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Offer HN: Adwords/PPC Help

22 points by glasner ↗ HN
Today seems like the day for lurkers to give back, so...

I've been doing PPC for over 10 years. My focus has mainly been advertising large, retail catalogs, but I've also worked with info products and service businesses.

I'm happy to help in anyway I can including:

- long-tail keyword ideas - account organization - ad copy - bidding strategy

If you have a general question or don't mind sharing the details with everyone, I can answer here. Otherwise, I'm available at the email address in my profile.

21 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 48.9 ms ] thread
Morinoko
Hi, thanks for the offer.

A general question: I do some Google PPC, LinkedIn PPC and Facebook PPC. I point those ads to specific landing pages relevant to the ads and keywords on my site.

I also track everything with Analytics (i check visitors, referrals, time on page, page views, keywords, countries).

I have a very small number of conversions (contact email sent via form). But I guess it's a numbers (%) game: I have a small amount of visitors.

The thing is: I check almost every day my stats on Analytics, but after my routine check of the stats i mentioned earlier, i really don't know what else to do/check/verify and what sort of "next action" I have to do with all the data I gather.

I guess, my question is: what's next?

glasner
Are you using broad match? If so, you should regularly:

- build out your list of negative keywords - create new ad groups with exact matches on any queries that trigger your broad matched keywords

Also, test your ad copy continuously. You want to maximize both your CTR and conversion rate. I'm still changing ads for keywords I added 6 years ago.

Really it's just a matter of coming of with things to test and testing them, much like the iterative process of improving a website.

re: Social Ads

I have much less experience. What I've done though is to continually tighten the demographics I'm targeting. You end up creating a ton of ads, but it's the only way to find the nuggets.

Andrew_Quentin
Google has again offered me a free £75 voucher. I run an info business. Is it worth it to spend their money? Is it like gambling, will I get addicted to it and loose in the long run? And just how do you promote an information business, I mean, basically, is it worth it to spend the time in spending their money?
glasner
I delved deep into Adwords after suffering a SEO slap from Google, that cut my revenues (and staff) in half over night. As long as you find your niche and stay on top of it, Adwords is the best bet in my experience.

I would say run some tests with the voucher after learning the basics. Focus on long tail keywords that describe the problem you help to solve. If you want to share the product here or via email, I can give you more guidance.

techbio
Any idea why they offered it? ie. I might try AdWords if they started me with $125.
kapauldo
Hey, thanks for the offer, I was just about to take you up on it, but I don't see your email in your profile.
glasner
Just updated my profile.
dennisgorelik
Did you have experience with AdWords API? I'd like to advertise large number of jobs (hundreds or thousands) from my job board www.postjobfree.com using few-cents bids on Google AdWords. Would AdWords API be right tools for that?
glasner
You can definitely do this the API. If you can handle doing some manual work, you could export files from your program to import into the Adwords Editor. The fees for the API can be limiting when you're dealing with w/ a lot of changes.
techbio
Do reliable price competitors to AdWords exist for niche arbitrage?

What sorts of advertising opportunities are there to yield a CTR/CPC combination ultimately yielding more than AdWords CPC?

Of course, I truly admire Google, and doubt any would exist for any length of time. Thoughts?

matthewcford
I have a question about the qual score, for one of my most visited and converting keyword I have a qual score of 2.. probably because it is a broad match term (most exacts are 5-7) Is there a way to improve this, should I create a separate landing page, I already use the keyword but maybe not enough. loading time score reports no probs.
glasner
If it's a very general term, you can expect a lower quality score. I would break out all the queries it's being matched to as exact matches, effectively using the broad match to research keywords.
linktylr
Not to step on your toes glasner, as it is an easy mistake to make, but match type DOES NOT affect quality score. All keywords on phrase and broad match are judged ONLY on instances in which the search query precisely matches the keyword, regardless of match type. This is referred to as the exact match subset.

You can find more info here: http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2010/09/28/negative-keywo...

Do you maintain "scent" from keyword to ad copy for this keyword? http://www.grokdotcom.com/topics/senseofscent.htm

If scent is not maintained you are hurting your clickthrough rate which accounts for a majority of the weighting behind quality score.

glasner
No problem. Thanks for expanding.

I didn't mean to imply that changing the match type will magically increase quality score. To me breaking them out as exact matches is about making the targeting better, both for the text ad and the landing page, which sets you up for a better quality score.

linktylr
Agreed. Broad match ads necessarily include less targeted ad copy which will ding clickthrough rates.

I'm fond of the "keyword trap" approach as described here http://www.clickequations.com/blog/2008/12/the-match-type-se..., but the same thing can be accomplished in one ad group with multiple match types if bid correctly.

Is this helpful matthewcford?

brettmjohnson
As a developer and long time Mac user, I can only ask, "How is Adwords any different on PowerPC?"

[In other words, if your niche uses some obscure jargon or acronym, don't assume most people know what it means...]

glasner
UPDATE => I received more emails than I had expected, but I'm going to work my way through them today. More emails are welcome, but it might take me a day to reply.