Adwords hiking up prices!

tbp · 12-11-07

Launched a new PPC campaign, first one of the year, but only lasted a couple of hours before Google slapped me!

Its for a niche site, and I launched an ad on the main site keyword, which is the domain of the site and the whole focus of the site so its incredibly relevant.

Launched it this afternoon, and had "excellent" quality scores for the ad, and gave me good results for a mere 5p per click. Just had a look, and although it had a click through rate of 10.5% all the ad's have been pulled, and the minimum price for the keywords put up to £5.00 a click!

Not sure what to do now, the sites as relevant as it can be, but now Im priced out. Don't understand what happened considering earlier it told me the quality score was excellent.

Any ideas on what to do? Don't want to give up before I`ve started, but not paying £5 a click.

tbp · 12-11-07

Just an update, been poking round and the quality score is now saying "poor", although on the landing page side rather than keywords.

Must admit although I`ve had large amounts of experience with adwords, this is a gap in my knowledge.

All my previous work has been for existing large websites, and never had any problems and had very succesfull results.

This is the first time I`ve done it on a small niche website though, which has one main page with all the content on, a contact page and a privacy policy.

Obviously, Google doesn't like this for some reason, so i`m not exactly sure whats missing. Its saying I need to improve the landing page, but im not sure what it wants in terms of its quality score?

Can anyone give me any pointers as to what I should be looking out for?

Thanks!

mainlime · 12-11-07

Keiron usually knows what he's talking about : Google AdWords Landing Pages - how to build a page that won’t get banned, with examples

Shane · 12-11-07

Yup good article that, impliment the advice and you'll find less hassle ahead however you'll probably still get grief from time to time..

I posted the other day regarding this.. .A site of ours isn't about monkeys but if main product was a "monkey credit card" then the keywords :

"monkey credit card co uk" is 0.10p a click no problemo even though ctr is 2.1% and conversion is 3.55% (it's a com site
without mention of co uk on the page)

yet : "monkey credit card" is now £5.00 a click even though ctr is 9.83% and conversion is 23%

whilst : "monkey cards" ctr is 25% and conversion is 66.67% was 8p a click !!!! now £5.00

funny how it jacks the main term up as "poor" and wants £5 for it, despite it converting well at a good ctr, yet the least targeted phrase which has "co uk "on it which isn't relevant AT ALL is left unmolested.. funny that... seeing as it's 10 clicks a day instead of 200 clicks on the main term which coverts at 300% the rate of the term that google considers relevant and scores as "good"

"landing page quality score" .. more like operation "bid jacker"

HarveyC · 12-11-07

Try adding a new page to the site, and relevant keywords. Still "poor"? It means your domain is "poor quality". Email google and I can tell you exactly what they'll say - "thanks for your business, but we may not be the best solution".

If it is a domain-wide problem, you need to copy it to a new domain and get a new adwords account. You're on the right track with PP/contact us, but also add some more content to the front page and mask affiliate links.

I did all of the above, and within a few days everything was back to normal - sounds exactly like what happened to me!

tbp · 13-11-07

Thanks for all the ideas!

For the moment redirecting the adwords to another of my sites which features the product, and then having a link from there to my main site. Not the ideal solution, but better than nothing for the time being.

Its frustrating, as I`ve been looking through competitors ad's and they seem a lot less relevant, as theirs is one product description on a general site, rather than a product specific site like mine.

Affiliate links were masked already, as I utilise my own tracking, so thats not the problem.

Spoken to the previous owner of the domain (who I trust totally), and he didn't have this problem.

Going to keep at it, and try and find a solution. In the end its an algo behind it, so its just a matter of finding what it wants, and if its practical to give it whatever it is.

Taken me by suprise, as I`ve never had this problem before, and would have said I was pretty good on adwords! Spent hundreds of thousands of pounds before, and made good profits. However, that was all on big established sites, and this is the first time on my own with a small niche site, I guess theres some different rules and things to learn!

If I manage to crack it, i`ll post how I did it!

cyates · 13-11-07

if its a small niche site why not build up the organic rankings ?

tbp · 13-11-07

Quote:

if its a small niche site why not build up the organic rankings ?

It does already have great organic rankings, at position 2/3.

Just wanted to try PPC as well to see how many extra sales it would bring.

Been searching around, and have an idea of how to fix it, so going to implement that as it will improve the site anyway. Whether it will work or not remains to be seen, and also depends on how long it takes google to reasses the quality score.

It's wierd, because I have another site thats near identical in terms of format and structure, but for a different product. That one google likes and offering really good CPC rates.

Doesn't seem to be any consistency in the way it treats sites.

cyates · 13-11-07

thats google for you

consistency doesnt apply to their formulas lol

good luck with the research

tbp · 13-11-07

Quote:

consistency doesnt apply to their formulas lol

True lol,

Glad I don't rely on PPC, the focus of all my efforts has been into SEO, and all of my sites have top rankings for their fields.

Just wanted to try PPC as well to see how much extra I could get.

BruceyBonus · 15-11-07

I've had a similar problem. An excellent keyword was running at an average CPC of around 8-15p. Then Google were asking for 50p minimum. I couldn't afford to raise the bid so had to cancel the ad

tbp · 15-11-07

It's been wierd, I have a blog where I also mention the product that the main site was about, with just a paragraph of text about the product - so much less detail.

I pointed the advert to the blog instead, and got top placement for 20p! Yet the blog is far less relevant than the dedicated product site I had.

I was losing money, because people were having to go to my blog, then to the product site, and then to the merchant, and weren't bothering.

So yesterday I bit the bullet, deleted the keywords it wanted £5 for, and set the main term to 50p per click which was the minimum bid (i`m still using googles free credit so it wasn't really a problem). The ad ran for about 2 hours, in the same place as the 20p ad pointing to my blog site.

After 2 hours, the ad was pulled, and they suddenly wanted £2.50 a click! That was ridiculous, so I swapped back to the blog ad. (Note that the text etc was exactly the same for both the site and blog ad, the only difference was the destination url's).

I have another domain which was similar to the product site domain, so I tried it out as an experiment. I set the domain up on my server, so that it just did a 301 redirect to the main product site.

I then set up another ad which used the second domain as the destination url, but when someone clicked they were redirected to the main site. Has been fine all day, 20p CPC value, and been making sales

The adwords bot should follow the redirect, so it shows that there was nothing wrong with the landing page. It seems like the domain name has been black