If you’ve ever setup a Google AdWords account and noticed that the Minimum CPC (cost-per-click) for most of your keywords started around $1, $5, or $10 from the get-go, you may be experiencing a quality score issue around your “Visible URL” …at least that’s what was explained to me by a Google AdWords insider last week. It’s apparently possible, through no fault of your own, to inherit a doomed domain …and possibly ruin your SEM reputation in the process.

To say the least, I was surprised when I set up an account targeting auto related keywords in a small Florida community and noticed that, right from the start, most of my keywords had a Minimum CPC of $1 …and many had a Minimum CPC of $5. Since I was working with another advertiser in the same industry and in the same market, I was quite surprised. Almost every keyword in the other account had a Minimum CPC of $0.05. How could the Minimum CPC vary so much between these two accounts when the keywords were the same and the ad copy was very similar?

Knowing how well the other campaign was performing, I didn’t worry about it too much. I figured after a week or so, the high CTR (click-through rate) would eventually lower my Average CPC and, most likely, my Minimum CPC. It did not. In fact, it got worse. Even though the CPC I was bidding at was certainly higher than everyone else was paying, my ad position never got above 8 or 9, which completely tanked my CTR. After that, my account quality tanked and there was no recovery. By the time I bit the bullet and resorted to call my AdWords contact, 97% of my keywords had a $5 or $10 Minimum CPC.

“What am I doing wrong?”, I asked. “Do I just suck as a search engine marketer?” Forget ‘AdWords Ninja’ …I was an ‘AdWords Mr Bean“! …But then I found out about one of the “not to be mentioned” items that comes under Google’s Quality Score formula when they state “other relevance factors”.

The “Visible URL”

The way it was phrased to me was “visible URL” …as opposed to your invisible URL? I wish I had thought to get indisputable clarification, but from the rest of the conversation, she was definitely referring to the display URL, at least as it pertains to AdWords. My colleague, Justin Davy, covered this and another issue after our conversation, but I wanted to provide an update and spend a little time on a different angle of the visibleURL issue …like, how can you inherit a penalty from someone else, and what to do when that happens.

First off… I don’t think I am giving away some top-secret AdWords factors. This person was very open about the “visible URL” issue and certainly never has given me any top-secret information. This is something they just don’t mention for sake of brevity and so their advertisers focus on the things that, in the end, effect these “other” factors.

With that said, the most important part of our conversation was where they stated that the quality score stays with the visible URL from account to account. Huh? In other words, someone who previously managed an AdWords campaign for your advertiser may have completely destroyed the quality score for that domain. It doesn’t matter if you’ve created a new account under a different name, you’re in trouble from the start.

Yes, I understand that some domains perform poorly because they’re just plain bad sites and SHOULD have a poor quality score, but it seems they’ve overlook some important reasons for keeping the quality score from transferring across accounts. How about the PPC N00b factor? Can we all agree there are a lot of people in this business or running their own AdWords’ campaigns that have just enough knowledge to completely destroy a campaign with it? It seems a bad decision to assume that a poor visible URL score is always a result of the visible URL, and never the PPC marketer.

Note: This advertiser performs poorly organically …even for their own business name (despite it’s usage in the title, meta description, h1 tag, & page copy). I have not been able to verify if factors outside of AdWords effect the visible domain quality score.

Note Update (2/1/2008): I received the following quote from my Google contact. Not very revealing and probably what all of us expected:

Poor organic search results do not affect quality score. However, if the organic search results are poor, it could be an indicator that the landing page quality is not deemed relevant…

Repairing Your AdWords Account

Putting the rationality of this practice aside, what can you do when this happens? Well there are a few thing:

1. Create a new AdWords account - The one you have is already ruined. The account quality score is jacked and it will take you forever to repair it, if that is even possible. New accounts are free, so you might as well trade it in. By simply creating a new account I went from having 97% of my keywords with minimum CPC of $5+ to only 6% with a minimum CPC of $5+.
2. Set up a new campaign with only the most targeted keywords - In my case, the auto dealer specialized in used cars only. Keywords like “used cars {city name}” are perfect, but keywords like “car dealers {city name}” are not targeted enough, since many people looking for car dealers are looking for new car dealers. It’s not enough to add “new” as a negative broad keyword, as people just assume they will get new car results and will not necessarily type “new” into their query.
3. Create a landing page on a domain that is known to have a good (or neutral) quality score - Use this page to land the other less targeted keywords while you work on repairing the quality score of their domain. As you notice the minimum CPC starting to drop, you can gradually move some of the more targeted keywords back over to that domain.
4. Keep a close eye on your campaigns - I’m talking about going in there once an hour for the first few day, the twice a day for the rest of the week. I cannot overstate how crucial this step is. If you’re going on vacation, wait until you come back. Otherwise you may end up worse off than when you began.
5. Keep the CTR as high as possible - At least 2%. If you can get it higher than that, even better. Any keyword that gets 100 impressions and zero clicks, pause it until you can figure out if there is a better way to structure an ad group to make the keyword work.
6. Organize the keywords into highly targeted ad groups - This allows you to write very targeted ad copy. If the keyword is “lighting installation tampa”, your ad copy should say so …not “Electricians in Tampa”.
7. Don’t get all high and mighty …and post a comment about how we should be doing this anyway and how you do this with all of your accounts. We know that already, and nobody likes a know-it-all ;-)

Yes, all this is a pain, and you may be tempted to dump the advertiser and say, “Sorry it didn’t work out. It’s not me, it’s you.” However, if you can explain what is going on, and successfully repair their AdWords issue, more than likely they will stay with you out of thanks and admiration …or just because they are too scared that someone else will butcher their campaigns.

Categories: Google AdWords, Search Engine Marketing, Pay-Per-Click ~ ~ Trackback