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So here I am trying to get the SEO work on my website finished up and am now contemplating using Google Adwords. The keywords I am targeting cost around 2 dollars a click which isn't too bad.
Has anyone had good luck with Adwords advertising? What kind of conversion rate did you see from it? Did you have trouble with click fraud (competitors trying to run up your bill)?
The only flaw I see is Google charges for clicks and not by unique click. If a potential customer clicks once and looks, leaves and returns I am out four dollars. If they keep coming back four or five times it would add up pretty quickly. This is a BIG problem I have with Adwords and where it seems to get expensive. If Google can identify unique users in Google Analytiics they should be able to do the same in Adwords. I can see charging for a unique click per day but if you have a shopper that uses the adwords link repeatedly instead of bookmarking your site it can add up. (Good for Google but expensive for the advertiser)
I have a 100 dollar credit so it won't cost me to test my Ad. the 100 dollar credit will produce 50 clicks on my site. I HOPE the conversion rate is higher than direct mail because a 1% conversion does not seem worthwhile (200 dollars per customer), the only way I could see it being viable is if I can achieve a 4 to 5% conversion rate or higher.
So- Has anyone used Adwords, what kind of conversion rate did you see and would you do it again (or are you still doing it?)
So here I am trying to get the SEO work on my website finished up and am now contemplating using Google Adwords. The keywords I am targeting cost around 2 dollars a click which isn't too bad.
Has anyone had good luck with Adwords advertising? What kind of conversion rate did you see from it? Did you have trouble with click fraud (competitors trying to run up your bill)?
The only flaw I see is Google charges for clicks and not by unique click. If a potential customer clicks once and looks, leaves and returns I am out four dollars. If they keep coming back four or five times it would add up pretty quickly. This is a BIG problem I have with Adwords and where it seems to get expensive. If Google can identify unique users in Google Analytiics they should be able to do the same in Adwords. I can see charging for a unique click per day but if you have a shopper that uses the adwords link repeatedly instead of bookmarking your site it can add up. (Good for Google but expensive for the advertiser)
I have a 100 dollar credit so it won't cost me to test my Ad. the 100 dollar credit will produce 50 clicks on my site. I HOPE the conversion rate is higher than direct mail because a 1% conversion does not seem worthwhile (200 dollars per customer), the only way I could see it being viable is if I can achieve a 4 to 5% conversion rate or higher.
So- Has anyone used Adwords, what kind of conversion rate did you see and would you do it again (or are you still doing it?)
i have been using adwords for about a year not local more national and even canada as well but at first i did pretty well lots of clicks converting to sales people spending a lot of time on the site. they shut me down and i wound up getting back up and running but things have never been the same.
sounds like your relatively knowledgable about ppc advertising. im the same way myself was managing it myself up until recently and thought i was ding wel but recently hired someone to manage my ppc for me and it makes a world of difference. money is spent much more efficiently evn though im paying him a fee monthly to do it. he also optimized my site with keywords and metatags and also anlyzed my site and redid some stuff because the quality rating on your site affects what you pay for keywords. its really a science nad a lot of trial and eror to adwords.you also need to have some decent content on your site or your going to pay more for adwords. im really happy with my guy if youd like his contact info pm me. im in chicago but hes out of new mexico
i have been using adwords for about a year not local more national and even canada as well but at first i did pretty well lots of clicks converting to sales people spending a lot of time on the site. they shut me down and i wound up getting back up and running but things have never been the same.
sounds like your relatively knowledgable about ppc advertising. im the same way myself was managing it myself up until recently and thought i was ding wel but recently hired someone to manage my ppc for me and it makes a world of difference. money is spent much more efficiently evn though im paying him a fee monthly to do it. he also optimized my site with keywords and metatags and also anlyzed my site and redid some stuff because the quality rating on your site affects what you pay for keywords. its really a science nad a lot of trial and eror to adwords.you also need to have some decent content on your site or your going to pay more for adwords. im really happy with my guy if youd like his contact info pm me. im in chicago but hes out of new mexico
How much did your guy charge you per month? I want to see what I can do on my own locally first but some of the stuff I would like to advertise nationally.
I spent close to 12 hours today tweaking the website making sure there were no spelling or grammar errors, setting the urls right with the keywords, setting up metatags, yada yada yada.....
This website stuff is a lot of work (for anyone thinking about making "easy money in e-commerce")
I think I will "go live" with the adwords this weekend.
wartrace, I'm paying $250 a month which origionally seemed high to me, however most companies want you to sign a contract of a year if not six months at the very least. i dont want to be locked into a contract with someone who i dont know whether thy will perform or not. also many of these companies dont want to work with you unless your spending $1000 per month. ive looked into a decent amount of companies and seems like 20% of ad budget is a pretty standard rate of charge for adwords management most companies require you to spend $1000 so basically $200 a month to manage your adwords.
i honestly didn't even really try to get my guy down on price at all, he also did the site redesign for me for $250 which was supposed to just include metatags, keywords, keyword research but he's also been doing some content writing for me, actually redesigning website, creating logos for me, etc and doing a bunch of stuff that wasn't even in our agreement so i can't really complain about cost if somene is willing to go above and beyond for me, he's also very responsive.
site redesign and stuff just happenned and most search engines index once a month i believe so cant speak to how its helped our google organic results yet. overall happy. my advice whoever you go with dont get locked into a contract bc you dont know how well that company wil do. also you could find adwords doesn't really do much for your site or industry and your locked in throwing money away.
So here I am trying to get the SEO work on my website finished up and am now contemplating using Google Adwords. The keywords I am targeting cost around 2 dollars a click which isn't too bad.
Has anyone had good luck with Adwords advertising? What kind of conversion rate did you see from it? Did you have trouble with click fraud (competitors trying to run up your bill)?
The only flaw I see is Google charges for clicks and not by unique click. If a potential customer clicks once and looks, leaves and returns I am out four dollars. If they keep coming back four or five times it would add up pretty quickly. This is a BIG problem I have with Adwords and where it seems to get expensive. If Google can identify unique users in Google Analytiics they should be able to do the same in Adwords. I can see charging for a unique click per day but if you have a shopper that uses the adwords link repeatedly instead of bookmarking your site it can add up. (Good for Google but expensive for the advertiser)
I have a 100 dollar credit so it won't cost me to test my Ad. the 100 dollar credit will produce 50 clicks on my site. I HOPE the conversion rate is higher than direct mail because a 1% conversion does not seem worthwhile (200 dollars per customer), the only way I could see it being viable is if I can achieve a 4 to 5% conversion rate or higher.
So- Has anyone used Adwords, what kind of conversion rate did you see and would you do it again (or are you still doing it?)
If you have a good quality score which is made up of previous CTR and relevancy of your ad and website to the search ophrase you can hammer down on the CPC. The $2 could be just the average bid of people placing ads on the front page. So good optimisation can get your costs down.
I would suggest that if you can afford it that you ihire an Adwords campaign manager to help you set up and run your Adwords. It saved me a lot of money and I could clearly see the improvements in CPA and overall costs going down and leads going up.
It's typical of consumers to click your ad to view your websites, hit the back button visit a competitors site and do the same and come back to you. But don't be too concerned about that though Adwords has clickfraud monitoring systems in place and can detect malicious clicks and such. Constant bot clicks and competitor sabotage clicks are easy to detect.
Conversion is important, when I got an Adwords consultant to help me on my campaigns he went through my entire conversion funnel, looking at my website and analytics data to evaluate site performance and then look at my badly structured Adwords campaign and do proper keyword selection and ad creation for them, here's my consultant.
I use to manage my own ads before, and I'd say I'm fairly competent with it. Problem is, it just takes too much time to manage your own ads. I just donw have the time for it so I hire someone else to take care of that for me
Been using adwords for many years - it is my bread and butter. I will be the contrarian here and tell you to do it yourself. It's very important for your business and it is not difficult to learn the ins and outs. Also, doing it yourself, you will learn and adjust, learn and adjust, as Google changes and adjusts all the time. You might want to pay a consultant one time to tweak your site for so-called organic SEO - AKA free listings. But handle the adwords yourself.
The keywords you choose are very important, but many good keywords are prohibitively expensive for the small business. So learning combos of words that will not break the bank but give you the ROI you need is important. Also, you do not have to be the number one ad on the first page to bring the response you need. You can do well being on the sidebar ads, being in the top three ads sometimes - things like that.
Have a landing page or pages with definite calls to action that you can measure daily. You will want to pay daily attention to your adwords campaign until you have a good handle on it.
Good luck with your venture!
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