Advice From Users Of Google Adwords

Zinsco

You can't buy your way to the top in the organic search results. No possible way. You need good, relevant content and quality backlinks.

Giftcard

Did you call At&t ?

J. Sullivan

What service were they trying to sell you?

Why would you talk to AT&T about anything having to do with the web?

Why would AT&T tell you that you can buy your way on to Google/Yahoo/Bing when they aren't affiliated with those companies?

How much did the sales rep say it would cost?

How come you're not at the top for any of your websites?

Again, just to clarify, there is absolutely no possible way to buy your way to the top of a search engine.

If there was, everyone and their brother would be doing this.

PPC requires a ton of research for a potentially minimal gain. Not the first thing I recommend when it comes to traffic, especially when there are ways to get plenty of it for free.

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Zinsco

I know you're try'n to get my goat, I'm gonna LOL.

Giftcard

first i do my own seo. At&t called me. however you seem to be calling me a liar. you should learn more about the services they offer. try reading news articles. maybe its a new program. Your funny because the At&t rep thought she new more than me also. I copied and pasted to her my ranking on the SE she ask me how muched it cost me, I told her it was almost free. You don't even no that At&t has a adverting department.
.

Giftcard

How come you're not at the top for any of your websites? Lets take a look at Frederick Airport Shuttle on Google I have two spots on the first page, on Yahoo i have two spots and Im number 1. this is all while im changing my content on my site.

Giftcard

bwi shuttle to frederick on google i have two spots plus my twitter page on yahoo http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=...fp-t-701&sao=1

frederick shuttle to bwi on yahoo i have 5 spots plus one free ad http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=...fp-t-701&sao=1
on google i have three spots on the first page http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...h&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

carlsore

Here is a link to a thread on CT I started on a while ago regarding some common Google Adwords mistakes. If you're going to set this up on your own, the article outlines a few key points that may help you.

Google Adwords Tips For Contractors

Carl Sorensen

cbscreative

Hey, Carl, it's been a while since I've seen you post. Welcome back!

Giftcard, I'd recommend you delete the credibiliity rating you gave that AT&T rep from the file structure of your mind. She must have been a refuge from a failed telemarketing company selling vacuum cleaners, one of those kind of people who will stoop to any level of BS to try and make a sale. As others have already stated, buying the #1 spot on Google is a myth, and the AT&T rep was full of wind.

What's really interesting about your experience is that now, finally, after years of diminishing return on Yellow Pages advertising, many of these YP companies are now selling web design. It's more like they're trying to grab a lifeboat at the last minute than using a well planned strategy to adapt to the changing market. For now at least, let the buyer beware. Just ask yourself if you should trust anyone who refuses to lower rates even when they know the value is dropping (for years). Now all of a sudden, they're able to solve your problem after they ignored it for so long.

Stay tuned next week as we discuss how newspapers are positioning themselves to deal with the Internet threat...

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Steve Chittenden
Web/SEO Geek • Graphic Artist • Writer • Marketing Guy
One reason I know so much about the web and marketing is that I don't have to know as much about construction.

Mylocalcontract

PPC is an important SEO ingredient. Whats great about managed PPC is that you can control costs (great if you are just starting out and on a tight budget). I would suggest doing a long tail keyword campaign which will allow you to target less costely keywords and still cast a wide traffic net so to speak. Organic SEO can accompany this managed PPC campaign and might consist of link building, content updates to your existing site, on page tactics outline above.

MarcD

Wow this has been lots of good information. Thank you everyone.

I have the website up and running, Finally am indexed in google. but not for the keywords I want. I am going to keep adding information and posts to the site. I am watching the site move up a little bit each day and each day google seems to add another page of content into its index.

I have been running google adwords for about 4 days now. 0 clicks with about 448 impressions.


Again thank you everyone lots of great information.

carlsore

To me, this would suggest you have an issue with your campaign... CTR (click through rate) of 1-4% would be average, 5-15% is above average and 15-30+% would be excellent. The higher your CTR the less you'll pay for your click costs and increase your ad position significantly.

To be running on average you'd need at least 4 clicks out of the impressions you've shown to suggest the campaign was working.

Do you have the content network turned on or off? Make sure it's off.

That many impressions and no clicks would also suggest you've got some poor keyword targeting in place.

Carl Sorensen

kcremodeler

I agree, your CTR is not working well. Three thoughts...

1. In Adwords be sure you are geo-targeting your campaign - just pick the geographic area you want your ads to be shown in.

2. Simple keyword trick: Make a list of all your competitors and bid on their names as well.

3. Review your keyword list, and make sure they are very targeted. Then have a good call to action in your ad - if you can offer a free report or something on your site, it will generate leads.

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Burke Jones
Architect & Local Market Domination Web Marketing Guru
Kansas City Remodeling - My blog about remodeling in Kansas City.
Local Market Online Domination - SEO & Local Listing Service

Zinsco

In metro areas the keyword bidding for contractors is over $8 per click, and after 30 to 50 clicks you'll hear from a customer. Google Adwords was great when the service was new, but now so many people are in it that there is no longer a realistic return on investment. I can't afford to pay $300 for the opportunity to bid on installing a ceiling fan.

For contractors, Adwords has become as relevant as Service Magic.

HomeElements

Do not forget about the actual placement of the ad itself on your site. You here of this alot, and I do it myself by accident at least once a week but going to a site link I bit fast and accidentaly hitting an ad.

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tin man

PPC has worked the best for us on" long tail keywords",like painter Boston.The broad term Painter more traffic and more money.

If you sell a product with your service this works best for ppc because
they are ready to buy that product.

PPC is a fast way to get the phone to ring.You can test it see what works for shot money 50-100.

If you hit on something that pulls, it will save you money to have a landing page just for that keyword,your click through rate will go up also.

I have found it well worth paying a pro to run it,it will save you money in the long run.They have the software to spit out hundreds of landing pages.

Aiken Colon

really it use to be "structured settlement", which back in the day would go off for upwards of $500. I think google put a cap on adwords of $100 per click.

JJ

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brooklynite

I have a feeling once you pay for ADSENSE your site organically DROPS to pages 10 and 15 so you are hooked onto the ADSENSE deal...

Just my guess.

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Aiken Colon

Do you think that changes per keyword, Carl? We run a pretty decent sized adwords account, and I have almost all keywords up to 10/10. What few that are not are 9/9. Yet my CTR is no where near the 15% level. On average we run between 7%-8%.

JJ

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Blower Door
Knipex
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carlsore

It depends on how you've structured your campaign... If you've got 1 ad that is being triggered by 10+ keywords then you will have a hard time increasing CTR. 7-8% is actually pretty good, but to really see the price come down, and the ad position increase you want to be 10%+ is what I have found.. If you can hit the 15% CTR mark you'll almost always have the best position for the lowest possible price.

The easiest way to improve your CTR is to refine your targeting... In a "perfect" world, you'd have an optimized landing page for every single keyword phrase you were targeting on adwords in their own individual ad groups.

For the amount of work that's truly involved in setting up an adwords campaign and not losing your shirt, you're better off in the long-term to focus on some SEO for your main keyword phrases and use adwords to pickup on the keywords you might not rank organically for, especially if you offer several different services.

Carl