Boody, bloody google adwords - total display network

[CairoPrankster]

This is the second time they have caught me out with this crap, I took my eye off adwords for two weeks and my bill has more than doubled how do I stop total display network?

Last time I took a firm grip on adwords I managed to get my bill down to under £15 a month with a higher CTR, almost zero total display network clicks and better call rate. Somehow they have got me back into this utter bilge of total display network please help me to throttle google again.

[CairoPrankster]

Doh! okay I think I have sorted it - I went to settings, changed the name of the campaign and then changed target groups.

Gave me a kick up the bum though, you can't take your eyes off google for a day or two let alone two weeks

[bubalou]

It's such a common thing with Adwords.

We check most of our clients daily. We are constantly running negative keywords and handling bid optimisation.

Make sure your daily budgets are set and you should be ok. You will have an overall maximum spend that will stop this happening.

[CairoPrankster]

Thanks bubalou, I was keeping a close eye on it but just took my eye off the ball.

I have a daily budget of £4 but if it goes to this every day in a month I am way over budget. I am concerned that if I drop the budget down too much my add will never show so I try to manage it with my bids - 95% of my words are currently only 1p I have about ten words that I have bid higher on but my business is small, service based and local so I don't need a massive CTR just a presence in relation to my direct competition.

I'm no IT specialist, I have learnt to work adwords and google places entirely based on advice from MN and for that I am hugely grateful

[Talkinpeace]

set ALL display network to 1p : that way it only comes up on an exact search and clicks will be few and far between but possibly worth it.

[CairoPrankster]

Okay, I have set up another campaign including display network and set all the keywords to 1p. So now I have two campaigns running simultaneously, identical in every way but for the bid on the keywords - this should keep me amused for a while

[bubalou]

Adwords can be a complicated process to really make it scalable for business.

Make sure you are targeting very 'relevant' keywords. If u sold electric bicycles you wouldn't target the word 'bikes' - it would be ridiculously expensive and wasteful and the clicks and conversions would be that much lower.

Also if relevant make sure you are using the negative keyword section to help rule out any clicks and spend that will be used on people getting served your ads for terms that aren't relevant to your site.

[CairoPrankster]

Bubalou, I'm not sure what negative keywords are? Although I have over a hundred key words only about ten of them have more than a penny bid on them and they are very targeted. As my business is local - people come to me and I don't sell anything online - I have the ads location set quite narrowly and the ad turns off at midnight.

My average position is 3.5, CTR is 1.45% and average CPC is 51p

for the help

[Talkinpeace]

cairoe
be careful of locations - as that can be affected by where people's servers are ...

[CairoPrankster]

I know Talkingpeace, but I really can't afford to show my ads to the whole country. I don't know how to get around it as I suspect that it messes up whether my ads show on mobiles too

[bubalou]

Negative keywords is where you can select terms that you do not want your ads to be served with.

For example we have a client that sells high end designer swimwear for women - some of her negative keywords are 'kids, cheap, sale, bargain, etc because people searching for these terms wouldn't be relevant.

I'm sure you can google how to do these quite easily. ;)

[CairoPrankster]

Okay, I get it. I'll need to think about it a while but I can think of a few off the top of my head :)

[m0nkeynuts]

And of course make sure you've linked up your Google Analytics and Adwords accounts so you can monitor the effectiveness of your Adwords campaigns!

[CairoPrankster]

I do use google analytics but, TBH, although it is fascinating, the two don't seem to correlate.

I find that the best way of finding the effectiveness of campaigns is to just ask my clients how they found me (not 100% accurate but useful )

[m0nkeynuts]

The good thing about GA is that you can also track those who click onto your site but DON'T become clients.

The keywords they found you by let you see what they are interested in, so by analysing how they clicked through your site, along with any other of your defined goals they completed (e.g. newsletter signup, click onto social media page), you can try to work out why they didn't become customers. From that, you can optimise your campaigns and/or website to turn those clicks into sales!

[bubalou]

Agree. Analytics is an amazingly informative tool that can give you information and stats to help drive your business forward!

Definitely worth a look at.

[CairoPrankster]

I have been using GA separately to adwords, I have now linked them so maybe it will work a little better. I had a look at search words and as yet this isn't available on linked GA but on the non linked version there is a list of ten or so that are all fairly predictable but right at the top with easily 50x more hits than anything else is "(not provided)" is this because these are all clicks from my ad, or am I missing something?

[Talkinpeace]

just had a major hiccup with my adwords

could not work out why one adword phrase was costing me so much
found out that it was showing on each part of the phrase - one word of which was party
BUT
to change the setting to phrase it has "deleted" and restarted all those adwords so I cannot do comparatives for another year

I have webstats linked to my hosting so do not tell google EVERYTHING about my site

[CairoPrankster]

Talkingpeace I feel your pain! I know everyone loves them but I am really narked at goolge atm

My main problem is my extreme low budget zero and complete lack of IT knowhow. My page is home made, my google account and social media is all run by me, I can't even work out how to link my site to social media.. A few generous friends have helped beyond measure with advice. It is a bloody miracle I get any clients at all! however I do and mostly the feedback is that they like how home made amatur it is, it makes them feel less intimidated . That said I know things would be better if I could just afford to slicken it up a bit.

[m0nkeynuts]

Are your (not provided) results from your organic search keywords (rather than your Adwords clicks)? If so, it's because of a change Google made to search that means any searches that happen over SSL (secure socket layer - that is, https instead of http) no longer pass on keyword data (article about it here).

[CairoPrankster]

Yes they are from organic no paid for. I have a bit of homework to do with the article, my brain is just not trained to understand the jargon.

Thanks for the help

[m0nkeynuts]

I can summarise it by saying that any organic Google searches (that is, not Adwords clicks) will no longer pass on the keyword data to your Google Analytics reports.

Google say it's to protect the privacy of its users, however it doesn't affect Adwords clicks which still DO pass on keyword data. So privacy of users appears to be a bit less important when Google are making money out of it

[CairoPrankster]

Yes, google are good at moving the goal posts,

Thanks for the summary, it was giving me a headache. I'd love to know what those search terms are as they make up the massive majority. Will see what I gets when the linked account starts to perform.