A Beginner’s Guide to Pay-Per-Click: Quality Score

http://blog.octoclick.com/ppc/beginners-guide-to-quality-score/

by grep • 15 years ago

51 27 15 years ago

blog.octoclick.com

kristaps• 15 years ago

In case the author sees this - the page is unusable on iPhone, there is a white block covering the article text, maybe some broken ad.

vaughanhedges3• 15 years ago

I am on the board of a non profit.

We have a Google Grant, but none of us has the marketing expertise to set up an effective campaign (ineffective we are pretty good at).

We have unsuccessfully tried to recruit SEM's as volunteers through Craiglist, Volunteer Match, and contacting local marketing professors (we don't have the money to hire anyone).

Does anyone have any suggestions how we can get help with this?

forwardslash• 15 years ago

I used to work for adCenter support and you can always call them up to help you with some basics of PPC and running a good advertising campaign. Google now has a phone number so I hear, so they also might be of some assistance. Also, if your monthly budget is $500 or more you can get an 'optimization specialist' (buzzwords I never cared for) to work with you for up to 45 days on getting a campaign up and running (it's a free service).

Unfortunately all that won't help you much with finding an SEM, but if need be it'll allow you to effectively self-manage.

joshklein• 15 years ago

My recommendation is to go on LinkedIn and search for people you might be connected to who are working at a large advertising agency. Most of the large agencies pick a few non-profits to work with pro-bono in a consultative role. If you have a grant to provide the media budget, hopefully you can solicit some manpower from someone with a connection to your cause. If you want to, send me a DM on Twitter (see my profile) about your organization, and I'll see if I it makes sense to put it in the hands of someone in my org.

grep3• 15 years ago

Try contacting the people behind that blog and other blogs related to the subject.

Entaroadun3• 15 years ago

Hey something on HN I can actually help with haha. Now I won't build entire campaigns for you, but if you have specific questions, send me a pm or email and i'll try to help. I've been working in SEM for almost two years now since college, so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it.

vaughanhedges3• 15 years ago

Any help would be greatly appreciated. How do I pm or email you? I just updated my profile.

vaughanhedges3• 15 years ago

All good ideas. Thanks so much.

jsm386• 15 years ago

Have you explored http://catchafire.org/ ? They have an interesting volunteering model. I've seen them demo in the past and was impressed.

rfergie5• 15 years ago

I'll help you out. Drop me an email to discuss

jcampbell1• 15 years ago

I'd recruit someone that is learning SEM, and just let them have a blast with your account (it is free, right?). It is hard to learn SEM without an account, and the only way to create an effective campaign is to spend a lot of time and try many different things.

IMO, for most organizations Google Grants is a waste of time. SEM is a useless tool for building "awareness", which is what most organizations try to achieve with Google Grants.

RobertCoats• 15 years ago

Hi vaughanhedges, If you still need some help, let me know. My agency works with several Google Grant clients and we also offer discounted rates for nonprofits. http://www.kinseystreet.com

Contact me and I will see what we can work out.

ROI-Pop• 15 years ago

You should checkout the 'Pop Grants' at ROI Pop ( http://roipop.com ). We specialize in PPC campaign management for nonprofits.

dminor2• 15 years ago

One thing not mentioned here is that exact matches will have a higher quality score than broad matches, so don't just rely on broad match keywords - include some exact match keywords for common variations.

Entaroadun3• 15 years ago

There's actually quite a lot of little details that get speculated on in SEM. The fact is, until you test it yourself, you won't know for sure. One interesting thing about QS for phrase and broad is that the QS you see is not the real QS; it is only the QS for queries that match exactly to your keyword. The real QS is weighted appropriately, based on impression distribution.

rfergie5• 15 years ago

I also doubt that quality score takes only integral values.

QS as reported in the interface is a bit like tool bar page rank; it can tell you if you're doing really well or really badly but at the end of the day your competitors probably have a load of 7's too

dminor2• 15 years ago

This was directly from a Google Adwords rep.

suking2• 15 years ago

I thought QS was independent of match type and account wide for that KW...

rfergie5• 15 years ago

This is definitely not the case; I've seen different QS on different match types for the same keyword.

rfergie5• 15 years ago

This is a pretty good resource for someone who just wants to know the basics.

In my opinion the best high level resource for quality score information is http://www.clickequations.com/blog/

The guy who writes there also has a book coming out http://www.highresolutionppc.com/books/quality-score-in-high...

A Beginner’s Guide to Pay-Per-Click: Quality Score

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