Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Keyword Domains for PPC
-
I have a client who wants to buy a lot of long domains with keywords in them, for example, thesandiegopetstore.com (this is fictional) and then set up a PPC landing page for each. They think that when someone types in "san diego pet store" that their domain will be listed high and then they will get a lot of traffic.
My concern is that they will own a lot of domains for their company and I thought Google is getting pretty adamant about companies not having a lot of domains, and I thought that keyword domains are not as effective as they used to be -- that branding is more important now.
Also, I think the domains they've picked target very competitive keywords and that perhaps they will get a lot unqualified traffic and will still have to pay for the clicks.
What do you think?
What is the best way to set up PPC landing pages?
-
Hi Karen,
SEOclient12 had some really good points, so let me just add my own 2 cents.
To boil down the question to it's fundamentals, you're asking if a keyword rich domain is better for PPC campaigns is more effective than directing the ads towards a non-keyword rich domain.
The easy solution is simply to amend the Display URL to include keywords. If you have the space, you can generally put whatever keywords here you want, including Dynamic Keyword Insertion. This has the usual effect of increasing your CTR, which in turn raises your quality score and lowers your cost per click.
(if you aren't familiar with Keyword Insertion, it's a great technique worth checking out)
This is the preferred solution and generally a lot easier than setting up unique domains for each ad. That's not to say that a unique, keyword rich domain won't help your conversion rate, but my suspicion is the benefit, if any, may not be worth the trouble.
Also, if you do set up multiple domains, be careful about linking them together (or make sure to keep them out of Google's index) as too many linking domains may be interpreted as a network.
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
Thank you for your detailed response.
I'm still wondering if buying these keyword domains and using them for PPC landing pages would be more effective than using the company's website domain, which is already well-established and trusted but doesn't have keywords in it?
Which types of domains work better for PPC landing pages?
Does SEOmoz have an experience or knowledge in this area?
I was hoping to hear from mozzers on whether hosting PPC landing pages on keyword domains is more effective than hosting the PPC landing pages on the main trusted domain.
Does anyone anyone at SEOmoz know?
-
If the keywords they are targeting are very competitive then they will have to buy bidding high to appear where they want to anyway.
I think it would be very naive to think that the quality score would be impacted to such an extent by the keywords being in the domain names (other factors such as website authority and ad longevity have a much more important role imo).
Let's say that they appear in the top 6 for the keywords (through a combination of quality score and presumably high/unsustainable/aggressive bidding). If the content on their websites isn't good enough then the consumer is going to click through and leave. With an aggressive bidding strategy in place to achieve these high positions, it would most probably increase unqualified traffic, increase CPC and CPA, decrease CTS and result in an unprofitable ROI model.
In order to get the most out of PPC/landing pages imo the adverts need to be live for a while at a lower average position. Through work on the website and other initiatives to increase page authority and relevance to the ad, you could hopefully over time see your av.position increase without increasing costs. Then at this point I would find some sort of trade-off between how much money you're paying and what you're getting in return to find the most optimal average position.
Obviously there are a variety of other tactics for efficient bidding etc, but this is the basic approach I would take.
With regards to being penalised by Google; if you think there's a possibility of it happening, don't risk it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Special Characters in Negative Keywords in Ads
Howdy, fellow mozzers, I came across this weird suggestion in my Bing account (screenshot link: https://dmitrii-regexseo.tinytake.com/tt/NDY3OTc5NF8xNDgyMzY4OA) It almost that the dollar sign in the negative keyword is acting like a wildcard character, or being disregarded completely. I did some tests, it seems that in Google Ads that is not happening. Does anyone have an idea if this is normal behavior? I have never seen this before.
Paid Search Marketing | | DmitriiK0 -
PPC: how to get rid of an ad appearing on a keyword we don't want?
Hi, Our ad on Google Ads is appearing for a search we don't want. it isn't in our search keywords and when i try and ad it to our negative ones, we get the error " You cannot exclude keywords that are targeted " which i assume means that google thinks we are bidding on it? We have a selection of broad phrase matches so i can only think that this is where it's coming from? Do you have any tips on tracking down which keyword is generating this ad and how we can turn it off? (we don't want to pay for clicks on this search if possible!) Btw - i have turned off each keyword in turn to test it = nothing. have then paused the whole campaign = gets rid of the ad (but this is our most successful campaign so i can't just turn it off). Any advice super super welcome. thank you!
Paid Search Marketing | | Fubra1 -
Are there free tools that would tell me the cpc for my keywords?
If not what tools do you recommend to use to get an accurate cpc $ for estimating budget?
Paid Search Marketing | | lina_digital0 -
How to Find Competitor PPC Keywords ?
Can anyone suggest best way to find all PPC keywords of a competitor. Any tool recommendation ?
Paid Search Marketing | | singhmahendra0 -
Is it better to place PPC when competition is high or low?
When managing a clients PPC campaign is there any advice on throttling up and down the accounts depending on the search popularity. Let's take "wedding cake" there are obvious trends here https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=wedding cake but would you advise to spend more on Ads during the quite months as competition is low and you can get more click for less cost, or do you load up on clicks when it is more competitive/expencive . Please don't get bogged down in the "weeding cake" keyword, I'm looking more for views on when would be best to load an account in terms of return on investment. For example would you get better quality clicks when low search volumes as opposed to high. Lets also assume that our product costs us the same all year round. I have seen different side to the story. What are your views
Paid Search Marketing | | smartcow0 -
Adwords negative keywords / keyword lists conflicting?
Does any of you had any experience on large 5k+ shared negative keyword lists impacting normal campaign negative keywords in Adwords even if they are not selected on these campaigns? And a second question; does anyone know how selected negative keyword lists can be removed from a campaign? I seem to be able to add them but not to remove them... Cheers!
Paid Search Marketing | | hellemans0 -
PPC question for the experts
I know this is paid search but since Moz had a section for it, I thought it would be ok to ask. 🙂 According to: http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2497836?hl=en Broad match modifier +tennis +shoes Ads may show on searches for tennis shoes
Paid Search Marketing | | MattAntonino
buy tennis shoes
best shoes for tennis Ads won't show on searches for running shoes
tennis sneakers I'm using (for a client) +wedding +photographer. It should show on wedding photographer hire a wedding photographer best wedding photographer in dallas It should not show on photographer in Dallas become a photographer dallas pictures But it is. Why would this happen? Isn't that exactly what it says it won't show up on? Also, Google writes: Don't leave space between the plus sign (+) prefix and the word you're modifying! •Correct: +leather +shoes
•Incorrect: + leather + shoes
•Incorrect: +leather+shoes Yet the client was told by Google the opposite. "I spoke with Google and they confirmed that the space after the plus and before wedding (“+ wedding”) would notrequire “wedding” to show up." How on Earth does this reconcile or make ANY sense? ETA: This is fairly clear to me: Be sure there are no spaces between the + and modified words, but do leave spaces between words. The right way to do it: +formal +shoes. The wrong way to do it: +formal+shoes. http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/bmm.html0 -
What are the best sources for finding competitor PPC spending by category?
Can anyone provide sources for gathering paid search advertising spend for competitors, preferably by category? Thank you.
Paid Search Marketing | | JoeAmadon0