How to greatly increase Google Adwords traffic

Try out the new Ads Diagnostic tool shortcut indicated by the magnifying glass icon found next to each keyword in your account. The tool is still a little buggy, sometimes forcing you to scroll to read the message window. It also experiences some delays and sometimes doesn't remove a window before putting another on top of it.

Best to try this when you have a lot of time to invest and maximum patience. It can take about one second per keyword so the more keywords you have the more time you may end up spending. I expect it to be worth doing though or I wouldn't be using and recommending it.

You're probably going to be in for a big surprise. Keywords that have been getting no impressions but show active aren't actually running. If you've had your account a long time you may have more keywords that are not running than you have that are.

This tool does not appear to be "real time". It most likely runs against an archived copy from some set time which could be minutes or hours earlier. (If I figure out about how long I'll post that information later.) What this means to you is that changes you make to correct messages you get are not immediately reflected in the tool so you must come back later to see if your changes made any difference.

I use a "system" of bid amounts to help me see at a glance which keywords to recheck, which bids I probably don't want to change while doing routine bid adjustments, and why bids are set to a certain amount.

Set up your own bidding system

1. Select a number besides 0 and 5 and end all your regular bids in that number. (Bid changes in ten cent increments are generally close enough.)

2. Select two other numbers to indicate you set a minimum bid required by Google to activate a keyword. (Their minimums end in 0 or 5 so use 0 or 5 or a number slightly higher like 1 or 6.)

3. Select yet another number that you didn't use for either of the above steps to indicate a bid you raised trying to get Google to activate keyword phrases that appear to be active but are not according to the Ad Diagnostic tool. (This allows you to see at a glance which keywords to recheck and remind yourself why you may have some ridiculously high bid set.)

ADS DIAGNOSTIC TOOL MESSAGES

Here are some of the messages you'll see, what they probably mean, and how to potentially get those keywords running again.

"The keyword phrase doesn't currently trigger any of your ads."

As long as the ad group and campaign are active I don't do anything when I see this message.

"This keyword isn't showing ads. Although your ad is showing, its rank is not high enough to place it on the first page of search results."

This is an easy one. Increase your bid to get your ad onto the first page.

"This keyword isn't showing ads. This keyword isn't performing well enough to show your ads."

You may get this for many of your most targeted keyword phrases, usually because they are low traffic. If the keyword phrase matches your ad and your landing page you can try editing your ads or raise the bid to see if you can get the phrase to start running. Sometimes a reasonable bid increase will get a phrase running. Other times it take a monumental increase.

I am testing bids over $1, $2 or even $3 to see if I can activate those keywords. Sometimes it works (the keyword says it is running) but so far I don't have enough results to evaluate whether this is worth doing on a large scale yet. If you get close enough the message changes to tell you your ad is showing but not on the first page of results.

"This keyword isn't showing ads. We're unable to show your ad because your Quality Score and CPC were too low for this keyword auction."

This one can be a challenge. Sometimes a reasonable bid increase will get a phrase running. Other times it take a monumental increase. I am testing bids over $1, $2 or even $3 to see if I can activate those keywords. Sometimes it works (the keyword says it is running) but so far I don't have enough results to evaluate whether this is worth doing on a large scale yet.

I believe the primary reason some phrases aren't meeting the quality requirement is that those phrases have far more bidders on them. Some phrases only run with far higher bids while other almost identical phrases run for pennies. I believe that the inactive phrases are those being used by lots of advertisers because they're on the list of suggested keywords in Google's tools.

A primary reason traffic and sales decline over time is that Google ads your best keywords to their keyword tool and suggests them to other advertisers, greatly increasing competition on those particular phrases. This happens about quarterly and can result in sudden very noticeable drops in traffic/sales.

You often also see an unexplained drop in conversions and ROI due to an increase in less relevant traffic just after one of these database changes. Abundant negative keywords can protect your account from some of the strongest effects so be pro-active and increase the number of unrelated searches you're blocking.

WAYS TO INCREASE TRAFFIC AND SALES

1. Come up with some new phrases.
2. Be sure to use phrase and exact match versions in addition to broad match.
3. Raise your CTR by adding many more negative keywords.
4. Use keyword search tools and real searches online to come up with more positive and negative keyword ideas.
5. Use this new tool bids to identify dormant keywords. Then optimize the ads or landing pages or raise your bids to get them running again.
6. Consider bidding high to get some clicks (but be sure to monitor spending to reduce surprises). It is likely that if you can get some clicks that you can then drop your bids back down eventually.
7. Be sure to increase your Daily Budget as needed. Be sure to check it regularly and each time you change bids.

MAXIMIZE PROFITS

If you are advertising something that is showing high profitability and/or strong sales don't be penny-wise and pound foolish. Put some effort into maximizing sales now while you have the advantage. I'm testing bids over $3 right now to activate keyword phrases for products I'm really only paying well under $1 per click on. I don't believe most of those clicks will cost anywhere near that. I'll report back here when I find out for sure.

When a shopping comparison site displays your product at the top of their lists for best match or even better, best price - and especially if you have a great selection - maximize your advertising on that item. You'll convert far more searchers into buyers.

The way Google Analytics currently tracks those increases won't look like they're driven by PPC ads because many of those buyers will check the price comparison sites and get back to your site from your links there which overwrites your PPC tracking tags. Don't worry about that for now. Just realize the ads are the actual source so keep doing what is working and do as much of it as possible.

Keep a list of what is doing really well and if you don't already have specific pages for those items with unique product descriptions (not the manufacturer provided blurb that every other seller uses) seriously considering adding them and optimizing them for SEO.

Then use this list as a guide to what ads/pages are most important and monitor them to keep your results high.


[ Message was edited by: flyingrose 11/18/2006 04:25 am ]

This is an IMPORTANT TIP on that QUALITY SCORE message.

If your keywords match your ads and send visitors to a very relevant landing page - especially if all the words in your keyword phrase do already appear on that page - assume that Quality Score and CPC message is more likely to mean you are being outbid on that phrase than your "quality" is a major issue.

Raise your bid, get some clicks so you have a good CTR and then you can buy that phrase, get the traffic, and probably lower the bids again later.

If this is the real issue you don't want to spend a lot of time optimizing your ads or landing pages.

FINE TUNE WHICH ADS DISPLAY

Another use of this tool is to fine-tune which ads display. Whenever you get the message that another ad is being displayed for that keyword, right click on the link to the regular Ad Diagnostic to open it in another tab/window. That way you don't lose what you're working on in THAT tab/window and can maximize productivity and results.

Check to see which ad is displaying. If it isn't as targeted, click on that ad group from within the tool and add appropriate negative keywords to that group. This will get your product specific ad to display instead of the more general ad.

If the ad that is displaying is already well targeted you don't need to do anything.

You can use multiple tabs/windows for other tasks when you're in your Google account. For more details see Google Adwords productivity tips.

Hi Rose.

I have been messing with this for a couple of hours now and have spotted a peculiarity.

I have an ad-group that has three keyword phrases in it, the key phrase is quite targeted (three word key phrase with about 80-150 impressions a day). The broad match keyword and the exact match keyword trigger the ads no problem, however the phrase match according to Google is not triggering the ads, see details below

Key Phrase (broad) IMPR 48, CLICKS 3, CTR 6.25%, AVG POS 6.7
Key Phrase (phrase) IMPR 24, CLICKS 3, CTR 12.5%, AVG POS 7.5
Key Phrase (Exact) IMPR 4, CLICKS 1, CTR 25%, AVG POS 7.5

Now, according to Google the phrase match term in this group is not triggering the ads but the other two are, all key terms are status active so what I did was I removed it from this ad group, set-up a new ad group with this key term in there, with the same ad, at the same CPC and what do you know, it is now showing.

I know that increasing the CPC of this key term in the original ad group would have been the easiest way to go, but that would then have made that keyword less profitable for us and would have ended up being paused, so it got me thinking what exactly was the problem with that key term?

I am continuing to go through all ads in our campaigns to see if this is repeated or just an anomaly. I'll report back any findings.

I think you'll eventually find others incidences like that one if you haven't already. Since moving that phrase to another ad group started it displaying again, I believe I know the most likely cause.

Google allows a certain number of impressions before it decides your ad is not relevant for a given search and stops displaying it. It is theorized that this number is probably less than twenty which is lower than what is truly statistically significant.

Moving the keyword to a new ad group resets the history on that keyword phrase, allowing it to start displaying again. The question is, it that is the issue, why does raising the bid activate the phrase.

I'm going to theorize that the answer is that if you're willing to pay enough that Google's system believes it is a better risk to generate more revenue from a click on your ad than the potential income from a more likely click on another advertiser's ad it displays yours.

Which message were you getting on the phrase that was not being displayed?

The Google Budget Estimator appears to be even more inaccurate than usual. It says budgets are adequate but then the Ad Diagnostic Tool says ads are not running because of budget constraints.

I've doubled the number of products and/or doubled bid prices and had it not think any increase was needed even if that campaign was already spending the amount the budget estimator thinks is sufficient.

I've also had it ask for wildly disparate amounts on campaigns I've made no changes in for products that are not seasonal in nature. If the estimator indicates a budget vastly lower than you have presently think twice before lowering it.

If the Ad Diagnostic Tool is leading bids to be increased on many keywords and more targeted ads to be displayed that could cause shifts in traffic between advertisers and higher CTRs on some ads, changing how much traffic the budget estimator believes you can garner.

Advertisers selling holiday related items or who see huge increases in traffic and sales will be most affected. I don't know if their estimator only uses last month's data or uses seasonal historical data too.

If you want to maximize traffic and sales consider increasing budgets on any campaign that ever spends your budget amount in a day, any you raise bids or add new keywords to, and any you expect to have higher searches between now and Christmas.

Hi Rose.

The message I get back is

"The Keyword is not Triggering ads. Although your ad is showing, it's rank is not high enough to place it on the first page of Search results"

I am assuming that although the average position is 7.5, when I checked the ad using the Diagnostic tool it was actually not on the first page.

You are right about one thing though, I have found multiple instances of this, with some keywords having an Avg Pos of 3.4???

I have also found that although this message appears I can still get conversion on them

Actually I have looked through all the campaigns today and this message has started appearing all over the place, even on key phrases that are on the first page and are converting. There doesn't seem to be any discernable pattern to it, it almost look random.

I am going to have to do some more digging on this and find out what is going on.

It appears that the Ads Diagnostic tool is a snapshot of a particular time. I haven't figured out how often it gets refreshed yet. The reason you can still get impressions and even conversions is that your ad is not ALWAYS not on the first page - it was only not on the first page when that snapshot was taken.

If you're running Google Analytics look at your average positions. I bet they're all over the place and that is why you're seeing that message. That one basically only means that you're being outbid.

That could be partly due to that particular phrase's history - and the broad, phrase, and exact match each have their own history. Or it could be due to any of these variables:

1. Advertisers limiting impressions with low daily budgets
2. Advertisers pausing their ads or using the new time scheduling feature to only run them certain days and hours
3. Variances in CTRs (yours and the other advertisers') during any particular time period

Basically your ads are sometimes on the first page and sometimes not. If profits are high enough you may wish to increase your bids to get them onto the first page more consistently.

You could also try bidding higher and using position preference to keep your ads out of the top positions so that you are on the first page but not paying for premium positions.

If a lot of your competitors have ads that are coming and going how many bidding higher and how many bidding lower is going to vary so much that there is no way your "average" position will be anywhere near consistent.

I can tell you that in your industry bids on similar keyword phrases can vary from under ten cents to over five dollars for the same phrase because some advertisers only bid on exact, or only on broad, or only on phrase.

If you ever get one of those automated Google recommendations it will suggest keeping only one form and deleting the other two. It looks like it chooses the one that is performing best but I'm not positive of that.

Hello Again.

Well the ad i took out and put in it's own group is now performing better, it is getting fewer impressions overall but a better CTR and the ad has not had the warning come up again.

I am trying to keep any testing to about the same time of the day so i can better gauge of what is happening without too many variables.

With regards to the time scales involved in refreshing data, i think it probably varies widely, i had a keword this morning that was displaying the non triggering error, it took me about an hour to do some research on the keyword and when i came back to it the error was no longer displaying. It may also depend on the time of day that you look, my guess is that during higher traffic times you may get the error more frequently as people fight for positions.

It's all a bit of guesswork at the moment but a patterm will emerge, it usually does.