[david@zap-clean]

I've been monitoring & managing my new adwords campaign and I'm astonished at the price some companies are prepared to pay for a top ranking:

"professional cleaning services"
first page bid £9.00
top of page bid £22.00

"End of tenancy cleaning"
first page bid £12.00
top of page bid £35.00

....way out of my league!

[wynne jones]

 

[garry22]

David, there's a bit more to it than that as your quality score and click through rate will have a huge effect.

Those terms are too broad and not necessarily guaranteed buying terms. Specific ones should be cheaper.

You're right though - crazy (but a great way for "Adwords professionals" to lose your money for you!).

I remember some telecom terms were £ 24+ and when you get into high value "compensation claim" type phrases, the price rockets. Incidentally, a friend who is a physio was offered £ 400.00 per referral from claim companies involved in no win no fee cases.

[david@zap-clean]

...
Those terms are too broad and not necessarily guaranteed buying terms. Specific ones should be cheaper.
You're right though - crazy (but a great way for "Adwords professionals" to lose your money for you!).
...

I wondered if it was a bit of a con/scam.  Those particular keyword phrases aren't one's I'm too interested in, so I'll leave my max-bid at an acceptable CPC for my budget... When the higher bidders run out of cash/budget  I'll get front page listing at MY prices.

[stuart_clark]

There is a fairly local company to me!{ county durham} That are  NCCA  Members Advertise carpets from £10 and are on the first page Google on the top of the page! I think as a sponcered link
They must be paying a serious amount of money for that placing

[wynne jones]

Garry is right. Just think if you were a solicitor getting a hot compo claim in your niche. And only a few years ago you could buy traffic like this and sell it on at a profit. An EOT though?  

If you look over time in your area you will see adwords campaigns from the same people over and over again. Either they have very deep pockets or they are not paying anywhere near those figures for their keywords.  

[AshWhite]

As has been mentioned - get your quality scores to a good level, make sure your ads are attractive, keep you max bid to a level you feel comfortable with - and you'll be surprised how many clicks you get regardless of the guide prices.

FWIW, I believe that finance related keywords are the most expensive - I dread to think how much

[Neil Williams]

'Carpet cleaners' 'carpet cleaning' for my area needs £5-£7 to get in the top 3
The sad thing is it's infested with carpet cleaners from well outside the area.

[david knowles]

Their are people making niche websites specifically designed to a keyword phrase,  they make a good living by backlinking and getting to page one of google. The income comes from a pay per click on adverts on their sites.
I did some work a few years ago with the keyword academy generated a little monthly income.

[AshWhite]

Their are people making niche websites specifically designed to a keyword phrase,  they make a good living by backlinking and getting to page one of google. The income comes from a pay per click on adverts on their sites.
I did some work a few years ago with the keyword academy generated a little monthly income.

You'll probably find that they're not doing so well over the last 6 months or so.

[prodry]

"professional cleaning services" may be £9

but "professional cleaning services Macclesfield" is probably more like £0.50.

You don't want to come up for the top option as you will appear anywhere & everywhere, all over the UK.

If you do not take time to set up an Adwords account correctly, to suit your needs and budget. By having exact keywords, area targeting, turning off certain search partners of Google and much more like mentioned above having a decent Google quality score. Then you will waste a fortune guaranteed.

I have accounts running for 5 carpet cleaners and they moan if they don't get back £400-700 for every £100.00 they spend. If you are not getting these returns then you are doing something wrong. Simples..

Also Google do not pay anyone commission when it comes to Adwords (no matter what they tell you). So if you are paying a company to do your pay per click. Then you need to find out how much of the money you are paying them is being kept by them and how much is actually going on Adwords. Prepare for the BS from them.

[david@zap-clean]

"professional cleaning services" may be £9
but "professional cleaning services Macclesfield" is probably more like £0.50.
You don't want to come up for the top option as you will appear anywhere & everywhere, all over the UK.

Yep, e.g. geographically localise to 10mile radius of home.

I've tried  "professional cleaning services Macclesfield" and a host of other clever idea's I had.  The problem with these specific keywords is Google says "rarely shown due to low quality score" - and so Google will NOT show my ad for that keyword - AND it screws up my ranking.... catch 22 problem here.

If you do not take time to set up an Adwords account correctly, to suit your needs and budget. By having exact keywords, area targeting, turning off certain search partners of Google and much more like mentioned above having a decent Google quality score. Then you will waste a fortune guaranteed.

Yep - and monitoring daily as google keep moving the goal-posts.

What do you think is a reasonable % ROI?

[prodry]

Problem with an area with small population and small search info for Google to use.

You could try broad match multiplier So instead of having exact keyword match ie "carpet cleaner maccefield" have +carpet +cleaner +maccesfield.

Why do you have the 10 radius? Someone sitting in there office in Manchester who lives where you cover is not going to see the ad.

Also have a new ad campaign for each area/town you want to cover. With a landing page on your site for that area. Gets quality score up.

[david@zap-clean]

Problem with an area with small population and small search info for Google to use.

You could try broad match multiplier So instead of having exact keyword match ie "carpet cleaner maccefield" have +carpet +cleaner +maccesfield.

Why do you have the 10 radius? Someone sitting in there office in Manchester who lives where you cover is not going to see the ad.

Also have a new ad campaign for each area/town you want to cover. With a landing page on your site for that area. Gets quality score up.

I've yet to try broad-match - I'll try it on a couple of keywords.

I've got several location based ads running.. The reason for fixing the radius is to prevent too many impressions/clicks from outside my patch, though I do realise it will restrict a search from outside the area, even if they want a cleaner in it.

No-one's mentioned google places yet - that seems to be a goer at the mo.

[david@zap-clean]

Uhhh! Adwords has just changed, again - see Enhanced Campaign Ads, from today!

[AshWhite]

Why do you have the 10 radius? Someone sitting in there office in Manchester who lives where you cover is not going to see the ad.

Actually, they would. The search target location covers people in the area, as well as people searching for that area.
And when it says 10 miles - that's the way the crow flies, which in actual travelling terms could be double that distance. 10 miles (depending on population density) is a big ol' area.

[david@zap-clean]

Why do you have the 10 radius? Someone sitting in there office in Manchester who lives where you cover is not going to see the ad.

Actually, they would. The search target location covers people in the area, as well as people searching for that area.
And when it says 10 miles - that's the way the crow flies, which in actual travelling terms could be double that distance. 10 miles (depending on population density) is a big ol' area.

...I've just tested that with the 'Ad preview and diagnosis' tool, you're correct - Tnx Ash...

[AshWhite]

By the way, I'd pretty much ignore enhanced ads for the carpet cleaning purposes.
Also, you mentioned Places - this should be linked to your Adwords campaign through the "Location Extentions" setting.

[garry22]

I've tried  "professional cleaning services Macclesfield" and a host of other clever idea's I had.  The problem with these specific keywords is Google says "rarely shown due to low quality score" - and so Google will NOT show my ad for that keyword - AND it screws up my ranking.... catch 22 problem here.

David, the optimised landing page (specifically for that keyphrase) should be the very first thing you think about. Google uses the destination URL to calculate quality score. If you send clicks to a general home page, the score will be lousy.

I did manage a couple of 10 /10 s once although in fairness, they were for specific telecom models (highly targeted terms).

Just out of interest, how many ads are you testing against each other per Adgroup?

[AshWhite]

40 of my 117 keywords are 10/10 at present. Each Ad is targeted to a relevant page, as Garry mentioned.
A lot of the keywords you (should) use will be "Low search volume", but that doesn't matter because you're looking for good quality clicks, not high quantity.