Quote Originally Posted by birdoasis View Post
The trick I learned from Numinix is that you don't have to pay for the top spot to get hits and sales with google adwords. I started by paying $1.50 per hit and dropped down to 50 cents and I'm getting more sales than I was at $1.50.
The top spot in Google Adwords isn't usually a good place to be. People click on the top ad without thinking about what they are clicking on. People who click on the ads further down the screen have pre-qualified themselves by already looking at the previous ads and possibly sites.

50cents still sounds like a lot to pay. 20 Cents would be my top price and I'd try and get the average below that.

Make sure that your landing pages are relevant to your ads and your ad text is relevant to your landing page. Also be very careful with broad matches, they will match all sorts of things that are not relevant. Try to go for phrase matches and exact matches where possible. Broad matches are useful for finding out what people are searching for but don't pay much for them. Make sure that you have negative keywords set up for anything you do not want to match, especially things like free and wholesale (unless you are a wholesaler).

If you are using Google Analytics to track your campaigns then remember that it does not show the keywords the customer searched for before they clicked on your ad. It shows the keyword you have set up for matching in your ad group and depending on your match type this can be quite different. You can get Analytics to show the exact search words the person used but it requires a bit of extra javascript on your site. Alternatively have a dig through your log files.

For example if you have set up a broad match for heated birdbaths then your ad will be triggered by searches for...
heated
birdbaths
heated swimming pools
birdbath designs
...and so on and so on.

Regards,
Christian.