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[Peter Christian Contribution Level: 1]

I just posted my first ppc campaign. With one of my ads it showed up in the second position on the first page. I did an ad variation, and now both are no where to be seen.

Google is telling me that my landing page is not relevant. I followed the suggestions from PPC Domination as far as using my primary business name in the ad. What gives?

Peter

[Jim Yaghi Contribution Level: 3]

The best solution is to build out your own landing page specific to your ad and keyword and then use the magnetic sponsoring sales letter as the "thank you" page when people opt in.

That's the approach i am using.

Your only other alternative is to increase your bid high enough to beat most of the competition and then write a killer ad that gets lots of clicks. This will secure your spot there at the top while bringing down your cost per click. It will also help you improve your quality score.

Jim

[Richard Bravo Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 9]

hi Peter,
Without seeing your campaign it's a little hard to diagnose, but I'll try to share some things to look at.
It sounds like you're new to ppc. A lot can go wrong if you don't do your homework and plan your attack in some detail.

Here's a couple of things to ask:
1) Is it your own landing page that you created, a direct link, an iFrame, etc.?
2) How many keywords do you have in the adgroup?
3) Are the ads just not active because of a low quality score or does it say your bid is too low for first page results?
4) How much did your minimum bid rate go up? Is google asking for $5-10?
5) Did all of your bids go up throughout the entire campaign or just this ad group?

OK, with those questions in mind here are some workarounds.
1) Direct linking isn't dead, just harder. Your ads and keyword list have to be really tight. No margin for error or you'll get slapped. It is much easier to control things if you own all of the real estate or at least most of it. Like Jim said, using your own squeeze page that redirects to your affiliate landing page is better.

2) Best practice is to only have one keyword in each adgroup. 200 keywords = 200 adgroups. With the exception of match type derivatives, in which case you may have 3 variations of the same keyword, but still only 1 keyword + match variables in any single adgroup. This is a little harder to manage, depending on your tool set, but way more efficient for controlling your quality scores.

3) Low quality score can be a real bit**! Try adjusting your ad copy to be more relevant to your landing page. If the bid is too low and under $2-3 it's definitely a problem with your chosen keywords, ad copy and how they relate to your landing page. Pause the campaign readjust and unpause; see what happens.

4) If asking bid went to $5-10 you've been slapped. game over.
5) If it's across the board, see #4.

If #4, delete the ad group and recreate it with a different name. Some times that's all that has to be done. But I would take a serious look at your adgroup structure, how relevant your ad copy is, but more so make sure your landing page is kosher. The entire package should tell a cohesive story. From your keywords, to your ad copy to the landing page, the story must flow smoothly. If your ad copy and keywords are "pink bunnies" then that landing page better be all about "pinnk bunnies." Even an innocent deviation, something like, "grooming pink bunnies" and you've put a substantial amount of content on that topic, can throw off your quality score. If it takes up more than a couple of sentences to get through, then create a separate adgroup, keyword set and landing page for that topic. So you would now have 2 landing pages, one for "pink bunnies" and one for "grooming pink bunnies"

If #5, delete the entire campaign. create a new one using the above mentioned structure, give new names to the campaign and adgroups, and you may even need to use a different domain. A slap like this usually means you've been targeted for some reason and that domain will only throw up red flags if you use it again. It may be too that your page was associated with a domain that has been flagged. It could be that the editor who reviewed your campaign that day didn't score at the club last night and decided to take it out on you, Who knows? the google elves are very hard to figure out.

Anyway, hope that helps in some way. Good luck.