1) Why did I get slapped by Google?

2) How do I recover from a Google Slap?

The answers two both questions are actually quite simple:

Why did I get slapped by Google?

Here are the top 4 reasons why people get slapped by Google

Google Slap 1: The content on your page was not related to the keyword that you were bidding on.  This is a huge no no which will hurt your Quality Score and you will most likely get slapped by Google.

Solution: Make sure that the content on your landing page matches the keywords you are bidding on.

Google Slap 2: The landing page is a squeeze page and does not link to other web pages.

Solution: In the footer, have at least a couple of links to other sites (on the same domain or other domains).  Google frowns upon pure squeeze pages and will slap you if that is what you do.

Google Slap 3: The landing page is full of beautiful graphics but not enough text.

Solution: The Google bot cannot read text that is part of an image file so make sure that all of your copy is in text form.

Google Slap 4: The Ad Groups are not targeted.  In other words, you have Ad Groups with many different keywords.

Solution: Break up your Ad Groups into highly targeted Ad Groups

You might say… great… thanks for the tips but what do I do now that I have already gotten slapped by Google?

Remember, the moment you launch a new campaign and a new Ad Group Google will actually have someone manually review your page so if it does not follow all of the above guidelines you are most likely going to get slapped again!

How to recover from a Google Slap?

First, implement all of the suggestions above and then follow these steps.

First try: Delete the campaign and copy and paste all of the Ad Groups into a brand new campaign.  It is MUCH easier to start over than to revive a campaign that got slapped.

Second try: If you get slapped again, make sure to weed out all of the keywords that got slapped and then delete the campaign and launch it again.

Third try: Get a new AdWords account.  Sometimes your account just might have gotten slapped so many times that it is easier to start fresh with a brand new account.

Fourth try: When all else fails, buy a new domain and grab a new AdWords account. 

NOTE: I have only had to implement the above 3 steps.  So far, I have never had to buy a new domain to have success with Google AdWords. 

Want to learn more about AdWords?

Check out:

Secret AdWords Strategies Revealed

Learn How to Steal Your Competitors Winning Ads

A while back, I promised to answer any AdWords question that our users would send me. I am still going to go and do that, but it is going to take a little while since I got hundreds of questions via the blog and our newsletter.

In any case, one of the questions that I kept hearing again and again is:

“How many keywords should I ad per Ad Group?”

I see just about anyone that is new with AdWords struggling with this and just the other day, I was listening to a StomperNet video by Frank Kern and I was shocked that in the video even the advice that Frank Kern was giving was not what I would have recommended.

So, here is the rules that I follow each and every time I create a set of new Ad Group.

For example, here is what I did while I was building a keyword list for our new keyword tool www.WordButler.com. While I won’t go over the entire keyword list that I build, I will dive into a specific example to answer “how many keywords per Ad Group?”

So, lets pick the keyword phrase “keyword tool” as an example.

Step 1: Check the traffic. The phrase “keyword tool” is a very popular keyword phrase. According to Google’s keyword tool it gets over 90,500 searches per month.

So what do I do?

I create 1 Ad Group where I put only 1 keyword phrase into the Ad Group using exact match.

In other words, if the keyword phrase gets a lot of searches and is very important to you, then I would recommend to use exact match and create 1 Ad Group with only that 1 keyword.

Step 2: Now I use our keyword tool WordButler to build a comprehensive keyword list of all the searches that are done online that contain the keyword phrase “keyword tool” and I put all of these into Another Ad Group. In this case I found over 150 keyword phrases that contain the word “keyword tool” and I added all of them into a separate Ad Group.

Lets repeat – How many keywords per Ad Group?

• Step 1: I create an Ad Group with 1 keyword only using exact match
• Step 2: I create an Ad Group with all of the keywords that contain the root (in this case “keyword tool)

Lastly, I will then go deeper. If you go to Google’s keyword suggestions and look at the traffic estimates, you will see that there is lots of keywords that get over 10,000 searches per month.

keyword tool – 90,500

overture keyword tool – 9,900

keyword research tool – 8,100

keyword search tool – 8,100

keyword selector tool – 8,100

adwords keyword tool – 6,600

free keyword tool – 6,600

Since the above keyword phrases all get over 5,000 searches per month, I will repeat the same steps and create 2 Ad Groups for each of the above keyword phrase. The first will have only 1 keyword with exact match and the other will have all of the keywords search queries that I can find. I will start with broad match and then add phrase match down the line.

Here is another tip. Whatever you do…. NEVER ever add different keyword phrases into the same Ad Group. For example, I would never put “keyword tool” and “keyword software” into the same Ad Group. If you do that, then there is no way you can compete with the top guys out there because your Ads will never be very targeted.

I hope that helps and if you like to check out our new keyword tool you can do so here at www.WordButler.com

You can make the headline of your ad more inviting by making it appear as if your product or service does the work for the customer. Here is an example: “Develop web banners in minutes” vs. “Develops web banners in minutes.” The only change in the above ad is that we changed “develop” to “develops.” While this change is small, it means a whole lot to your CTR.

It implies that your software does the work for the customer rather than requiring your customer to use the software to do work.

“Develop Web Banners in Minutes” sounds like a guide or manual requiring the customer to read, study and then go to work to develop banners.

But

“Develops Web Banners in Minutes” sounds like a magic tool with a button you’d push to instantly spit out your web banners. And a heck of lot more appealing. Which would you rather have? We seen CTRs double when we change the wording to imply automation. Other examples: * create > creates * put > puts * design > designs * conceive > conceives * organize > organizes * boost > boosts

So the next logical test would be on the very last word, right?

Right.

Take a look:

Our defined goal was click-thru-rate and  the ad with the test-word removed did better… much better. Our conversion rate results are not statistically significant yet so we’re disregarding that for now.

This is interesting because generally the more specific you are, the better your ad will do.

But not this time.

And testing that assumption gave us a 50% improvement in traffic.

Not bad for another 1 word difference.

If you are interested in the other critical elements to test, find out in glorious detail right here.

So the next logical test would be on the very last word, right?

Right.

Take a look:

Our defined goal was click-thru-rate and  the ad with the test-word removed did better… much better. Our conversion rate results are not statistically significant yet so we’re disregarding that for now.

This is interesting because generally the more specific you are, the better your ad will do.

But not this time.

And testing that assumption gave us a 50% improvement in traffic.

Not bad for another 1 word difference.

If you are interested in the other critical elements to test, find out in glorious detail right here.

We changed 1 word in an ad and saw our CTR double.

As you may know, it’s crucial to test whether your audience responds better to advertised features or advertised benefits (If you can’t test, bank on benefits first). Another important element is whether they prefer imagery of passive or active results from said product.

I think these next results fall within that last category. We changed up one word (the first one, so a crucial one) in our ads and waiting for results, and when they came in…

… it was pretty huge. It is clear the idea of development better resonates with our audience. The astute observer might ping the losing ad with bad grammar, but that doesn’t always matter.

That one tiny tweak instantly doubled our click thru rate and even though the conversion rate dropped a bit we still developed leads way faster than before.

Why don’t you try testing YOUR ads’ first word and see what happens?

Learn other major tests in our step-by-step AdWords Guide.

We changed 1 word in an ad and saw our CTR double.

As you may know, it’s crucial to test whether your audience responds better to advertised features or advertised benefits (If you can’t test, bank on benefits first). Another important element is whether they prefer imagery of passive or active results from said product.

I think these next results fall within that last category. We changed up one word (the first one, so a crucial one) in our ads and waiting for results, and when they came in…

… it was pretty huge. It is clear the idea of development better resonates with our audience. The astute observer might ping the losing ad with bad grammar, but that doesn’t always matter.

That one tiny tweak instantly doubled our click thru rate and even though the conversion rate dropped a bit we still developed leads way faster than before.

Why don’t you try testing YOUR ads’ first word and see what happens?

Learn other major tests in our step-by-step AdWords Guide.

Not even me.

That’s why you have to rally when you discover a 200% boost in conversions with one of the oldest tricks in the book.

Take a look:

What was the trick? It isn’t as black and white as we’d like, but the winning ad uses capitalization and specificity more astutely than the losing ad.

The result?

Nearly 200% increase in conversions.

Though we can’t tell the exact result of it here, try testing specificity in your ads. Instead of saying "over 15,000 people served," use the EXACT number – "15,611 People Served To Date."

Specific numbers attract more attention and are more unique, i.e. they’ll attract attention. It creates a more powerful message that may just stick in your visitors’ minds longer and more clearly.

Give it a try and let us know what happens.

If you’re looking for further AdWords ideas, check out our AdWords Guide, and for additional copywriting wizardry we believe in Yanik’s course pretty whole-heartedly.

Not even me.

That’s why you have to rally when you discover a 200% boost in conversions with one of the oldest tricks in the book.

Take a look:

What was the trick? It isn’t as black and white as we’d like, but the winning ad uses capitalization and specificity more astutely than the losing ad.

The result?

Nearly 200% increase in conversions.

Though we can’t tell the exact result of it here, try testing specificity in your ads. Instead of saying "over 15,000 people served," use the EXACT number – "15,611 People Served To Date."

Specific numbers attract more attention and are more unique, i.e. they’ll attract attention. It creates a more powerful message that may just stick in your visitors’ minds longer and more clearly.

Give it a try and let us know what happens.

If you’re looking for further AdWords ideas, check out our AdWords Guide, and for additional copywriting wizardry we believe in Yanik’s course pretty whole-heartedly.

Clicks are great, but if your traffic doesn’t perform your most wanted response (MWR), then you just lost money. I know of few marketers who want to pay Google to give them traffic that simply pokes around and then wanders off.

WE pay Google to give us traffic so we can provide them information and eventually help them make a purchasing decision.

Take a look at this:

Some people may automatically choose the loosing ad because more people are clicking on it.

Remember, this doesn’t capture the whole picture.

It turns out that the winning ad has a much smaller cost per conversion, a critical piece of info.

To ultimately decide which ad would better suit you, you must include your profit margin and look at what you are able to afford. Here’s what to think about:

1. If your margin is large, sheer masses of sign-ups may benefit you more because this of course leads to more sales.
2. If your margin is small, you want to maximize the efficiency of acquiring customers, which means you might want to focus on conversion rates.

So now if anyone gives you some weakly constructed argument only involving click-thru, you can toss these lemons right back at them.