How do you rectify when you have 1000 impressions and no clicks?

First of all, the problem lays in the click through rate (CTR) of the ad. That is to say – your ad copy 2 lines.

If your ad copy is not compelling for someone to click and find out more, then the ad copy is a failure. Simple as that.

How do you test your ad copy if they actually work?

I have heard of someone going to a bar to test if the ad copy works. He wrote a couple of ad copy (one page length), read to the people in the bar. Just to inform you, this guy promised to treat to those who listen to all his ad copy will get a free beer after that, they have to tell him what to change and what is good. All of these are not winners till someone in the bar ask  him where this product can be purchase. Then the ad is the winner.

I am not asking you to do the above, but maybe in a better environment like in a cafe or something.

Now the thing is that having 1,000 impressions and no clicks, can be due to 3 reasons:

Reason 1: Your PPC ad is not compelling enough, and do not attract click through.You will need to test your ad by spit testing your PPC ads constantly. In this way, you will be able to change the ad and become a compelling PPC ad.

Reason 2: The Ad position is not even in the first page of the search result. You have to find out what is your what is the best ad position for your PPC ad. Not every niche or everyone is suitable to be in the first 3 ad position in the first page.

Reason 3: Using the wrong keywords. I think this is the worst of the 3, as it just targets the wrong crowd, meaning not making money or profit. This will also incur unwanted clicks, making your cost high.

I do not think 1,000 impressions will not attract any clicks. This can only mean that this 1,000 impressions are all from content networks. This will usually not happen in search networks.

Then in this case your Ad copy has to “Scream” at the content networks traffic, in order to get clicks. I will touch more on content networks soon. If you have any questions, do use the comment below and I will reply you.

Content networks in Adwords is a great way to get massive traffic in the fastest time, it is relatively cheaper then using the search networks. BUT they are not people who are looking for the services or products you are selling online.

I have done a major mistake of not switching off my content networks before (thank God it was once and only for a day), getting un-targeted impressions to the content networks are not really a good idea, if your PPC ads are not screaming at them to click on your ad.

That is why if I would want to use both the search and the content networks, I would separate them into two different campaigns. This way I can track and find out the type of traffic in both the networks.

Back to my past mistake of switching on the content network, is that I incur additional cost (CPC), but thank God the impressions are not taken into account in the search networks. Why?

It is because Google knows that the content network traffic are not as targeted as the search networks, so Google only take into account of impressions in the search networks.

So remember always, to switch off your content networks from your search networks. In order to get the best result for your PPC ads, thus increase in conversion.

Finding out if your competitors are using broad match keywords is quite easy. What you need to take note is the URL of your competitor’s first then key in a keyword phrase that is related to the competitor.

I have used an example of using “slim down fast diet” as a keyword phrase, note that I am using on the U.S search market. Right  is the ad which I saw and took as example: 

Then after which I take away diet from the keyword phrase, using “slim down fast” to search. I am still using U.S search engine to find out the result. And on the left is the the result I find out.

The second result can only show that www.Slim-Fast.com is using phrase match type, in order to find out if they are using board match, you will have to broaden the keyword by using one or two words as keyword, in this case I used “slim” as the keyword to finalize if www.Slim-Fast is using board match. The result shows below:

This confirms that they are using broad match as keywords. Do remember that once you used broad match, you must add in negative keywords to filter away unwanted traffic that are not targeted, which will cost you unwanted and un-targeted clicks in your PPC campaigns.

In order to maximize the PPC campaign, you must make full use of the Ads, the ad groups, and the keywords. As you can see that www.Slim-Fast.com uses the same ad, and furthermore using broad match “slim” as keyword. This is also one of the PPC mistake that most people make as well.

Do you make the same mistake before? If so, what did you do to correct the mistake? Share with us below on the comment, I will be hearing from you.

Now to you as someone who is searching online to find a product, you sees a PPC ad that looks like giving you what you want, you click on the ad, then you find nothing after clicking the link. Disappointed, so you left the to search for another product online. Back as a marketer yourself, did you make that mistake before, not checking the link on the PPC ads back to the landing page?

If you have made that mistake before, its okay. You are not the first and certainly not going to be the last for making that silly mistake. You got to correct this mistake fast, before it seriously affect your quality score and losing money because of the clicks.

Here’s what you should do to check for the landing page link is working. Once you have done up the landing page, give it a name to the file (preferable the keyword you are targeting), upload the page to your web hosting. I use Hostgator and Site5 for my all my web hosting, yes they are affiliate links, these two are the ones that I trusted.

With the URLs of the landing page, you will create a new ad in the new ad group. When you are done with writing your compelling PPC ads, you are to add in the landing page URLs to the destination URLs in the new ad created. After you are done, click save ad. Next click on the new ad you created at the top of your Google Adwords campaign.

Once you have click on the new ad link, it will bring you to the landing page you paste in the destination URL. If it does not show the landing page you are linking to, then you will have to check the destination URLs again,. Repeat what above what I said till you get the correct landing page.

Now you are ready to drive traffic to your landing page and make some profit.

There are reasons why I wrote that as the title. As I have been seriously wanting to improve in my PPC skills (especially in Adwords), the more I find that the tools in Adwords are not telling us the whole story. So I ponder about it and decide to write this post to share with you.

I have been using Adwords for like 3 years now, initially I was not really serious about it and did not make any money, but thank God I did break even. Now as I get to find more and more stuffs about Adwords PPC, the more that I feel that Adwords are not telling me a lot of things. It felt like along in the dark, not able to find the way out.

Why I comment this way?

As I was using the Adwords report, a lot more things are not what they are appearing to be. For example, I did use a “keyword A” in both phrase and exact match, but when I found out that someone actually type the exact match for my “keyword A”, it came off as a phrase match. I checked the spelling and plural stuffs, it was all set by me long time ago.

The “Keyword A” should have triggered the exact match, but instead it was reflected in the phrase match. The search volume was good, so the PPC ads were on.  I am still trying to figure out why this happen?

Then when I used the Ad Preview Tool (login to Adwords account), the keywords which I bid are actually higher than the other ads, but when I use the Ad Preview Tool (without login to Adwords account), the result are very different. They are actually lower position than the login Ad Preview Tool.

My conclusion

You can still use the Adwords tools as to give you ideas and how to market to your niche, but to fully trust it will be not wise. I still use them like the Ad Preview Tool (without login to my accounts) and Adword Keyword Tool (without login as well), they are actually more accurate when you did not login to your Adwords account. Try it, you will be surprise to see.

By the way, here are some links you might want to check it out for more info in supporting my post.
1. 76% of SEMs Don’t Fully Trust Google’s Keyword Tool
2. Can we trust Google Keyword Tool?

Adwords has a great system that will help you in maintaining the bidding price for your campaign, through the Ad Group Max CPC, and the individual keyword Max CPC. With this you might think that you are save. Yes you are saved, but this is also where the loophole comes in too.

What Happen?

There are two different level of bidding in Adwords, one is the Ad group level and the other is the keyword level itself. The thing is that if your Ad group bidding is higher than the keyword bidding, you may be paying more for the bidding in the keyword level. At least lesser than in Ad group level.

Here is the thing. Most Adwords users are using only the Ad group bidding only, and not the keyword level bidding. As Ad group bidding is in default once you created a new Ad group, making most of them ignoring the keyword level bidding.

This is where most of the Adwords users miss out. Not all keywords in the PPC  are priced the same, and you should make use of this to cut down cost for your PPC.

If your Ad group bidding has a higher bid price than the keyword level bid, then most properly your keyword level bidding will actually be more than you bid. For example: your Ad group is set to $0.50 as default, and your keyword bid is set to $0.35 for one of the keywords in the same Ad group. When someone click on the PPC ad, the click price will be set from$0.35 to $0.50 instead of $0.35 and below.

This is not wrong though in Google’s eyes, you are still paying the intended bid price $0.50 in Ad group level.

The solution

Set the default bidding for Ad group level lower than all the keywords level in the Ad group, this way you will only pay for the individual keyword bid you are willing to pay for. Some of you might ask, if the Ad group level bis is too low, would it not be switch off? The answer is no, because the keywords bid are higher than the Ad group bid. Unless your keyword bid has the same bid. So add in a extra one or two cents on the keyword bid

If you have a better solution or have something to share, please comment below and I will get back to you soon.