Google Adwords, so many questions

[HCHTech]

I've had a slow couple of weeks, so I decided it was finally time to check out adwords. I've done a lot of reading in this forum, and on the web, and I've setup an ad (running for 7 days now), but there are about a hundred questions that have cropped up. Let's start with a little background.

I'm a mobile tech that serves primarily residential clients. This is where my skillset lies, this is the clientel I want to serve and I'm happy with this work.

I have a wordpress website that was redesigned in 2011. I'm using the Yoast SEO plugin and have gotten happy little green dots on most all of my pages and blog posts. I'm far from an expert at this but the basic "rules" seem simple enough.

I have a Google Places listing and my company does show in organic searching. At least in my area, I'm on page one for some terms. I get a small amount of business from my website before adwords.

Since I serve residential clients, I don't have a "speciality", I do it all. I've only setup a single ad for now, with the generic title of "Award Winning Service" and description lines "We make housecalls" and "Affordable, friendly service". I'm linking to the home page of my site.

Since analysis has to involve my site, here it is. I've been at this almost 10 years now and one of my big regrets has been settling for a domain with a dash, but that's another topic.

Here are the top three questions, we'll start with them:

1. I've allocated about $200/mo to this effort, so lacking guidance to the contrary, I've set a daily budget of $7 for my single ad. Would I be better off allocating $20 per day and only running the ad for 10 days per month? Is this just too small of a budget? Most of my keywords require a bid approaching my daily budget to get top placement. In 7 days, I've managed almost 16K impressions, and 28 clicks, all but 1 on the "display network", so my ad clearly isn't working well on search. I've spent $1.69 per click on average, so I've burned about $48 so far...no phone calls, though.

2. I've got about 50 keywords (too many, but I'm not sure how to pare them down intelligently). I'm in Pittsburgh, PA - we have no less than 72 zip codes that are considered Pittsburgh, each of which has their own town name. So, for example, my keywords include 'Computer Repair Wexford' and 'Computer Repair 15090' and 'Laptop Repair Wexford' and 'Laptop Repair 15090'. Wexford is a northern suburb of Pittsburgh and is in my target service area, but both of these keywords report "low search volume". How do I best address this multiple area problem and pare down my keyword list?

3. My quality scores range from 2 to 5 with most all being either 3 or 4. I'm not sure how to increase these without getting backlinks, which seems near impossible to me.

I'd appreciate any helpful advice - I may decide that adwords just isn't worth it for me, but I'd like to give it a good chance for a few months before throwing in the towel.

 

[Instant Housecall - Corey]

3. My quality scores range from 2 to 5 with most all being either 3 or 4. I'm not sure how to increase these without getting backlinks, which seems near impossible to me.

Watch this video, it's a great primer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJljAiruI2Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KMe6BoIEiQ

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Have you read:

http://www.ppchero.com/ultimate-guide-to-adwords-quality-score/

and

http://searchengineland.com/how-account-quality-score-can-guide-adwords-optimization-148595


I havent personally used adwords in a while but I am not a local shop.

 

[JonnyRT]

I've used Adwords fairly successfully for a while now but am in the UK so not sure if that will effect what works and what doesn't.

First thing I would suggest is to turn off the display network for the minute and focus on people that are actually searching - more likely to turn searchers into phone calls/enquiries and earn you more money.

I'd also make sure you've got either exact or phrases keywords set, not the broad matches. This should considerably reduce the number of impressions you're getting, helping your click through rate which will improve your quality score. That being said, don't worry too much about your quality score at the minute - wait until you're getting enquires through your site and then you can look to improve your quality score which will reduce your cost per click.

To answer your questions:

1. I'd allocate $20 per day for now, and hope that you'd get at least a couple of jobs out of it which will fund your budget for the next 10 days after you've spent your $100. But you need to cut down the keywords, the impressions by turning off the display network etc.

2. Focus on 10 tops, less if possible - from doing a bit of research it looks like "computer repair pittsburgh" with a couple of other keywords would have enough traffic to keep you going. Have you thought about using the keywords [laptop repair] and [computer repair] but using the location targeting to narrow your searchers down?

3. Like I've said previously, don't worry too much about quality score yet. A couple of easy things you can do to improve it would be having a separate campaign for laptop repair and computer repair. If someone searches 'computer repair' and your ad has the words 'computer repair' in it, it's going to have a higher quality score than if your ad had 'laptop repair' in it. The same applies for landing pages so look to have a proper landing page set up that mirrors your ads, and also include a contact form on the page to stop people having to hunt to send you an email.

Hope this is of some help. Happy to answer any other questions I can.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

You can put your phone number on the ad as well, to save on clicks.

 

[Instant Housecall - Corey]

You can put your phone number on the ad as well, to save on clicks.

That's a double-edged sword. Lower CTR = higher CPC.

 

[Rosco]

it will take time. I spend about 180 a month. That's really my sweet spot. it takes time. You got to spend money on adwords to get results. I have spent about 400 bucks this year. I dont always run ads. Just when it slows a bit. from that 400 i have brought in about $5,000 in labor. A couple of big projects came in from it. I find the more keywords the better. I have about 200 keyword active between 2 ads. People do not know what they are searching for. laptop is a great keyword for me. and it only cost me like 1.61 a click.

 

[JonnyRT]

Completely agree about it taking time and you needing to spend money to make money. If you don't spend time learning the ropes, you'll waste a lot of money.

 

[HCHTech]

Ok, thanks. These recommendations do help, although the whole systems seems to be geared to forcing everyone to learn the ropes on their own. I suppose that's by design since every area and every business is different.

I've also heard that it's important to get your CTR up early so you lower your CPC. This argues for raising my budget to, say $20 per day and running the ad for only 10 days. Something like that.

I'm going to pause my current ad and build a more specific one (Virus removal, laptop screen repair, something like that). This will let me focus on fewer keywords, have an exact match landing page, things like that. I want to hone it as much as possible while I'm still on their dime.

I'm also spending a lot of time reading about site SEO - all this stuff goes together...

 

[Instant Housecall - Corey]

For sure, the system's confusing. They've done a lot to simplify it (and make it more complicated) over the years.

High CTR is very important. You need to pick good quality keywords. Look up the term Google Slap and make sure you don't fall into this treacherous pit. Keep on top of things with Google Insights for Search, and don't forget to put your "keywords in quotes" and [in square brackets] to avoid excessively broad matches that will get you no clicks.

Try writing one ad with two different headlines, then run for a couple weeks to see which headline works best. Keep that headline, and write two ad texts -- see which works best. Rinse and repeat and eventually your CTR and results will rise. Predicting what people will actually click on is challenging, and you can waste so much time reading articles with advice. In the end, everyone has a different demographic that behaves differently and you're int he best position to judge that.

As for SEO, well, that's another topic unto itself, and probably deserves its own thread.

 

[16k_zx81]

Definitely it would be worth doing a search for Adwords here on the forum and spending some time reading up from the established threads.,

There has been a LOT of discussion here over the years and a lot more information than could be gained from a single thread.

There are some gems if you care to take some time to look.

 

[HCHTech]

Yes, I'm in the middle of a reading campaign now. In fact, I need to take a break - information overload. I've got a busier schedule today, so I'll dive back in this evening or tomorrow.

Thanks, everyone!

 

[Magic Miguel]

I started AdWords again back in January of this year. I've spent about $645 since the beginning of the year and I've made quite a nice amount of profit off of that. All of my ads are targeting about 1-2 keywords at the most. I use location targeting and exclusion as well as negative keywords to make sure people I don't want seeing my ad, don't see my ad.

I had to get very specific so that I could get a good quality score for my keywords. I get pretty high QS around 9/10 and am consistently at the top of the page for my ads. My only suggestion is to keep the keywords to a minimum, keep the ads as precise as possible, break it down to services that you offer as opposed to generalizing. This has helped me tremendously.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

You are paying per click so which clicks do you want? I'd rather have a computer repair or virus over replacing a ink cartridge or a $100 per hour out call over a $59 per hour bench rate job, as there is more money and profit on average. Likewise, I would rather get a new Network or Quickbooks client which tend to spend more money over the year than a new virus repair customer which I might see twice a year.

So I started with all of my services by average profitability. Then I target the five biggest money makers. I'm still learning but I put 20% each towards: Virus removal; PC repair; Network Support, Quickbooks Support and Hard drive repair and Data recovery.

I will watch the analytic to see which of the 5 give the highest ROI and see if the lowest ROI is worth keeping or put that money towards something else.

To tell you the truth it might be easier to do 100% of oe thing if you can get plenty of it. I'm thinking along the lines of something like being the Rotor-roter of Computer Repairs.

In small markets you have to be a generalist but in larger markets you might find it easier to specialize to large degree.

 

[JonnyRT]

You are paying per click so which clicks do you want? I'd rather have a computer repair or virus over replacing a ink cartridge or a $100 per hour out call over a $59 per hour bench rate job, as there is more money and profit on average. Likewise, I would rather get a new Network or Quickbooks client which tend to spend more money over the year than a new virus repair customer which I might see twice a year.

So I started with all of my services by average profitability. Then I target the five biggest money makers. I'm still learning but I put 20% each towards: Virus removal; PC repair; Network Support, Quickbooks Support and Hard drive repair and Data recovery.

I will watch the analytic to see which of the 5 give the highest ROI and see if the lowest ROI is worth keeping or put that money towards something else.

To tell you the truth it might be easier to do 100% of oe thing if you can get plenty of it. I'm thinking along the lines of something like being the Rotor-roter of Computer Repairs.

In small markets you have to be a generalist but in larger markets you might find it easier to specialize to large degree.

That is absolutely excellent advice (for us all!).

 

[WilkinsMicawber]

I'm implementing Adwords for my computer repair business in Florida. I'm on page 8 of organic search for my site and page 4 for the youtube video I made for it. Without Adwords I would have 0 website visitors. I have a very good website compared to the competition and have followed every piece of SEO advice i've come across save for writing articles, but my competition also has no articles.

I feel like it is essential to limit the ad to people using search engines, and also to limit it to the area you're servicing. So far I seem to be getting tons of impressions with few clicks, and I suspect it isn't the strength of my ad text, but rather the ad position. I was averaging fourth place and four clicks a day. I'm going to try and get third place for as little money as possible and for as many keywords as possible so that my ad looks like a standard search result.

What I would like to know, is why is it that when I search for my keywords on my pc my ad is always number 1, but in adwords ad preview it shows up much lower. I wonder which search result displays a more accurate ranking. I don't want to overbid.
---------------------
Computer Repair Jacksonville FL

 

[JonnyRT]

It sounds like you may be using broad keywords rather than phrase or exact matches. If you change that setting you should get less impressions but more clicks so a higher click through rate - and your ad will appear higher up for less money if you have a higher click through rate.

I don't know how accurate adwords preview is, but try changing your keyword matches for a few days and see if you average position is higher.

 

[Magic Miguel]

I do have a question for you guys, how do you track conversions? I don't have anything that can track when they call me after visiting my website. Is there anything you guys use? It's hard to put an exact number without guessing. I'd like to take out the guess work.

 

[HCHTech]

One way is to have offer a discount in your ad. "Mention this ad for 5% off first service". Something like that. You could also have a special landing page that isn't in your normal site menus that offers this discount.

More complicated is to setup a separate phone number to use in the ad and on your landing page. Only folks who got to your site through the ad see that phone number.

This is what the Google folks told me when I asked this very question.

This is similar to tracking which yellow page book a customer came from (to track ROI). The only real way is to have a separate phone number. Too much trouble IMO, so I never did that when I was doing yellow pages - I just guessed based on location - not perfect, but it was good enough.

 

[JonnyRT]

Yes I think having a separate phone number is the only way to track. Even that isn't completely accurate as you have no idea which of clicks converted to sales.

I have a landing page set up specifically for Adwords traffic with a contact form on so I know if they contact me through that form that they have come through Adwords. If they call, I tend to just ask them where they saw me.