"I have read its best to set the bid to 30% of the suggested price, are there any additional guidance."

For Google, CTR is king (everyone wins: no clicks = no one gets paid) and because your account history clock is always ticking, you need to get highest CTR as quickly as possible.

So the strategy should be to bid aggressively right from the start to get a high CTR and then start to bid down to optimise for lower prices and probably better conversion at lower positions.

Optimally you should be tracking conversions and able to take advantage of Conversion Optimizer (30 conversions per campaign per 30 day period or less) – it works really well in all the testing I have done and read about, but the rules of the game are very different (http://www.adwordsanswers.com/2009/02/14/google-adwords-conversion-optimizer-special-report-from-adwordsanswerscom/)

Yes, you can "lurk" with low bids and low positions just to gather impression volume data (I’ve done this) before you commit to higher bids and positions for selected keywords (http://www.adwordsanswers.com/2008/07/03/adwords-keywords-research/)

However, you need good Quality Score to get away with this or your ad won’t show and gather the Impression data you need, and over time your QS is likely to be adversely affected by a low CTR.

Certainly for the Content network, Google have published case history data which dramatically evidences the need for initial bids to be artificially high to get initial prominence and eyeballs on your ads.

This website is a WordPress blog.

Why?

Because articles posted on it get into the Google index in just 14 minutes:

"I notice that some adwords ads have bold words in their headings. How do I achieve that?"

a good question with an easy answer – include your keywords in the headline.

In fact, without overdoing it, it’s very important to include keywords wherever possible and appropriate in your ad.

They are then bolded and invite a higher response rate from users seeing your ad.

You benefit from a higher clickthrough rate (CTR) and Google will reward your ad with higher positions, meaning you can pay less.

So always ensure you have keywords somewhere in your ad, and experiment to see what works best – sometimes even small changes have big improvements.

Oh, and don’t forget to always test at least two ads against each other to see which works best for CTR – make sure you set your campaign to ad delivery Rotate (not Optimise) so the statistics are accurate.

Read all Google AdWords Tips here

Back to AdWords Tips Home

You don’t want Ad Impressions that cost you CTR, money, or both.

A client I ran a recent training course for was concerned that rival Companies in India were searching on his keywords, triggering his ads, diluting his CTR, and maybe costing him ad clicks.

If you’re running ads in the UK, someone overseas can search on Google.co.uk and find your ads.

The way to prevent this happening is ensure IP-targeting is working properly for you.

So instead of targeting the UK as your Country Location, simply select England, Scotland, Wales and so on instead in your Campaign settings.

Then, only IP addresses within those locations will be able to trigger your ads.

Read all Google AdWords Tips here

Back to AdWords Tips Home

Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 

A. when it’s rare and exotic!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.

Why Not?

You just uploaded new keywords. Often there will be a short delay while Google analyses them

If they are "rare and exotic", Google may pause them before running.

By this, I mean phrase and exact match types with 3, 4, 5 or longer words in them ("long-tail" keywords).

This is based on their match types, and what Google already knows about their historical performance with other AdWords users.

It’s best to quote Google directly.

This from my Google Account Manager:

"Many of the keywords you are using in other campaigns have been flagged as low-traffic keywords and have temporarily stop entering the ad auction. This state is only temporary and these keywords will be reactivated automatically if we find that they could start delivering traffic.

Often long keywords in phrase or exact have low search volumes. You may wish to consider editing your keyword lists. "

You can always view keyword status by hovering your mouse over the magnifying glass to the right hand side of the keyword when logged in to your account.

Back to AdWords Support home

Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 

A. when it’s a negative!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.

Why Not?

One of your Negative keywords is suppressing it.

You’re using negatives – right?

If you’re using any broad or phrase match keywords in your Campaigns, this is seriously important.

Only exact match keywords are exempt from this.

Negative keywords are a highly advanced area, since there actually exist 8 different types of them.

Yes, EIGHT different types of negative keywords, with extremely subtle effects.

I will be writing an advanced user guide about them in the future.

Get an overview with this article about AdWords negative keywords.

If you want to know more, contact me at the Help Desk

You can always view keyword status by hovering your mouse over the magnifying glass to the right hand side of the keyword when logged in to your account.

This will clearly indicate if a negative keyword is suppressing your ad.

Back to AdWords Support home

Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 

A. when it’s Inactive!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.

Why Not?

If your keyword Quality Score is Poor, your bid price will be inflated.

Quality Score was introduced to weed out people trying to game the system and building automated, rubbishy websites with no real value.

Google prizes relevance – always, and above all.

What’s bad for uusers, is bad for Google, and they won’t tolerate it. Even at the expense of income.

If you don’t bid enough on the keyword, or at Ad Group default level, the keyword is flagged Inactive and you have to meet the minimum bid to revive it.

Quality Score has many factors, not all public knowledge, and Google introduce revisions to it all the time (like their patented Search algorithm).

You can turn on the Quality Score indicator in your ad group display.

Generally, if you have a decent and authentic website, with good, original content, inbound and outbound links, things will be ok.

But you must then carefully match your keywords, ads, and landing pages.

That’s in everyone’s interests.

You can always view keyword status by hovering your mouse over the magnifying glass to the right hand side of the keyword when logged in to your account.

Back to AdWords Support home

Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 

A. when it’s invisible!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.

Why Not?

If your bid price is too low, your AdRank will suffer.

So your ads will languish low down in the list.

No one will see them if they are too low down.

So no one will click and your CTR will suffer.

This is a downward spiral to disaster, unless you’re using it as a deliberate strategy for keyword research, as I teach here).

You can see each keyword position showing in the statistics.

Generally you don’t want to be below position 6, or you’re then "below the fold" and people will have to scroll down to see you.

Google Analytics can tell you what each ad is earning at what actual display position – highly recommended (and free).

I once saw an ad at Position 401 (really). Who’s seeing it and clicking? No one!

You can always view keyword status by hovering your mouse over the magnifying glass to the right hand side of the keyword when logged in to your account.

Back to AdWords Support home

Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 

A.  when it’s a cheap-skate!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.

Why Not?

If your daily budget is too low, your ad delivery will be "throttled" to space your ads out evenly during the day for maximum exposure (unless you deliberately set your campaign to "accelerated").

This will be exacerbated if you’ve also used Position Preference.

So sometimes your ads will show, sometimes they won’t.

You can check your Budget is OK (or not) by editing your campaign settings and checking Google’s suggested Budget.

If there’s a major Budget discrepancy, you will get a Budget Alert showing up on your Campaign overview page.

You can always view keyword status by hovering your mouse over the magnifying glass to the right hand side of the keyword when logged in to your account.

Back to AdWords Support home

Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 

A. when it’s Politically Incorrect!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.

Why Not?

Google’s url policy is now being rigidly enforced.

You have to be using the same root url in your display url as your destination url.

No more redirects

Your ad will be Disapproved if you are trying the old Affiliate method of not owning your url, but redirecting to another.

Back to AdWords Support home

Q. When is a Keyword, Not a Keyword?
 

A. when it’s counterfeit!

You Can’t See Your AdWords Ad.

Why Not?

You are infringing someone’s Trademark.

You can bid on a Trademarked term, but you can’t have it in your ad without permission.

Your ad will show status Disapproved.

Trademarks are a BIG issue.

But sometimes this will clearly not apply, and you can request an exception.

That usually gets things going again.

But unless you have the Trademark owner’s permission (e.g you sell accessories for Apple iPod), Google will stonewall you into getting that permission – there’s no "Get out of Jail Free" card on this one.

You can always view keyword status by hovering your mouse over the magnifying glass to the right hand side of the keyword when logged in to your account.

Back to AdWords Support home