Help me understand Google Adwords

Xix

I'm new to google adwords, there's a lot of information out there but some is out of date, and I have no idea if I'm using the new Keyword Planner correctly or not.

What exactly is the key to having an effective ad campaign? Effective meaning I can maximize clicks for as cheaply as possible. I have some ads getting 0.50-0.60% click through rate, how far is that from average?

Some people say the best strategy is to have 10-20 good keywords, but doesn't it make sense to have a lot of keywords even if they are low volume because they would be less competition and cheaper to bid for? If I have a hundreds of keywords that each get about 10 impressions a month, isn't that better than competing for a few high volume keywords that all together get the same amount of impressions per month as the cheaper words?

I'm also targeting a very specific region (two counties).

-Confused as Fuck

Blarghy

Having high-quality keywords is generally the key to having a good adwords campaign. The thing to realize about casting your net too wide with marginal keywords is that the keyword that-maybe-sorta-kinda represents your widget is probably not what the person that is googling the keyword is thinking about when they do so. And if all they do is click on your keyword and immediately hit the back button, then you're just wasting your budget.

Note that low-volume and low-quality keywords are not necessarily the same thing, if there's a keyword that perfectly describes your widget, but is rarely searched for, it still might be fine. However, try googling your keywords to see what comes up by default on google. If your website is already on or near the top of the first page anyway, you probably don't need to add it as a keyword and pay for something you already get for free.

On whether it is worthwhile to fight for the high-volume keywords, that really depends on the nature of the keywords you're fighting for. If you're a pizza delivery place, for instance, it may well be worth fighting for the "Your city/area food delivery" super-high volume keywords, because those are keywords that hungry people looking to buy food right now use, and being near the top is gold because then you get the hungry people money instead of someone else. However, if you're a grocery store looking to advertise your next-day delivery service, fighting for that same keyword is probably less worthwhile, because you're more marginally relevant to said hungry people.

Darkewolfe

Since you're asking for advice, I assume you're not a market dominator looking to fight the entire planet for a high-volume keyword. And since that's the case, it's been my experience that moving more toward niche in word choice is more productive, since you waste less time putting your adword in front of people who aren't looking for whatever you've got.

TheBigEasy

Blarghy wrote: »

However, try googling your keywords to see what comes up by default on google. If your website is already on or near the top of the first page anyway, you probably don't need to add it as a keyword and pay for something you already get for free.

This is not always true. If your keyword is near the top or even at the very top of the organic search results, it doesn't automatically mean that you should stop your adwords campaign. If you are the only one advertising on that keyword you can think about either lowering the CPC bids or actually stop bidding on that keyword.

But if you are not the only one bidding on the keyword, switching bidding off completely just gives your competition the click. Users usually don't discriminate between ads and organic search results, they click the first thing that comes up. If thats the ad of your competition, you just lost a prospective customer.

Figgy

TheBigEasy wrote: »

Blarghy wrote: »

However, try googling your keywords to see what comes up by default on google. If your website is already on or near the top of the first page anyway, you probably don't need to add it as a keyword and pay for something you already get for free.

This is not always true. If your keyword is near the top or even at the very top of the organic search results, it doesn't automatically mean that you should stop your adwords campaign. If you are the only one advertising on that keyword you can think about either lowering the CPC bids or actually stop bidding on that keyword.

But if you are not the only one bidding on the keyword, switching bidding off completely just gives your competition the click. Users usually don't discriminate between ads and organic search results, they click the first thing that comes up. If thats the ad of your competition, you just lost a prospective customer.

This, partially. Google says that when you have an ad in the paid results AND an ad in the organic results, users are more likely to click on your ad because they see more results to your page as trustworthy and they're more likely to click on the organic result.

Of course, since you can no longer easily see organic keywords coming into your site, there's no easy way to prove if that's true for you.

Still, with a paid result you can tailor the description, landing page and sitelinks exactly as you want them. The first result that comes up organically might not be (and usually is not) the most effective landing page for conversion.