a single source, nothing corroborates it

Read the search terms report and add negatives

Open the report of what your keywords actually matched, sort by cost, read the long tail as well as the top, and the whole check takes about ten minutes; one specialist calls it the highest return available on that much effort and runs it on every account he inherits. A dashboard showing a few hundred dollars buying six hundred visitors looked fine until the money turned out to be going to people searching for a snake. Build the negative list from what the bad terms have in common rather than blocking broad single words, tighten match types and use two or three word keywords where one is ambiguous, and restrict delivery to the countries you sell in. Do not expect careful ad copy to screen anyone out, because people click without reading.

The method

1. 01

   Open the search terms report of any paid search account you take over, sort by interactions or cost, and read the long tail as well as the top terms - the whole check takes about ten minutes.

2. 02

   Build the negative keyword list from words the bad search terms have in common rather than adding broad single words that would also block good traffic.

3. 03

   Inspect the actual search terms your keywords are matching and add negative keywords, and restrict targeting to the countries you sell in.

4. 04

   A healthy-looking cost per visitor in the ad dashboard tells you nothing about who those visitors are, so verify the audience before judging the spend.

5. 05

   Do not expect careful ad copy to screen out the wrong audience: people click search results without reading them.

What it returned

• $572

  Domino Data Lab's dashboard showed $572 a month buying 624 visitors, which looked reasonable until he found the money was going to people searching for the snake and to people learning to program.

• He describes it as the highest return on ten minutes of effort available, and does it with every new client because paid search leaks money silently when conversion tracking is weak.

• For the python case: snake, eggs, giant, burmese, buy, facts, colt. He adds that software companies should generally exclude jobs, free, careers, why and how.

• One client spent hundreds of dollars a month on people searching for python the snake; no one there knew how to check which search terms their keywords were matching.

Sources

• Selling Software to Snake Charmers, and Other MistakesGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · Spot and Avoid This Costly Mistake · 2018-01-06
• Why Ad Campaigns FailGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · Know-Better Errors · 2017-01-17