Higher Adwords CTR and Higher Quality Score = Lower CPC & Better Positions
That was actually the last sentence I wrote for a possible new client we've been courting, while trying to sum up the idea of why someone would even hire us in the first place. Actually it went like this...
Why better? Very simple. Better targeting = higher CTR. Better landing pages = higher Quality Score. Higher CTR and higher Quality score = lower CPC & better positions.
All of that = way more clicks for less money!
But before we got to the punch line, we have to do some basic research to get our bearings. Our possible new client sells furniture for laboratories and is already advertising on Adwords. When we're looking for some indication of historical performance, but before we have access to the actual Adwords account I usually like to start with a round of SpyFu analyses.
Basic Step #1: Check out PPC Reports on SpyFu
I noticed one of the ad + keyword combinations in SpyFu's Ad History analysis that was drawing a lot of attention was the ad "Custom Built Workbenches" showing for the keyword: Cabinet Makers Workbench
...and it made me wonder if that was intentional?
Not that it's wrong exactly--cabinet makers may be a big group of clients for this business. But it did give me a sense that there may be opportunities within their Adwords account to be more specific about targeting (and negative targeting). In this case, if they actually want to target cabinet makers looking for a cabinet makers workbench--then our most preliminary recommendation would be to include the phrase "Cabinet makers workbench" somewhere in the ad.
Basic Step #2: 'Adwords Advisor' Report from SpyFu
We also often use SpyFu to get a sense of what competitors are bidding on that the client is not. For example:
I'm not totally sure that they don't have the keywords laboratory cabinets or laboratory tables somewhere in their account--or that they're not trying to do something more sophisticated with targeting and that's why I didn't see them in my test searches. Just that those are keywords that I think would be valuable for this particular business--and I didn't see their site in the SERP.
Adwords targeting is basically our bread and butter. And although it's not rocket science, it does take a certain level of skill--and for sure a bunch of time to get it right. We like we say "way more clicks for less money". There's a lot that goes into that--but at the end of the day, you can boil it down to really simple math.
Basic Step #3: Keyword Search Volume Analysis Using Keywordtool.io
We use Keywordtool.io regularly to look for key phrases with the highest search volume, to make sure our clients are getting seen where people are looking. After I pulled up this list below...
Adwords CPC and Search Volume Using Keywordtool.io
This one caught my eye, vwr laboratory furniture. The addition of "VWR" makes it a higher intent keyword than say, laboratory furniture. Someone typing in vwr indicates they are further down the sales funnel--they know more specifically what they want.
So I drop the keyword into Google and I'm happy to see their ad.
Although I see two big areas of opportunity:
- Get that keyword into the ad text. Preferably into the title
- I went looking for the landing page, which lead me to the site's navigation. Where I expected to find a page for VWR lab furniture...but I did not
Now again--this very well could be my presently naive knowledge about their business. But generally speaking, from an Adwords perspective...if that keyword is worth advertising for then it's worth it to have a specific page to land on that contain the main keyword. Or if they actually don't sell that product, it's a great opportunity to exclude searches that are very unlikely to be their customer.
From what I've seen it appears that they're using a sort of catch-all landing page for the ads. Just like the targeting example above, that's not wrong exactly. I've actually seen cases where broadly targeted landing pages with tons of relevant topics and strong CTA's on them perform really well. A deeper analysis would absolutely be needed here. But it's quite possible that the set up could be better.
Why better? Very simple. Better targeting = higher CTR. Better landing pages = higher Quality Score. Higher CTR and higher Quality score = lower CPC & better positions.
All of that = way more clicks for less money!
After some basic research I feel quite confident that we could drive more value to this business by working through our optimization processes on current their Adwords advertising. And for us, that's the basic starting point of wheter or not it makes sense to offer our services to a potential new client.
