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November 1, 2010 at 11:52 am #970550Up::0
Just wondering how many of you out there have tried or still use Adwords.
Love to know how you have found it. Last time I tried Adwords I found that, for example, I wanted the keyword “Perth Removalist” my initial pay per click was $0.50. The next day It had gone up to $1.75 to be on page one, so I matched it. Next day $3.50 – matched it. Next day $4.80 – decided to put my price back to $1.00. Next day Google was back to $1.25.
Is this just Google playing games? Or did tonnes of people suddenly want that keyword? Is it better to pay for impressions or per click. Love to hear what works for you?
Cheers
November 1, 2010 at 12:25 pm #1044817Up::0Tried it, cost me $100 and nothing to show for it, other than people asking if they can work for me….!
November 1, 2010 at 1:17 pm #1044818Up::0Funny you say that. When I was doing Adwords I had about 10 calls looking for a work. Just glad I was paying $10 per click. LOL
November 1, 2010 at 1:35 pm #1044819November 1, 2010 at 8:13 pm #1044820Up::0The increase in costs could be a few different things, but usually an increase that fast would be because the ads are getting hits, but not clicks. Sometimes changes in competitions can cause adwords costs to change by +-15%, but not in the way you have seen it.
Overall we have recorded that Adwords have gone up in cost over the years, but this quarter they went down in cost for the first time.
Is it better to pay for impressions or per click
Mmmm this really depends on the product and market. There are lots of factors to take into account with an adwords campaign. Impressions work if you are an FMCG who is looking to build a brand. PPC advertising works best in a tactical way when you can target your audience, push them to a goal and tweak the performance to maximise the benefits.
If you are really looking at an alternative method of promoting your business, I would do some SEO research.
November 1, 2010 at 8:17 pm #1044821Up::0This is why SEO is the new vogue of web design and development – it can seem a bit expensive at first but my site now is top of the page rank and I don’t spend a cent on adwords anymore!
So far I’ve been working on boosting the image manipulation side of my business on Google/Bing/Yahoo and others – and sure enough anyone now typing in ‘image manipulation brisbane’ will get to see my site first page on Google!
Spend the money you would have spent on adwords on good SEO, it’s worth way more in the long run as SEO will keep your company up the top without the need for any adwords
All the best
Scott Swinton
scott.swinton@altaimage.com.au
http://www.altaimage.com.auNovember 1, 2010 at 9:34 pm #1044822Up::0Here we go…
AdWords works and it works very well or else it would not be here after all these years. There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of businesses who use nothing else for lead generation.
It does not however work for everything! It works best where there is sufficient demand for the product in the coverage area and where that product actually has sufficient margin to allow for advertising.
Does it work for everybody – no, some people just don’t get it that they still need to have a unique, or at least competitive, offer attractively presented to site visitors in such a way as to prompt action.
Those same people tend to pick broad ‘head’ terms as their keywords and also tend to use broad matched keywords without doing the very necessary negative keyword implementation. I jest you not, I have seen boutiques use the term ‘fashion’ as a broad matched keyword – bad idea!
So yes it works but you need to know what you are doing!
SEO is great too and if you are one of the few folk in your area doing your thing then yes you are likely to get good rankings for area specific searches.
If however you are competing on a national level or wider then it gets harder. The more websites trying to get ranked for a term the harder it will be to get ranked. You can be on top of page one for months or years then find you have been dropped to page 5 in an update.
Bear in mind that Google is constantly experimenting with both the algorithm and the page layout, some of the layout experiments are pushing SEO’ed websites down and off the first page.
Think about that for a moment, what if you were Google, would you continue to give way free listings when you could easily charge for them? I wouldn’t!
My take on it is “Why Choose? Have both”. Here’s a link to an article written by some nice bloke for Gina Laforo’s blog: Getting on Google Seo or Pay Per Click which talks some more about that very topic.
November 1, 2010 at 9:47 pm #1044823Up::0I think the one thing I take away from adwords – and I’ve used them myself and built campaigns for clients so I do agree to some extent that they do and can work if implemented correctly. But remember this – you pay every time someone clicks on your advert until your daily budget is reached. And I know that some competitors will simply click your link to
A: Cost you money for a ‘dead click’
&
B: Remove your ad from display early on in the day so that their ad that is in direct competition with you shows up over yours
If you’re doing adwords make sure you use all the functionality – regionalise your campaign and set time limiters on ad placement to discourage the above habits and get a good spread on daily browsing habits
November 1, 2010 at 10:14 pm #1044824Up::0altaimage, post: 54694 wrote:I think the one thing I take away from adwords – and I’ve used them myself and built campaigns for clients so I do agree to some extent that they do and can work if implemented correctly. But remember this – you pay every time someone clicks on your advert until your daily budget is reached. And I know that some competitors will simply click your link toA: Cost you money for a ‘dead click’
&
B: Remove your ad from display early on in the day so that their ad that is in direct competition with you shows up over yours
If you’re doing adwords make sure you use all the functionality – regionalise your campaign and set time limiters on ad placement to discourage the above habits and get a good spread on daily browsing habits
I must admit, I wondered if this may happen…
November 1, 2010 at 10:36 pm #1044825Up::0….this happens more than you’d think!!
All the best everyone – if anyone wants a no obligation SEO report on their site then by all means let us know. There’s always something you can do to add a bit more exposure to your site without costing the earth and it’s really in essence the organic link placements that need the concentration SEO wise.
All the best
Scott @ alta|image
http://www.altaimage.com.auNovember 1, 2010 at 10:36 pm #1044826Up::0Nah – Google has been on that for a long time now. They may get away with a few clicks but repeated clicks from the same user are NOT counted.
November 1, 2010 at 10:37 pm #1044827November 1, 2010 at 10:56 pm #1044828Up::0I’m speaking candidly here – as someone with a vested interest in SEO and ad campaigns this is information that potentially doesn’t benefit me or yourself in some ways but honesty is always the best policy. Ad campaigns can and do work (adwords included) But – they must be run in conjunction with the bigger picture. Why build an ad campaign that drops off the second the money runs out – wouldn’t it be better spent working on both avenues? As always if you’re armed with the knowledge of what can and does happen in the real world then you’re always going to be better prepared.
I’ve seen real life cases of current clients (and from personal adword use) that some will simply click a link to use your adwords credit up.
And as for Google trying to clean up the logging of dead links, this is true but it doesn’t eradicate the problem in it’s entirety…
Not trying to start a war over this but people on these forums ask honest questions and I feel deserve honest answers, so in short – adwords as I said earlier can and do work – but you must be looking at the bigger picture marketing wise and developing an ongoing strategy rather than a quick fix.
p.s. – As you said ‘It might work for a few clicks….’
A few clicks at $4.50 per click soon stacks up – and that’s just from one competitor – imagine more than one competitor to you doing the same….November 1, 2010 at 11:23 pm #1044829Up::0Does anyone have a real-life example of a case where competitors have been clicking your ads and running up your spend? I have been running adwords campaigns for about 2 years now for a small group of clients and I have never come across a situation where the spend is getting run up with invalid clicks. To be fair, they are all in quite niche markets where I wouldn’t suspect their competitors would do this.
Honestly, if competitors were clicking how would you know? The only way is with the invalid clicks report and those are not billed.
If you really did have an unethical competitor clicking on your ads, yes they might increase your ad cost, but they will also push up your click-through rate and quality score, therefore positioning you higher in the search results.
@OP, IMHO yes, adwords works!! But not for everyone. If you have a good product to sell and you can sell it online (or at least have some kind of online conversion that leads to a sale and you can place value on your online conversions), adwords is awesome!
If you have unrelated landing pages, direct people to your homepage, don’t use clear calls to action, use generic keywords, don’t geotarget or are just trying to get adsense clicks, you are doing it wrong.
November 1, 2010 at 11:29 pm #1044830Up::0Hi Scott – No fight here, I agree with the concept of doing all that works hence my comment of using both PPC and SEO. I’d actually advise any other channels that work too be it online or off.
As for the point about your ads stopping for the day when the budget is used up, is this not the same with any advertising spend? If I don’t have the budget my ads are not going to get printed or broadcast! Its also the case that SEO consultants stop work if you stop paying them!
As for the notion SEO is somehow free and ever lasting, and in being honest on this board, we need to recognise this is simply not the case for most of us.
We have to put in the time and effort, maybe even use consultants and then risk it all disappearing when the competitors fight back or when Google changes the algo!
I hear people asking why they have dropped off the 1st page all the time, some of them have spent big on seo campaigns to get there and so are naturally peeved when they drop off. SEO companies however are delighted at that as they get the chance to start another job (well paid of course)!
As for competitors using up each others AdWords budgets, they may click but those clicks don’t count, at least not after the activity has been spotted. When it has Google stops counting those clicks and even credits the affected account with a ‘traffic quality adjustment’.
I’ve been there, done it and got the t-shirt and I’d love to see any evidence that those competitors clicks were actually counted against others budgets and not credited back!
My two cents
(and $10 each way on Americain in the Melbourne Cup)
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