I was getting some ok traffic to Fundogcollars.com until I fell prey to one aspect of the Google mojo I’m still trying to unwind: Quality Score.
Per the third week in the 30DC, I’ve jumped into some Google Adwords PPC plays (Pay-per-Click) advertising and set up a two separate campaigns - one that is triggered whenever someone searches for ‘fun dog collars’ and ‘dog collars’. I set my daily budget to 25 bucks/day and .65 cents per click. I wrote some decent ads, and I thought I was good to go.
For those who don’t know, Google Adwords are the ads that appear either on the very top of a search results page - or to the right. People like me pay for these positions - but the beauty is we only pay when the the ad is clicked on. So if the ad is relevant, you can get some great traffic.
But Google is smart. They don’t want just any ads running on their network. They want relevancy. They want to serve an ad that will be clicked on so that they maximize the earning power of their media space. So they screen the ads to ensure that if you’re searching for vegetarian recipes, you don’t see a whole slew of ads for pork. Each ad is passed through their mysterious matrix, and a quality score is determined based on this assessed relevancy.
To hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, click here.
Problem is, my Quality Score, for reasons I’m still digging into, stink. As a result, my ads aren’t triggered. And my natural SEO has fallen as well.
So I’ve only managed 102 people to my site in 3 weeks. Not horrible I guess. Of those 102, 15 have clicked through on the affiliate ads. No Purchases.
Irregardless, the sections on Google Ads and further deep diving into Market Samurai have been really strong. Ed Dale and team shine here, and I’ve learned a lot of finer points I didn’t know. Worth while all the way, even if my site is performing like a dog.
As Ed says, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Excited to close this thing out.
