Results 1 to 13 of 13
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    4,028

    Question Google Adwords - Help

    I finally took the plunge signing up for a google adwords account tonight.

    Althought I'm extremely impressed with the speed of the setup and such, I'm very VERY frustrated with finding phrases that can help me.

    It seems if I even have the word "host" or "webhost" in my phrase then I am S.O.L when it comes to a nice first page ranking.

    Does anyone have any articles, tips or anything they can help me with?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Kalamazoo, MI
    Posts
    60

    Niche

    Perhaps find a niche and go for that. Try exact phrases. '"Business websites".
    Better yet, are you offering any other services besides web hosting? reseller accounts? taht term may be an easier sell.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Houston, TX - Originally from UK
    Posts
    707
    If you stick to words and phrases like web host, and hosting you may as well not bother I'm afraid.

    Like jsquared said, find a niche. The impressions will be lower, but your CTR should be higher if you target properly.

    We finally bit the bullet yesterday too, after extensive research. Took us a good few hours to work out our keywords, and even now I'm not happy. I suppose it's a continual process - watching, refining, watching some more.

    One tip is to try the "quoted phrase" method. For example, web host won't get you very far, but "web host" may get you further (in actuality that example won't, but remember it is just an example!)

    Focus on your added extras. We have. No results so far, but equally our impressions are quite low. Not worried yet. Early days...

    Hope that helps, and good luck!
    Kinkamono Internet Services - The Internet. Done Right.
    Dive In...

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Cornwall - England
    Posts
    37
    What you want to do is to set it up so that each add is specified for one key word and for each add you have that one keyword which must be exact and about 10 - 20 negative keywords. That way your add seems more like what people are searching for.

    Google adwords have brilliant service. If you want to then just mail them and ask them for advice, when I did they submitted a complete optimisation of my whole campaign which haled the amount of impressions but doubled the click through.

    Shame I am yet to make a sale!

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Kalamazoo, MI
    Posts
    60

    Email

    That's cool that they helped you out like that. Then again, I guess it makes sense for them to try and get you more clicks since it's more money for them. I'll try that with my current campaing after a couple of weeks. But you have to check your campaign just about daily to refine it. Look at the ads that do well and create more similar ones to see if you can do even better. Remove the poorest ads. Google's own optimization service helps here too and will show the ads that get the most clicks.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Cornwall - England
    Posts
    37
    They don't try to get you more clicks, they caused my adds to have less then half clicks!

    However most of those clicks followed through to my product page and seemed interested in my hosting!

    I have a huge problem with my account because all the numbers conflict and nothing adds up... the only way for me to receive accrete figures as to what my adds are doing is by a specific search on the report. which I now have e-mailed to me daily.

    See unfortunately last month my campaign status was saying around 12000 impressions and 12 clicks however I then got charged around $200 and when I checked it out I found out I had actually got around 400 clicks!

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    4,028
    Thanks for all the tips guys. Going to mess around some more today.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Cornwall - England
    Posts
    37
    ok, if you want a hand with google adwords i have had a fair bit of good and bad experience with them and might be able to help you with some things.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Vancouver Canada
    Posts
    11
    To help in finding good keywords to bid on, I would recommend either using the free overture search suggestion tool or the Wordtracker service (pay). The other postings have been right on - if you are just going to bid on 'web host' or 'business hosting' don't even bother.

    are there any special services that you provide? Do you service any special geographic location? These things can make a big difference.
    Danny
    Editor - Web Hosting Voice

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Sofia
    Posts
    1,354
    I tried once in January, thought it was hot-dog easy, but the whole thing turned out to be high maths. I was so frustrated at my failure to produce at least 10 pageviews that even rejected the nice $20 offer of a Google sales-lady.

    PS. Especially frustrating was the realization of the fact that being a professional word-mongler, I failed to provide the right words and phrases...
    Last edited by Imago; 04-01-2004 at 06:31 PM.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    New Orleans, LA
    Posts
    581
    Beyond finding the niche phrases as mentioned above, also be careful to try and get the most from your $

    1) You want the clicks to be as targeted as possible

    - pre qualify the clicks by putting price in the adwords text
    - use a special offer

    2) You want to do your best to make these clicks buy

    - Land the clicks on a special page directly tied to the ad offer
    - in the top fold validate the info in the ad so the visitor is not confused
    - Have the 'buy now' link prominent and in the top fold if possible
    - keep the page focused and non cluttered
    - have a testimonial on this page

    (on your phrases - put them in ".." to be sure your ad only gets shown for that phrase),
    Andrew McMaster
    http://www.FindMyHosting.com
    Compare Prices, Consumer Reviews, Help, Guides and More.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    MO, USA
    Posts
    1,104
    - pre qualify the clicks by putting price in the adwords text
    Does this apply for more than cheap hosts?

    Within just a couple of days and over 12000 impressions with less than 50 clicks, ours has already been slowed twice in a few hours. I'm afraid if we leave pricing off of the ad, we'll have a lot of click throughs from people looking for cheap hosts and not buying at regular prices.

    I'm leary about narrowing our keywords to something so specific that we don't have enough impressions to generate the clickthroughs we want just to get their ratio. Btw, anyone happen to know what CTR they're looking for?

    And what's a decent avg position? I've noticed our keywords have quite a variance when it comes to position. What exactly does this positioning mean? Is it the page number, ad #, or something else when people pull up results?

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Tampa, Florida
    Posts
    81
    As a new hosting company, Adwords isn't an option for me at this point. It's funny, I can't speak for others, but if I can remember correctly, over the 4 years that I've used Google every single day, I havn't once clicked on an ad!
    Adam Reyher
    PylonHosting.com - We deliver quality hosting

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •