Using Google Adwords - Help!

I read through some threads last night about Google Adwords and decided to give it a try. I'd like to get some opinions from you guys to see if I'm going about this right. Here is how I have it set up...

CPC: $.50
Budget: $1.00 per day

I'm using all "phrase matches", so they have to type in exactly what I have in the keywords. Some examples of my keywords are...

Las cruces wedding photography
Las cruces wedding photographer
Las cruces photographer
Las cruces photography


I have added many of the smaller towns I shoot weddings in as well - replacing Las Cruces with the other city names. I Googled a few of these searches and I saw my ad on all of them, so I thought it was working like I planned, but when I go into my campaign, it shows 0 impressions for all of the keywords. Why is this? I thought an impression was when the ad was shown?

I'd love to hear some opinions on how I can market myself better in this way. Thanks!:thumb

Oh yea... I shoot weddings more than anything, but I do families and seniors from time to time as well.

waste of money imho

Can't help you with the question about page impressions, but a couple of other things to think of. Did google advise you what cpc you'd have to set in order for it to appear on the first page? depending on the number of photographers in your area, it could be lower than the amount you've set. Also, setting $1 per day is pretty limiting - it only allows for two clicks per day. You might be better to set $30 per month, to allow for any spikes on different days.

Have you thought about using google analytics to see how many visits the site gets? Take a look, it might be useful. I'd then have a look at seo, though I don't know how to do it myself so can't advise (there is a sticky somewhere). Then watch the hits on google analytics go up

Not sure that the comment above about it being a waste of money is particularly useful. If you generate just one job from a year of $1 per day, surely it's paid for itself. An that's quite likely I'd say - just one out of 720 people who googled for exactly what you're offering and clicked through has to say yes. Getting people to click is a different matter, and it's no cost to you if they don't click.

Did you ever see my reply a few days ago on D-Grin?

No idea why the impressions are show zero. Go to adwords homepage, click on campaigns button and set the date to more than just today (pick all time). See if that makes a difference with impressions. If you look at just today, it might have been a slow google search day for your specific campaign.

Some things to think about adding:

wedding photographer in Las cruces
wedding photography in Las cruces
wedding photos in Las cruces
wedding in Las cruces
photography in Las cruces
photographer in Las cruces

ollyb wrote in post #8903880
Can't help you with the question about page impressions, but a couple of other things to think of. Did google advise you what cpc you'd have to set in order for it to appear on the first page? depending on the number of photographers in your area, it could be lower than the amount you've set. Also, setting $1 per day is pretty limiting - it only allows for two clicks per day. You might be better to set $30 per month, to allow for any spikes on different days.

Have you thought about using google analytics to see how many visits the site gets? Take a look, it might be useful. I'd then have a look at seo, though I don't know how to do it myself so can't advise (there is a sticky somewhere). Then watch the hits on google analytics go up

Not sure that the comment above about it being a waste of money is particularly useful. If you generate just one job from a year of $1 per day, surely it's paid for itself. An that's quite likely I'd say - just one out of 720 people who googled for exactly what you're offering and clicked through has to say yes. Getting people to click is a different matter, and it's no cost to you if they don't click.

I'm on the first page of advertisements now with the CPC I have listed. There aren't all that many listings in my area (I live in a town of about 100,000 people), so sometimes I am in the top two on the listings (the highlighted ones). The way this works is that you set a per day price, but it doesn't actually mean 2 clicks per day. You are really setting the price you are willing to pay per month, but setting that price on a daily basis if that makes sense. I'm not really sure why they do that??

Yea, I was looking at Google Analytics tonight. I'm going to look at it more and see if I can add some better keywords to increase my exposure. Thanks for the comment!

sf1 wrote in post #8906324
No idea why the impressions are show zero. Go to adwords homepage, click on campaigns button and set the date to more than just today (pick all time). See if that makes a difference with impressions. If you look at just today, it might have been a slow google search day for your specific campaign.

Some things to think about adding:

wedding photographer in Las cruces
wedding photography in Las cruces
wedding photos in Las cruces
wedding in Las cruces
photography in Las cruces
photographer in Las cruces

My impressions now show 8,762. Those are great suggestions for keywords. I'm going to add those in. Thanks!

Can anyone else chime in on this subject?

dawssvt wrote in post #8909281
Yea, I was looking at Google Analytics tonight.

Be careful about that, too. Remember that Google analytics does not show all hits to your site. When I compare GA to my raw server logs, there are days when GA shows less than 20% of the real total.

If you're self-hosted, I would put more trust in the raw logs than in GA.

CannedHeat wrote in post #8909635
Be careful about that, too. Remember that Google analytics does not show all hits to your site. When I compare GA to my raw server logs, there are days when GA shows less than 20% of the real total.

If you're self-hosted, I would put more trust in the raw logs than in GA.

What app do you use to look at the logs?

ollyb wrote in post #8910376
What app do you use to look at the logs?

My host (hostgator) offers two via cpanel: awstats and can't remember the name of the other. I have actually been looking for a better 3rd party app for a while - and placed a post in here a while back - but to no avail.

CannedHeat wrote in post #8912992
My host (hostgator) offers two via cpanel: awstats and can't remember the name of the other. I have actually been looking for a better 3rd party app for a while - and placed a post in here a while back - but to no avail.

Yeah, awstats seems to be pretty prevalent. Only other one I'm familiar with is advanced log analyzer, but that's nothing amazing.

Don't forget people who can't spell?

weading photography in Las cruces
weding photography in Las cruces
wedding photografy in Las cruces
wedding fotos in Las cruces
weding in Las cruces
weeding in Las cruces

PhotosGuy wrote in post #8923940
Don't forget people who can't spell?

weading photography in Las cruces
weding photography in Las cruces
wedding photografy in Las cruces
wedding fotos in Las cruces
weding in Las cruces
weeding in Las cruces

Ah... Good idea. I didn't even think of that. Thanks for the suggestion!

Read the lines to some of your friends & ask them to print them for you. You'll probably get more examples!
Seems to me that you'd be better off forgetting the "phrase matches" thing & use some sort of key-wording?

As you you've phrase matched them you'll have to include more keywords that people will type in such as
"Las cruces wedding photographer" will need "wedding photographer Las cruces" as it follows the exact phrase. So if somebody has used the search string of "wedding photographer in Las cruces" but you don't have the keyword string in your list your advertisement won't appear due to the 'in'.

As your budget is quite small also being around a $1 a day Google will show your advertisements intermittently even though you may have the settings set to accelerated from standard delivery. It's a Google thing where they try and spread your budget so it lasts 'longer' through the day.

I would have 2 campaigns setup for your advertising. One with more generic keywords and one with more geo location suffixed and prefixed specific keywords.

2 different campaigns would mean 2 different campaign budgets.

1. The generic keyword campaign having multiple ad groups based on the core photography types you want to do such as
Ad Group 1 - Photographer
Ad Group 2 - Wedding Photographer
Ad Group 3 - Portrait Photographer
etc and each with only a few specific keywords pertaining to the ad group.

For example in wedding photographer the list would be if phrase matching
"wedding photographer"
"wedding photographers"
"professional wedding photographers"
"professional wedding photographer"
"photographer for wedding"
"photographers for wedding"
"weddings photographer"
"weddings photographers"
"professional weddings photographers"
"professional weddings photographer"
"photographer for weddings"
"photographers for weddings"

The geo-targeting will be specific to the area of Las Cruces so change the advertisements in the campaign settings to a custom radius of Las Cruces.

Use campaign level negative keywords to help minimise unwanted impressions. Negative out 'New York', 'Chicago', 'stock', 'course', 'courses' etc. There will be a lot of permutations to think of.

The cost per click in this campaign will be most likely higher than the 'Las Cruces' specific campaign but this will bring traffic to your website and honestly the search patterns of most people are quite lazy and they generally search on more generic terms. But don't discount 'industry specific' or 'business specific' keywords as from my experience they are quite often the majority of the source of leads for a business is used correctly.

2. The second campaign with a separate budget will have geo-targeted keywords to the above such as.
"wedding photographer las cruces"
"wedding photographers las cruces"
"wedding photographer in las cruces"
"wedding photographers in las cruces"
"las cruces wedding photgrapher"
"las cruces wedding photgraphers"

The keyword list above isn't exhaustive so add more. But keep the keyword list of an ad group to having the most of about 30 to 40 keyword strings. This goes the same across the board with all ad groups.

Use the geo-location to display the ads to state level for the geo targeted keyword specific campaign.

Tailor the advertisement so the keywords of wedding photographer and Las Cruces are appearing in the advertisement. Remember the character restraints of the advertisements are
Headline (25 characters including spaces)
Description Line 1 (35 characters including spaces)
Description Line 2 (35 characters including spaces)

Turn off the advertisements so they won't show on the content network, so they only show on the search network (Google search and search partners)

You're not looking for impressions. You're looking for clicks and a high click through rate which affects the quality score of the campaign. The quality score determines positioning on Google and also how much you'll be paying per click.

Link the Adwords CPC data with the Google Analytics. Check the respective bounce rates of each keyword. If the bounce rate is high it means people aren't finding what they are looking for on the landing page. It could mean the keyword that is triggering the advertisement could be incorrect or the website isn't doing its job, which is selling your business and services. If its the keywords don't use the keyword in your list and possibly negative out the keyword or use an embedded negative keyword. If its the website then you're going have to make changes to the website.

Look at overall time on site, average pages per visit with the corresponding bounce rate to have a better gauge on the trend in seeing what you have to do.

And yes as somebody mentioned Google Analytics isn't precise with tracking all the traffic going to your website as it uses first party cookies and java script, but it's great for trends analysis.

Btw if anybody is wondering I do this for a living. I'm a Google Advertising Professional and Google Analytics qualified.

Wow. Tim that was intense, thanks! What does it mean to be a Google Advertising Professional? Do you work for Google? Or do you just make your living helping people with google ads?

And upgrade your cam body already - all those nice lenses deserve at least a 40D...