Can someone please explain Adwords to me

[Harriers9]

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I launched a new dating site over the weekend and made a list of words/search terms for Adwords.

The site is called Hot Mates so one of the words I chose was 'hot'. I also gave the list a budget of £30 pm.

By Monday the site had received around fifty hits and when I checked the stats the majority of them had come from Google via the 'hot' term.

Next day Google had made the term 'hot' un-available for search and the hits dried up.

Today I've checked my stats and the site has received another twenty hits all mainly coming from the adword 'couples'.

I bet you can't guess what Google have done?

Do I throw more money at it and increase my budget daily until I'm bankrupt or just sit and watch the site die because of Googles greed.

On another dating site that I run they have made eleven out of twenty search words un-available so I paused it for while.

Is there something inherently wrong with the way I operate this or is it all down to Google.

[axod]

The issue here is that you're not targeting well.
If you bid on the keyword 'hot', the user may be looking for a number of things... porn, cookers, fireworks, etc etc
This means with such a broad keyword that only a few of them will click on your advert, giving you a low CTR.
Google want to make money, so showing your advert with it's low CTR for that term isn't good business for them. They see your low CTR, and raise your minimum bid.

The answer is:
1. Either target keywords better - avoid broad keyword terms that could be anything.
2. Improve your ad copy so more people click through
3. Bid higher if it's still profitable for you

I'd say #1 is probably the most important though. Think of all the search terms that are *obviously* people looking for a dating site, and add them. If it's not obvious that the searcher is looking for it, it's probably going to be more costly to advertise for that keyword.

[Harriers9]

Thanks for that Axod. I don't really know how I can target better keywords when this is one phrase I've used:

how to meet the girl of your dreams
Paused Poor
Minimum bid: £2.50

So I've used a specific phrase there aimed right between the eyes for someone looking for a dating site and I get asked to pay £2.50 pc for it.

[Brendon]

>> how to meet the girl of your dreams

Search 101 : do real people ACTUALLY search using queries like that? On Ask, possibly. On Google, hell no. The issue with that phrase is likely that you've selected it as a broad match, and your ad is showing for all sorts of "related" searches that are way off.

Also, consider disambiguation. To take a parallel example, if I search for "how to save a life", am I looking for first aid advice? Or career guidance on becoming a doctor? Or can I just not remember the name of that band, and am looking for a lyric site? The same ads show in every case, and for at least 2 of them the results are likely to suck, no matter how well "I've used a specific phrase there aimed right between the eyes for someone".

If the ad doesn't work, and you're confident that it isn't because your copy sucks (writing good PPC ad copy is an art form), consider that how ever well you THINK you've done in targetting your potential user base, they seem to disagree. If they aren't clicking on the ads (which is what leads to the "poor" rating, and the CPC hike), you're missing something

>> By Monday the site had received around fifty hits

Try niche variations on the term "online dating". The reason that traffic is so expensive is because it converts... and because the #1 slot will likely drive 5k visitors / day

[Shane]

ouch.. two observations..

1) your keywords are far too vague
2) £30 a month isn't going to even be a full stop in the encyclopedia britannica compared to the spends on there the big boys are playing with

I've experience in this area and well aware that a dating site and could burn thousands in a day on the main terms.. so it's a case of finding REALLY specific terms and tailoring your landing pages enough that they pass the quality score.

"Hot" is painfully dire for a keyword tbh.. check out these top "hot" terms :

red hot chili pepper (31k+ searches)
hot tub
hot fuzz
hot (21k+ searches)
hot or not
hot girl
hot babes
friends hot mom
hot wheels (7.3K+ searches)

unless you have "chilli, pepper, tub, fuzz" etc set as negatives you'll be getting thousands of irrelevent impressions a day that have no interest in your site, these impressions lower you click through ratio so cutting them out is very important..

the ones there that are girl related, "girls, babes, mom" are most likely looking for a porn, pics, sex contact site rather than a dating site

you only want to show for what is actually interested in your sites product/services.. cutting your irrelevant impressions by 50% is like boosting your click through ratio by 100% !.. ie..

1000 impressions.. 100 clicks.. CTR = 10%
500 impressions .. 100 clicks.. CTR = 20% which is 100% higher than 10%

higher the CTR the more relevant a keyword is seen to be.. which is GOOOOOD

after spending mucho thousands on dating PPC .. take it from me.. you really do need to do some serious research and realise even £500 a day is nothing to burn on dating PPC so a smaller budget needs optimising so much better to even get a look in.

might be wise to look for the longer search terms that the big boys can't be bothered to chase, 3/4/5+ word phrases grouped tightly and optimise your landing pages to the adgroup keywords... isn't easy but with such a small budget you've not got much of an alternative really.

[krush]

you need stuff like "cityname dating".

shane is right, its going to be tough as the dating market is very saturated.

one thing i would do to start is sort out clean urls for each city name i.e. www.datingsite.co.uk/london/women.htm