How to improve the quality score (QS) when bidding on competitor brand names in Google Adwords?
-
Hi,
I have researched few sites on this topic and I could see that the competitor keyword should match with the add text relevance, landing page relevance and CTR.
Any other factors more to be included to improve the quality score?
Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2285536/Google-Updates-How-AdWords-Quality-Score-is-Reported
-
It depends what you want to achieve! You will never get 8 but you can really play with match types sometimes
broadwith right negatives can be cheaper than exact. test it! Get tight ad groups, research misspells and close variations and uncheck in settings close variations targeting. Work on your ad copy! test and refine. Improve page load times.Hope it helps!
Igor
-
Competitor campaigns work very well. Just make sure you are targeting a competitor offering a similar product.
Brian gives good advice...I structure my competitor campaigns similarly..separate campaign...separate groups for each competitor. Be careful about Dynamic Keyword Insertion....I've used it before in competitor campaigns, and it generated high CTR, but also generated complaints. I do not use DKI for competitor campaigns any longer.
I found that I can get high CTR if I show why my product is great, not focused on my brand or my competitor. ie. I will use Coke vs Pepsi in an example. If I am Pepsi, and I am targeting keyword of "Coke"... My text ads would say thing like, Cold Refreshing Soda, Summer Soda Sale, Refreshing Beverage, #1 Taste Test Winner, Caffeine Free Beverage, etc. Focus on the product, not the brand. Why is the customer looking for this product? They are thirsty... show how your product can help the customer...they will click on your ad and buy your product.
My competitor campaigns perform very well...they are a great way to gain market share.
-
Why not spend your time and money on improving your own listings and content rather bidding on competitors names? The CTR is going to poor whatever you do because it isn't really what the customer is looking for.
-
CTR in my experience, has the greatest impact on your QS in adwords.
If I needed to improve my QS on a competitors branded name, I would do the following:
- Create a new campaign titled "competitor x"
- Create ad groups for each of the competitors products
- Create ads that are transparent that you ARE NOT the competitor but offer a similar, if not better, value.
- Employ dynamic keyword placement in some of your ads (test with and without)
- Build landing pages that contract your business with your competitor (again transparency will avoid problems from people feeling duped that they clicked on your ad when they were looking for your competitor.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the perfect strategy for a Brand that manufactures the product?
Hello Moz Community, I'm currently associated with one of the brands. It's a nutrition and supplement brand that manufacture supplements. Now, they are running an e-commerce website. Problem: It should be product based website, not an e-commerce website (Like Design, Look and Feel of it.) The problem with SEO: What do you thing like which will work better.
Branding | | Max_
1. Doing Perfect On-Page SEO? And building links for queries like: Best whey protein supplement in "Geo." Buy Protein Powder Online Buy Whey Online "Geo." Generic Terms Brand Name URL All the Remaining Keywords and Anchors OR 1. Doing a perfect On-Page SEO? and
2. Doing massive outreach like Inviting bloggers for guest post (Natural Anchor) Guest Posts (Natural Anchor) Mentions on social media Content Local Business about reciprocal promotions Email outreach Product Reviews Influencers content Link building as mentioned above Q. Tell me which will work the best?
Q. What I've to change in the strategy?
Q. Also tell me how to do a perfect keyword research for product pages? Thank you0 -
LinkedIn Versus Google Adwords for B to B Advertising
Does anyone have experience with LinkedIn and Google Adwords for B+B advertising? I own a commercial real estate agency in Manhattan. We aim to generate qualified leads of business tenants seeking to rent office or loft space. The advertising is not meant to build an image or branding. Approximate total adverting budget is $3,000-$5,000/month. LinkedIn appears to have the advantage in being able to target a particular demographic (industry, geography, job function, size of company). But I wonder if it is not geared towards branding rather than generating warm leads. In terms of cost and quality of leads does anyone have insight as to how these two platforms compare? Thanks, Alan Rosinsky
Branding | | Kingalan11 -
My 40 year old, well established business has a brand name that I think is hurting my SEO. Need advice please.
Our business brand name has words in it which when we were using it as our domain name, was a) bad for our SEO and b) got our emails marked as spam in our client's inboxes. This was not a problem when we first got online, years ago. It eventually became problematic, but we didn't realize it for some time. When we realized the issue, we simply changed our domain name to something more SEO friendly, using exact match keywords. This was fine for a while, but eventually, algorithms changed again, and now with Google putting an emphasis on Brand Names and not looking as kindly on exact match keyword type domains, we are again at a place where we don't know what to do. We can't change our brand name. I don't want to post our real name or business here, but I will give an example. Brand Name: Living Free Travel The Issue: "Free Travel" gets blocked by spam filters, gets us useless traffic from people looking for free travel (which makes out bounce rates very high), gets our domain blacklisted. The Solution: travel2europe.com is the website of Living Free Travel The New Issue: travel2europe.com is not our brand, and probably doesn't look like one to Google, especially since on our site, travel2europe.com is never really mentioned because it is only our domain, not our brand. "Living Free Travel" is generally the anchor text for travel2europe.com wherever we are linked to. We assume this mismatch is problematic for us in ways we don't even know. Are we screwed? Need advice, please. THANK YOU.
Branding | | benenjerry0 -
Optimizing for a person with two variations of their first name.
Hello, I am wondering if there is best practices or ideas when doing SEO work for someone's personal name and that name has two variations. So for instance, if someone's formal first name is "James" but they go by "Jim" or "Richard" and "Rick." I thought it might be easy as choosing one and going for it, but this person has a lot of info about them indexed and google and for the most part it is two completely different set of SERP's depending on which variation of the named is searched.
Branding | | kevgrand0 -
Changing domain name and site design while recovering from penguin? Still SEO power in EMDs?
Our website recently suffered from a penguin update courtesy of some black hat techniques used by an SEO company we hired a few years ago. We are working on cleaning up and disavowing the old spammy links, but at the same time this penalty has hit us while we were working on making some major changes to our website. As a law firm we have 2 separate practice websites we are planning to merge under 1 domain to help boost our local results. Our problem is that the domain names for each practice are specific to the type of law they practice, so we will have to move both practices to a branded name domain that works for both practices. I thought since traffic was already affected because of the penguin update this might be an opportune time to change the domain name, but since I am far from an expert at SEO I'm wondering if there are variables I am unaware of that might make this decision a very bad one. Also we currently have exact match domains for our two different sites -- the way I understand it EMDs don't carry the same SEO weight they once did, but the firm is worried that losing the EMDs is going to cause a dramatic drop in traffic. If we keep the EMDs but permanently redirect them to the new site, will it maintain their SEO value? Would google consider that black hat and possibly penalize us for it in the future? Thanks for any advice or insight!!
Branding | | MyOwnSEO0 -
Big Problems Using &'s in Business Name?
One of my clients is a law firm with a Business name like the following:
Branding | | gbkevin
Rosenberg & Dalgren, LLP They get A TON of organic search traffic on their brand name above, but most people (95%) search "Rosenberg and Dalgren" instead of "Rosenberg & Dalgren". **Notice use of ampersand being used and alternatively, the word "and" being used. ** Currently, their local citations across the Internet (G+, YP, Yelp, etc) use the business name, "Rosenberg & Dalgren, LLP" (with ampersand). Here is the dilemma we are in... When someone searches "Rosenberg and Dalgren" in Google (which the majority of our search traffic does), Google does NOT show our local one-box on the right hand side of the SERPs (see example of a one-box I am referring to here http://blumenthals.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Screen-Shot-2013-09-28-at-9.59.58-AM.png). But when someone searches "Rosenberg & Dalgren" in Google, it does trigger our local one-box with photos, review ratings, links to our Google+ Local page, etc. WHICH IS GREAT! They have AWESOME reviews that command powerful social proof. We want that local one-box to show up! So my question is, what can I do to trigger that local one-box for both brand name searches for "Rosenberg & Dalgren" as well as "Rosenberg and Dalgren"? I am considering changing our NAP citations to have the business name be "Rosenberg and Dalgren" since that is what 95% of people search in Google to find them. I am guessing Google doesn't quite understand that "Rosenberg and Dalgren" is linked to "Rosenberg & Dalgren" via what it sees in the knowledge graph of the Internet (citations, website, etc). So how best should I handle this and get that local one-box triggering for the majority of our branded search traffic? Lastly, what is the best advice for including company/corporate designations in the NAP citations? (ie. LLP, LLC, Inc, etc) Thank you for any help and guidance! We appreciate it!0 -
Google Plus for Businesses - Should I add users to Company's Circles (branded page)?
Hi All, I know (or think I know) that one of the easiest ways to gain followers for my brand on G plus is to add people to our company's circles. Naturally, they often add you back. However, what does it mean to people who watch my brand (my G Plus page), the fact that I'm following thousands of people? Should I do it? How does it reflect on us?
Branding | | BeytzNet
Is there a better way to gain followers (specifically for G Plus)? P.S
We obviously have the badge on site but we hardly gain followers that way. Thanks0 -
Naming a brand & domain
Hi Experts, We are selecting a brand name and domain for a new ecommerce website. The major keyword in this industry is lets assume xyz. It is by far the most searched keyword in this industry, but it just sounds horrible for branding purposes. For SEO purposes how important is it to keep that keyword in the domain / brand name? can we make up for the lack of that keyword in the domain / brand name if we decide to pick a brand name that does not have xyz in it? Thanks for the help 🙂
Branding | | TVape0