Adwords Maintenance and QS

[Jon12345]

My Adwords account is bloated with lots of keywords with low impressions, some with poor CTR, others with poor CTR but still profitable keywords.

I love artarmon42's YSM tuning system, which makes perfect sense if YSM treats your overall account performance into the QS equation. But what about Adwords? I haven't seen a post by artarmon42 for Adwords. Is that because he (you,if you are reading!) don't have a similar system? Or perhaps Adwords doesn't treat the account QS in the same way.

Would love to hear comments about keeping your Adwords QS up. Yes, I know about matching keyword to the ad and landing page. But its the pruning and its effect on QS that I would like to know about. And also your estimate of the extent of its effect.

Thanks,

Jon

[artarmon42]

Both Keliix and I answered a similar question on another thread somewhere here.
In Adwords, you should remove any keyword that doesn't get alot of impressions or have low CTR. Bad keywords in your campaign (and even in your account) will negatively affect your overall performance.

[Jon12345]

I've spent the last half hour hunting for the post you mention but so far it has eluded me. I've looked through both the Quality Score and Adwords forums. Anyone help me find the post?

[mystickcal]

I've spent the last half hour hunting for the post you mention but so far it has eluded me. I've looked through both the Quality Score and Adwords forums. Anyone help me find the post?

You don't really need it.....he just basically summed it all up for you and told you what to do...delete keywords that have a low CTR and "bad keywords" once that aren't performing...and make sure to do it quickly.

[Jon12345]

There a few things I am not clear about regarding this:

1. If you have a Campaign that is paused in Adwords, does this adversely affect your account QS? Or have no effect? What about keywords (or bad keywords) in a paused account. Do you know if they have any impact?

2. I read somewhere on this forum that Google is better than Yahoo at factoring in CTR to ad position. If so, does the 1% CTR goal then not stand? And that leads to my next question...

3. Given #2 above, doesn't that mean a CTR higher than 1% but a poor CTR for the ad position could be dragging down your account QS? How do you deal with this?

4. I think it was mystickcal who said that only beginners should delete keywords with a low CTR. But more experienced affiliates should create more ads. Do you have any rules pertaining to this? e.g. if CTR 0.5% after 500 impressions, add a new advert and test for next 500 impressions.

5. Is there a way to search for Poor QS keywords in adwords using either Reports or Adwords Editor?

These distinctions would help me greatly. Thanks.

[artarmon42]

1) Paused campaigns will affect account QS. Account QS has smaller impact to individual campaigns, so you may or may not want to clear paused campaigns. However, the issue becomes moot if you just delete under performing keywords regardless of the status of the campaign that it is in.
2) That just means Google will recognize that Position 9 will have a much lower CTR than position 1. So don't look at the raw CTR. You have to consider CTR in context of what position it is in.
3) I think what you really want to know, is what's the "magic" number for a "good (enough)" CTR. The answer depends on the keyword and position. Some keywords, the best CTR I can get at position 1 is 10%. Some keywords, that position 1 is 50%. There is no magic number. So how do you tell if a CTR is good? Over time (even from day to day), your bid should decrease. Or at the very least your ad position should not get worse... if it gets worse with the same bid, then Google figures someone else has a better CTR. I posted a more detailed explanation on my blog (http://www.wandering.net/2008/01/21/the-importance-of-adwords-ctr/) ages ago.
4) I think that was in context of YSM.
5) Do it manually (yes that means if you have lots of keywords, it's a lot of work... but no one ever said affiliate marketing was easy). Personally I track it using the process I outlined in step (3) above. I find that provides a much better granular insight to the situation.

[nsusa]

Instead of pausing a campaign use ad scheduling and just set it down to run maybe 30 minutes a day. I think this helps to avoid the hit you would take upon pausing a campaign.

Chris

[Minisuit]

Thanks for sharing valuable info