Comments on: How The PPC Grinch Can Steal Christmas

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:56:25 +0000

The Google Grinch seems to have a big downer on my price comparison landing pages this year (worked a treat last year) quality scores gone from 10/10 to 1-3/10 overnight

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:47:31 +0000

Hey John, Its a long, long time since I had a landing page slap. About 2 years I think.

If you always try to address why Google is slapping your landing pages rather than “churning and burning” with disposable domains you will always be fine. I’ll put my hands up – I’ve done the churn and burn thing in the past, but only for as long as it took me to do my research and work out what my solution would be. I was deeply uncomfortable doing it because I felt it could ultimately end in exactly the situation you’ve just described!

So in short, no, I’m not worried about getting a ban. I always try to add bags of value to the user and make my landing pages compliant with Google’s desires (insofar as I am able to interpret them!).

The people you are talking about probably did the wrong thing one too many times – you even get a final warning before Google pulls the plug!

By: John

John — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:31:40 +0000

Kirsty,
Speaking of PPC, I’ve been reading on webmasterworld about affiliates being banned for life from Adwords for multiple landing page policy violations. You have mentioned previously that you have on occasions had the dreaded Google Slap applied to some of your PPC activity. Are you worried that you might get a permanent ban at some stage?

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:04:52 +0000

It is so easy Stuart, I do it way too often. You get half way through working something out, the phone rings or someone asks you a question, you start back on the wrong number and that’s it – you’re operating on the wrong assumption and don’t find out till the next time you go through it!!

Another example I was going to give in the post was that on Sunday there was a huge traffic increase as people started shopping online for Christmas. I got 180 visitors for about twice the price I’d have gotten 140 visits at my old CPC level ( I wasn’t getting that many more impressions just an enhanced CTR). It got too complicated for me though so I left it out.

I was quite tired when I did the post too, so its at times like that you will make number mistakes!

By: Stuart Dykes

Stuart Dykes — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:24:43 +0000

This also shows how easy it is to make simple maths errors. Something that I would imagine can really screw your campaigns up.

The annoying thing is when you find a mistake that has been staring you in the face for ages and you wonder how you could have missed that.

Makes you wonder sometimes, are you actually taking in what you are reading or just looking a words and numbers on a screen?

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:12:42 +0000

Mark – nah, you’re right I goofed up my figures after getting the average number of days wrong, starting to go back through the new PPC bid section, and then having Duncan come in and talk to me about a bloody bird in the garden. Have corrected now!

You’d think after all these years living with an affiliate marketer he’d have learned not to talk to me when the calculator keys are ringing, LOL.

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:46:57 +0000

Don’t quote me, but the figures from Kirsty were average daily figures, so before she may have had a lot of clicks for less than 4p, and this time a lot of clicks for more than 5p? I don’t know, I do agree that it doesn’t add up though!

By: mark

mark — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:17:57 +0000

134 x 5p = £6.70 ??? not £9.48 or am i reading something wrong ? i dont do PPC so may have it wrong

By: Adam Bean

Adam Bean — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:00:29 +0000

Great post Kirsty
It really is a timely reminder to keep an eye on not only PPC advertising.
But any advertising costs.
I find it quite astounding.
The amount of business owners that throw money away on advertising.
Advertising that they never test and measure,therefore they have no logical way of knowing.
How effectively their marketing dollars are being spent.
These are usually smart business owners, that have been brainwashed by ineffective marketers.
That convince them that they “need to get their name out there”!!!