Google - Pay Per Who?!

[VacMan]

Hey everyone!

I was wondering if we have a resident expert PPC person on this board, or at least someone who knows of some good resources.

I'm having a problem driving traffic to my webpage with Google Adwords.

I didn't have a problem in the past, but was looking at my analytics, and most of my clicks were coming from India.

I thought that was a little weird, and so I turned off my ads in everywhere BUT the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

Now... my CTR has dramatically fallen, and so have my impressions.

I've increased my bids, and also my budget.

This does not seem to help... much, anyway.

I've read Perry Marshal’s definitive guide to Adwords, and surfed around.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[YazKMan]

The keywords that you bid on may be the culprit here.

You can use the following tools to try to find better keywords and optimize your current keywords:
Google Traffic Estimator
Google keywords tool
Wordtracker(free trial available)
and if you can ever connect to it; the Overture keyword tool

These should be good starting points for you.

[rene_stpierre]

Maybe you can create separate campaigns. (1) Targeting India and (2) Targeting USA, Canada, UK and Australia.

If your campaign worked well for India, keep it going. Customers from there are as valuable as customers from elsewhere.

Then think about what would make people from India click on your ads more than people from elsewhere.

For the new campaign, try to put yourself in the shoes of potential customers. What would make them click? Try to find other websites that have similar content to yours and see if they advertise on Adwords. If they do, check which keywords and ads they use.

I did not read Perry Marshall yet, but I did read Chris Carpenter's Google Cash 3. I found it to be a great resource. The eBook also contains videos of how Chris does things.

Good Luck!
René

[Brutha]

If your campaign worked well for India, keep it going.

It seems that he thinks that the clicks from india where "click fraud".

[Mused]

By turning off India you've turned of millions of potential people clicking on your ads.

I'm guessing that you have made the decision that the traffic from India is not as qualified as traffic from USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK?

What is it ultimately you are trying to get the traffic to do?

If you are just trying to drive traffic to your site and/or generate ad revenue then it shouldn't matter what country they are from.

If you are selling something and trying to drive qualified traffic to your site that will perform some action (buy a product etc) then you will typcially end up with a lower CTR and unfortunately this usually results in higher CPCs. The reasoning behind this - when you weed out the lookie loos you are getting clicked on less. More relevant for you however Google's fancy algorithms tend to see this a less relevant to them thus they charge a higher CPC.

I do pharma SEM for a living and I concur with YazKMan. Two of my best friends at work are Google's traffic estimator and Google's keywords tool. Feel free to PM me for more specific help.

Good luck

[jamestl2]

Originally Posted by VacMan

I'm having a problem driving traffic to my webpage with Google Adwords.

You could always look for other ways to drive traffic to your site.

IMO Adwords is very expensive.

[turbosaab]

I have a fair amount of experience in Adwords, mostly for e-commerce sites. I think the Perry Marshall book is a good resource; have you had any luck with any of his techniques?

To figure out what is wrong one really depends on your particular business, website, keywords, ads, bids, etc. But in general:

1. Focus on keyword/keyphrase selection - it's easy to get derailed by irrelevant keywords, and in most business it takes a fair amount of time to figure out the relevant ones and the appropriate bids.
2. Use Google Analytics to track traffic and conversions. This is critical, conversion rates and bounce rates are essential to figuring out your keywords and bids.
3. Based on the conversion rates & bounce rates (and of course CTR), you may want to limit your geography, or, as another reply suggested, break out your campaigns geographically so you can easily bid separately.
4. Same with "content network" - I highly recommend using separate campaigns for content network vs. search. You will probably find that the content network traffic is lower quality so you'll want to be bidding much lower on the content network. Having it in a separate campaign makes it easier to track, I think.

Hope that helps!

[AttractIt]

Hey VacMan,

Any updates about that?

Did you change something, and now you have better results?

Need more help?






To be helped in order to help,

Cheers,

[rebelwithacause]

Hey Vman,

The only thing that I see that may be causing you some issues is optimizing your ads and being releveant in Google's eyes...

Most people skip that option...

If you have read Perry Marshall's book, then you are probably already aware.

Is your keyword in your title, in your body, and even better, in your domain name?

That always helps a lot...

The main thing is to be relevant for what people are searching for...

You do that, and you will pay less and rank higher...

Take care,

[rebelwithacause]

By the way, I forgot to mention that you can now do Pay Per Click on Facebook...

And according to my partners and sources, this is one of the best opportunities since google brought out adwords.

You can actually focus on detailed demographics down to the smallest minute detail...

For example, if you are selling wedding info...you can target specifically to engaged women from the age of 23-32, who are getting married in June, and live in Chicago...

an extreme example, but you get the point.

The main rule of thumb here is you have to be classy, and not cheesy/hyped ads...or Facebook will boot you fast.

So again, the rule of thumb as always, just be real, and have a quality product or service to offer...

The Facebook PPC is huge, people are kicking it up big time...and it's so much more of a detailed and focused audience...

[yakito]

I read today that they are changing back their adsense referral program afters some big time bloggers complained.

The problem is that now they will only pay you if you get a referral from north america, latin america and asia I think