Is it better to place PPC when competition is high or low?
-
When managing a clients PPC campaign is there any advice on throttling up and down the accounts depending on the search popularity. Let's take "wedding cake" there are obvious trends here https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=wedding cake but would you advise to spend more on Ads during the quite months as competition is low and you can get more click for less cost, or do you load up on clicks when it is more competitive/expencive .
Please don't get bogged down in the "weeding cake" keyword, I'm looking more for views on when would be best to load an account in terms of return on investment. For example would you get better quality clicks when low search volumes as opposed to high. Lets also assume that our product costs us the same all year round. I have seen different side to the story.
What are your views
-
Competition does matter, and the landscape does change based on different keywords. Most head terms don't have significant amounts of competition because they are too vague. Something like Wedding Cakes is not a good PPC term when you are looking to make money on your money as fast as you can.
It's always best to try bidding on the term (especially on Broad Match Modified) to see how it performs for you, but it is highly likely you will receive a low QS and a low CTR and higher CPCs which make it not as important of a term when you are looking at everything from a returns or profits perspective.
As far as low v high volumes for keywords, it's not something that I take into significant consideration unless my client is trying to get close to a specific number or is very concerned about a specific keyword. PPC is about throwing out a wide net for low, mid and high volume keywords, bidding on all of them, and learning over time what creates good return for your particular niche. What works for my business might be a horrible strategy for your business.
-
Hi Simon,
From your question it is very clear that you want to get more clicks in less cost but spending more in quite time there is no doubt cost will reduce due to less competition but you will also get less conversion in quite months.
IMO you should bid on peak season and if your budget is tight don't use broad match use only exact match and even if you think exact match is expensive use BMM keywords and add exact match as negative keyword so you can target only long tail keyword.
To reduce CPC best option is increase QS of your keyword.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
-
People who run PPC campaigns should be focused on the average cost for a conversion and the average profit on a sale. These can vary wildly as traffic blasts arrive from various sources that might have purchase intent or not. As soon as the eye is removed from the cost of what you are doing and the profit that it is producing, then a vendors shirt can be lost without knowing it.
-
Maybe more complicated decision than asked.
To me and my clients it is about market share. As you know ultimately there is usually only one winner/survivor. Law of the jungle.
google -v- bing
pepsi v coke. etc,
I suggest you use adwords as one tool in the kit to strategically gain market share at a faster rate than your competitors - however carefully monitor the cost of client acquisition. At some stages it may get too expensive to chase key Adwords in the high season - due to bulging cheque books of competitors - but stay in the hunt as long as you can afford to. Do not go head on for the "main" keywords if you cannot afford it. Also get smart if you can't afford to go head on - use social media, mail outs, editorial, long tailed keywords - fight to the death. A favorite of mine at the moment is outbrain. Never stop thinking about stealing clicks from your competitors. But never stop marketing at any time, just do it smarter. In high season you must be seen and heard as that is what will carry you through the slow season...
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
-
PPC: how to get rid of an ad appearing on a keyword we don't want?
Hi, Our ad on Google Ads is appearing for a search we don't want. it isn't in our search keywords and when i try and ad it to our negative ones, we get the error " You cannot exclude keywords that are targeted " which i assume means that google thinks we are bidding on it? We have a selection of broad phrase matches so i can only think that this is where it's coming from? Do you have any tips on tracking down which keyword is generating this ad and how we can turn it off? (we don't want to pay for clicks on this search if possible!) Btw - i have turned off each keyword in turn to test it = nothing. have then paused the whole campaign = gets rid of the ad (but this is our most successful campaign so i can't just turn it off). Any advice super super welcome. thank you!
Paid Search Marketing | | Fubra1 -
100+ PPC Landing Pages Linking To Main URL... Hurting My SEO?
I started another thread around this question but don't think I was articulate enough. So, I have over 100 various landing pages that I use for targeted PPC. I don't really have any interest in these pages amassing their own SEO value; I simply use them for my PPC accounts. However, they all link back to my home page. Is this considered a link farm? And, if so, is the best option to simply add a nofollow attribute to all the links pointing to my home page? Would there be any reason to keep the links as follow? I don't think they're giving my site any SEO value but I'm concerned that they could be harming it instead. Any expert advice would be much appreciated.
Paid Search Marketing | | jfishe19880 -
PPC Long tail keywords
I was wondering feedback and input on creating long tail keywords associated with a question. With addition a landing page that addresses that problem with a few products. Using PPC to bid on long tail keywords, I would set a campaign for long tail keywords and have multiple ad groups with a close knit and similar sentences like "Top 10 highest rated summer dresses" and "Popular dresses for the summer weather." My landing page would address the question with a list of products like a buzz feed article format. 1. As it is on a subdomain blog with an add to cart feature, would interlink building be helpful in exchanging link juice. 2. Bidding on a long tail keyword is cheaper, but will they result in higher conversions since its hyper-specific question? And since it is a long tail keyword sentence. 2-3 smaller keywords between the sentence would also pick up on to Google search?
Paid Search Marketing | | petmkt0 -
PPC software.. which one do you think is better? why?
hey guys... I am trying to figure out the best way of doing PPC. I dont want waste money doing it the less effective way. So far I have been looking at Acquisio and wordstream.. I am not sure which would be best for me or if there is other options that would be even better. I am in house in charge of 2 ecommerce websites.
Paid Search Marketing | | Felip30 -
PPC landing page cannibalizing the Organic page's juice?
I have a PPC campaign pointing to a custom landing page.
Paid Search Marketing | | Rich_Coffman
I also have a different webpage for the same product that is optimized to rank organically (on the same site). Should I noindex the PPC landing page so it doesn't steal the thunder from my organic webpage? If so, does noindex damage the adwords quality score? Should I just give the PPC landing page a different Title tag that doesn't cannibalize my organic page and call it a day? Does a PPC landing page need a title tag for a better adwords quality score? Thanks!0 -
How much is my competition spending on adwrods?
Hi guys Has anyone used tools like spyfu before? I need to find out how much the top competition in my market is spending on adwords and what keywords etc. Is spyfu accurate and how do they get that data? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | yournetbiz0 -
Keyword Domains for PPC
I have a client who wants to buy a lot of long domains with keywords in them, for example, thesandiegopetstore.com (this is fictional) and then set up a PPC landing page for each. They think that when someone types in "san diego pet store" that their domain will be listed high and then they will get a lot of traffic. My concern is that they will own a lot of domains for their company and I thought Google is getting pretty adamant about companies not having a lot of domains, and I thought that keyword domains are not as effective as they used to be -- that branding is more important now. Also, I think the domains they've picked target very competitive keywords and that perhaps they will get a lot unqualified traffic and will still have to pay for the clicks. What do you think? What is the best way to set up PPC landing pages?
Paid Search Marketing | | klkirby0