An Advanced Question

[AndyJ]

Hi All,

I have been an AdWords customer for quite awhile. I actually ported my old campaign on Google ( what did the call the pre-AdWords campaign? I can't even remember!) over to AdWords when it first started. So I am pretty comfortable with all the ins and outs of the system. I was working on my campaigns tonite and I realized there may be a better way to do things.

Here is the scenario:

Over a year ago. I had one website and 2 campaigns with distinctly different keywords in each campaign generating sales leads for my insurance business in Texas and Oklahoma. We are talking about TIGHT targeting here.

Now I have 3 websites ( varying content in each) targeting this market and 7 campaigns running. The problem is the keywords for website #1 are valid for #2 and #3 also. So basically, I have 3 almost identical campaign groups running. The only difference is the Adwords copy and the destination URL. The keywords are the same. So in essence, I am bidding against myself which is undesirable but not all that critical.

I do notice some anomalies. Very seldom do 2 of my Ads appear on the same search ie: Website #1 and Website #2 appearing in the same search. I usually run up to my daily limit in each campaign and my rationale was one one of the ads went offline due to meeting its daily ceiling the other one would kick in. It works sometimes -- but is never predictable. The other strange thing that happens is sometimes a campaign will just sit there with zero impressions for an entire day. Again, this is not a predictable occurence.

Now I know I am screwing Google up to some extent by having duplicate keywords running in multiple campaigns.

So what are my options here?

I have thought about revamping the entire program and consolidating it into 3 campaigns -- all with distinct keywords and then just putting Ads in for each of the individual sites. Probably 6 per campaign (2 ads per website). I am worried about several factors.
1) Revamping the campaigns will negate the high position/low cost I now enjoy because of really decent CTR.
2) Rotating 6 Ads would dilute the presence of the individual websites
3) It would do away with some of my flexibility. I routinely pause the campaigns and increase/reduce daily expenditures on campaigns to increase my targeting.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Alan Perkins]

IMO the main issue is that, for one keyword, you have multiple possible landing pages. That can't be good for you really. There has to be a BEST landing page for any particular keyword. Choose it and eradicate the bids on the other two.

e.g. if your 3 sites are one for Texas, one for Oklahoma, one for unknown/generic locations, the first two sites should be used when you can target the searcher's location to the respective state, the third site when you can't.