You’re right – pausing PPC campaigns and watching how sales / enquiries / conversions change is a sure-fire way to understand the true value of a PPC campaign.

But for those who are confident PPC is delivering value, but are not sure how (which keywords, ads etc are building interest and awareness), looking at user behaviour stats such as page views, time on site, returning visits etc becomes incredibly useful.

Cheers,
Alan

it seems drastic, but if you conversion data only shows that ppc is accounting for 20% of your sales, and they drop more or less, then you will know what actions to take.

Buy:Super Active ED Pack.Tramadol.VPXL.Propecia.Cialis Super Active+.Viagra Soft Tabs.Maxaman.Soma.Viagra Super Active+.Cialis Soft Tabs.Viagra.Cialis Professional.Cialis.Viagra Professional.Viagra Super Force.Zithromax.Levitra….

Thanks for your comment.

You’re right – sometimes a broad match keyword can get triggered for a search query instead of the exact match keyword, even though Google says this shouldn’t happen.

Although I’ve yet to do some analysis on search queries vs. triggered keywords for Google’s session-based matching, this could potentially be a reason why broad-matched keywords are being triggered when you have an exact match of the search query in your account.

That said, from my experience, anomalous keyword matching doesn’t appear to happen in large enough a volume to warrant a seperate PPC strategy, so I would tend ignore these exceptions, and continue to focus on the 99% of keyword matching which does work as specified by Google.

In terms of keyword and ad group structure, I’ve tried seperating broad, phrase and exact keywords into their own ad groups, and also tried bundling match types together in the same ad group, and have yet to notice any significant differences in performance of either strategy.

For high-volume broad-match keywords, it might be worth giving them their own ad groups or campaigns, and as you point out, perhaps using negative ad group keywords or embedded match, which could be useful for regaining control over broad-matching.

But unless their is a good reason for doing so (such as a very high-volume keyword), I would tend to avoid giving different match types their own ad groups. Doing so could over-granularize and bloat your account (see One Keyword Per Ad Group: Pros and Cons), which could do more harm than it’s worth.

Cheers,
Alan

Buy:Viagra Super Active+.VPXL.Zithromax.Super Active ED Pack.Cialis Soft Tabs.Cialis Professional.Soma.Maxaman.Viagra Super Force.Propecia.Cialis.Viagra.Cialis Super Active+.Viagra Soft Tabs.Tramadol.Viagra Professional.Levitra….

Categories: Antidepressants.Weight Loss.Eye Care.Mens Health.Anxiety/Sleep Aid.Womens Health.Antidiabetic.Stomach.Mental HealthBlood Pressure/Heart.Anti-allergic/Asthma.Antibiotics.Vitamins/Herbal Supplements.Antiviral.Pain Relief.Skin Care.Stop S…

What are your thoughts on where to place these broad match keywords in your account? Do you put them in the same ad group as the exact and phrase match terms?

For certain search queries, sometimes the broad match keyword, the exact and phrase will all be eligible to appear. I know Google says that the keyword that most closely relates to the search query and has the lowest CPC should be triggered:

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66292

However, in my experience, you can sometimes have a broad match keyword triggered for certain queries for which you have the exact match in your account. This is a point that I have put to the Google AdWords staff to which they could not really give an answer other than, “the rules you’re referencing are usually applied, but there are exceptions.”

When this happens you have, to some degree, lost a bit of control over your keywords and ad display, which I think you will agree is not ideal.

To me, the only way around this would be to have the match type keywords separated into different ad groups and have the exact/phrase negative matched against the ad group that contains the broad match keyword.

What are your thought’s on that?

I only tend to give high-volume broad match keywords their own ad groups (or campaigns) – and unless there is a good reason otherwise, I usually start with exact, phrase and broad match variations of the same keyword together in the same ad group. The goal is to find a balance between granularity and efficiency (which are often opposing factors), so it’s often unwise to give every match type or every keyword it’s own ad group.

Although a good campaign and ad group structure is essential for a sucessful PPC campaign, no matter how you choose to build your campaigns and ad groups, the key is always to regularly analyse the search queries which are broad-matched (and phrase-matched) to your keywords.

When you notice a difference between the search query and the keyword it is being matched to, alarm bells should start ringing, and you should consider how splitting out keywords into new ad groups with new ads and new long-tail keywords, could help to improve CTR, Quality Score, conversion rate and ROI.

Alan

You’re right – calculating marginal CPCs can be tricky. One option would be to adjust your keyword bids methodically, and take a note of click volumes. If enough data is collected for different CPC levels, you could have a fairly good understanding of the click volume at say $0.65, the click volume at $0.95 and the click volume at $1.15, and hence work out your marginal CPCs.

This obviously assumes that there are no external fluctuations in click costs (which of course there are – think seasonality, days of week, times of day, competition), so to improve accuracy you might want to take advantage of bid adjustments using Google’s ad scheduling. Set different hours in the day (and week) to as many different bid levels as you can (20%, 50%, 85%, 160% etc), then run an hourly report and plot your cost per click prices for each hour against your click volumes for that hour. This should reduce external bias and help improve the accuracy of your marginal CPC calculations considerably.

Another (quicker but less reliable) option is to use Google’s Bid Simulator to get an idea of how click volumes change as cost per click prices change, although I would tend to be very cautious using such data as its typically normalised across a large number of different advertisers.

Hope this helps!

Alan

I thought that this was an excellent demonstration of economic theory which has been apllied to PPC expertly.

I would like to take this a stage further and conduct your analysis with one of my clients.

My question to you is:

How do you accurately calculate the marginal CPC when you work out the figures for real as I am struggling.

Best,
Richard

Interesting post! Very well explained too.

I totally agree with your broad match “short term strategy”.

I was wondering how you manage broad match keywords. I found it easier to manage if I create an ad group especifically for broad match terms, so I can set a lower CPC at group level.

I also found that having them in a seperate campaign is a good idea, as I can set a specific daily budget for broad match keywords. This way I make sure that I’m not spending too much money on those low converting keywords.

Your thoughts about that would be appreciated!

Eric Paquet

You’re right – a world without analytics is like going back 10 years.

What we need is a change in culture and a reduction in our demands for more privacy. We need to realise that giving away information is a necessity for a heathly online economy. Ideally, if people want to search privately (or ad free), they should pay for it.

Cheers,
Alan