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
-
How to Find Competitor PPC Keywords ?
Can anyone suggest best way to find all PPC keywords of a competitor. Any tool recommendation ?
Paid Search Marketing | | singhmahendra0 -
Will pausing my AdWords PPC campaigns impact my organic rankings?
Over 95% of my revenue comes from organic search; less than 5% comes from AdWords PPC (all other sources account for about 1-2%). My ROI on AdWords is roughly zero. It's negative if you include opportunity costs. My question is: if I pause all of my AdWords campaigns, is there ANY chance that my organic rankings (and organic click-through rates) will suffer? This is really two questions. First, could Google retaliate to my reduced ad spending by dropping my rankings? Second, will searchers think differently about my organic link if they don't also see the accompanying paid link on the SERP?
Paid Search Marketing | | ahirai2 -
Cannot re-activate PPC after GWT violation has been removed.
Google adwords not allowing us to reactivate after GWT violation removed and site deemed clean by Google. Attempts at reaching them for guidance have been unsuccessful. Any suggestions? Thank you.
Paid Search Marketing | | ahw0 -
I want to try some Google PPC ads on other sites but don't know what i'm doing.
We have seen a massive drop in traffic this year and i am contemplation using banner ads to try to increase sales and also to help with marketing. the problem is i know nothing about doing this. I have used it in the past but to limited success and i was just stabbing in the dark. I have a few questions. Am i better to target keywords related to the product or to the people who may buy my products? Is it better for direct sales or brand awareness? What kind of ROI can i expect if i get it working well? Is it better to pay for the big keywords or pic all the low hanging fruit? Does it work? Should i employ an expert, are they worth it? Any insights into the world of PPc would be a massive help.
Paid Search Marketing | | mark_baird1 -
Will a javascript rewrite of city names on a home page from PPC traffic affect SEO negatively?
We have a client that was originally based out of Orlando and the entire website is SEO'ed for Orlando. In the long term we will start SEO'ing for Tampa. But In the short term, we want to drive traffic from Tampa to the website but we want that traffic to know the business specializes in Tampa service (he has local teams there). We are already using a ?_vsrefdom=changemynumber to change the phone number dynamically to a tampa area code for tracking purposes. We want to dynamically change all iterations of 'Orlando' with 'Tampa' using the same javascript. Does this cause any SEO problems or trip any alarms with Google?
Paid Search Marketing | | Highforge0 -
PPC : Do I have to create differents Adwords account for my 2 companies?
Hello Mozers, I have 2 small companies in 2 different fields (tourism and IT). Do I have to create 2 different accounts for my Adwords campaigns? Is it the good way of proceeding? Thank you for yours answers guys, Jonathan
Paid Search Marketing | | JonathanLeplang0 -
PPC/Adwords in China
I am trying to understand the challenges of running PPC in China. If anyone has any experience with adwords/Baidu/Alibaba I would really appreciate them sharing. I was having a hard time locating the specific polices in Adwords help. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | JerrodDavid0 -
Doing Google Places for customer - best solution?
I work at a media agency in Denmark and I'm trying to open a Google Places-account for one of our retail-customers which is to be linked to the customers AdWords-account. I created a Places account and via bulk upload I submitted the customers 74 locations. I was then asked to verify my bulk upload, which I did. That's two weeks ago, and I've tried to get help from our Google contact but to little avail. Could the problem be that I am doing the places account on behalf of our customer, and thus when I am asked to verify the upload I supply my own information (contact phone and business name) rather than the customers? Have any of you had a similar experience? Is there an alternate path I can take to solve this?
Paid Search Marketing | | Iumreprise0