approach will beat out shear volume any day. Again quality over quantity. (An example, notice how I slipped in my product plugs above without setting off the instant "spam" alarm)

best thread in months on GFY:thumbsup

Hello again. Now for another tip. THis one is important.

As I've hinted at a few times, relevance is VERY important to Google. So, if they determine that your keywords are not relevent, thye will first put a keyword on trial, then on hold, and then they will most likely disable the keyword.

So far, that might not sound all that bad. But here's the catch. If they put a keyword in a trial or on hold status, they may also put your ENTIRE account on hold or a "slowed" status. This has a whirlwind effect....
All of your keywords show up less. In turn, their click thru ratio may slip, and you lose your ranking.

So, how do you get around this:

First...Pick relevant keywords
Second: Write good copy
Third: Pick keywords with minimal competition, to start.

If you start out bad with google adwords, then it is next to impossible to get in the good books. Their system seems to automatically place keywords in less favorable positions if your account has a history of low click thru ratios. And, if your keyword starts out bad, then it begins a self fullfilling downslide. Not many people click on it, and it makes it's way to a trial, hold or disabled status.

Plus, if they put your account into a slowed status 3 times, it costs you $5 to restore the account.

Now, on the flipside. If your account has a record of keywords that have high CTR (click thru ratios), it seems much more forgiving. It will allow some words to perform badly. Yes, they will most likely disable them..but not as quickly. And the system is less likely to throw your whole account into "slowed" status.

The moral...start slow. Build up a well performing account...then do your tests..but still with care.

And get the right tools:


Perry Marshall's eBook
Wordtracker
Adword Equalizer

Next...another hint that you won't find elsewhere...anyone want it?

get that disgusting picture out of your sig already. what the hell is it anyways?

do you really think programs are making $120 on sales and only paying out $40 ?

Irrelevant to the purpose of this thread.

absolutely. new information is the source of all glory!

They either do and/or shave signups. They certainly won't pay out more to webmasters than they get in from the surfer. :glugglug

yes please. :) :)

O.K.

Now to explain the value of being 1st, 2nd or third.

A good portion of traffic you receive will not be from google. It will be from it's partners, like Lycos, Netscape. Here's why...

On google, your adword campaigns show up on the right hand margin. On the search partners, they show up as sponsored links, BEFORE any of the other links. But, to get here, you have to be in the top positions on google.

Now here's my "exclusive" secret. Say you get in one of the enviable top positions. Then at about 7:00 p.m. EST you decide to tweak your ad a bit to increase clickthrus and conversions.

If you can wait...don't do it. Here's why. Before an ad will appear on a partner's site, it will be MANUALLY approved by a google adwords specialist. So, even if you were already on the partner site, google system detects the change, put's up a red flag, and removes your listing from the partner listings UNTIL it is manually approved.

When will this be done?...some time after 8:00 a.m EST. So, your site loses it's position for the whole evening. I personally try to limit my changes on top performing keywords to about 4:30 p.m. EST or earlier.

But, I am just scratching the surface here. So far, these have all been secrets that I learnt by making Google Adwords a crucial part of my advertising buying strategies.

I can't stress enough that there is a mountain of information available through experts like Perry Marshall. And using the right tools. (I've provided the links in posts above).

Hope this helps!

excellent information, very much appreciated. :thumbsup