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Classic Google Slap

QUESTION: For awhile, I have been running a Google Adwords campaign that has brought a lot of impressions but a few clicks per day (1-2). I changed around my bids a little bit to find that my minimum bid has raised to $10 per click. What happened?

Well, it sounds like a classic Google Slap to me. A few things are happening here…

1) If you were getting a lot of impressions before and few clicks, you CTR was probably pretty bad. Because of that, you were probably getting bad placements resulting in the poor CTR (catch-22, right?).

2) Google is completely automated so everything depends on when the bots want to visit your site. When you initially bid, its rules were probably different and when you changed your bid, Google will automatically (again) spider your site for quality. Now the rule is probably stating that the landing page is of low quality.

3) About quality score… The index title on your website has good keywords in it, but it might flag as “too much”. The rest of the page has some text (as well as the website) but not tons. The link titles on the page don’t re-inforce the terms you are trying to bid for (as well as some of the backlinks to your page). Again, try to be a “robot” in your mind, not a person. If there is any reason why it thinks you are doing something not right or not adding any value to the internet (or a correlation to the keywords you bid on), it will slap you. Writing a few articles about some of the tasks (like what you have written in the SERVICES section) and then putting anchor text rich on the footer of the page may help a lot. Also, if you are bidding on a term, you might send them specifically to a page on that topic.

4) About your keyword selection. First, this is a very competitive niche. If you are trying to get rank high for these terms, you may need to have higher bids (assuming no Slap). Also, you said that you set your daily limit low (to about $25/day). This will not only suppress the number of impressions, but it will also rank you lower. For terms like this, you need to be doing a LOT of ad text testing to increase your CTR. Again, all of this is kind of a catch-22 (spend more to get higher rankings so you can pay less!?). Just a warning, too…beware of bidding on terms that are too broad. In TruGuru, I call these Broad Tier keywords. They usually have a lot of volume but little traffic. Look into some Focus and Money Tier keywords. This will lower your bid (and volume, of course), but if you can achieve higher CTR’s with these words, you can slowly start dripping in some broader terms (which can be a root of the focus or money keywords) and in many times, these will leverage off of the rest of the campaign resulting in lower prices and better positions for these hypercompetitive terms.

My suggestion: Work on the landing a page and website a little bit more…Add a bit more content, like articles with some keyword-rich anchor texts from at least the homepage (possibly footer!). Don’t optimize too much (like you may have done on the index title). Do a little more keyword research focusing more on the Focus and Money tier keywords (and in this case, you probably can get away with a lower daily budget). At this point, you may want to create first a new campaign and try again…if you get slapped about, you probably want to create a new account. But I think if you beef-up the landing page and choose less competitive keywords, you will probably be fine (just create a new campaign at least).

Tell me how it goes and good luck!

Cheers…matt

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Matthew BredelMy name is Matthew Bredel and as of March, 2007, I am a full-time, work-at-home internet marketer. For close to 10 years, I worked for a defense company which was an OK job, but I was so uninspired in life and frankly, I needed some more money. That is when I first discovered internet marketing! Now I admit that I didn't start making thousands in my first couple of months (in fact, I lost my shirt!), but I finally saw the "internet light"...

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Definitions: CPA, EPC, eEPC, PPC, CPL and more

December 6th, 2008 . by Matthew Bredel . Tweet This!
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One of the important things to know before you start promoting another person’s product (or looking for people to promote your product) is to understand the lingo used in affiliate marketing and CPA Networks.  Below is a list of the most common terms associated with the CPA industry…
Advertiser - Can also be called a merchant, [...]

One of the important things to know before you start promoting another person’s product (or looking for people to promote your product) is to understand the lingo used in affiliate marketing and CPA Networks.  Below is a list of the most common terms associated with the CPA industry…

Advertiser - Can also be called a merchant, retailer, e-retailer, online retailer, etc.  This is the website that SELLS the product or service. They will also process the payment and fulfill the order.

Publisher - Can also be called the affiliate, partner, associate, or reseller.  This is the third party who PROMOTES the product or service in exchange for a commission or other type of compensation.

Pay-Per-Lead - The commission structure where the affiliate is paid a flat fee for each qualified lead (this is usually achieved by a visitor entering their personal information on an advertiser’s website).

Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) - The amount of money paid per qualified lead.

Pay-Per-Sale - This commission structure can be either a flat fee or a percentage of the revenue generated on the advertiser’s site which was referred by a publisher.

Cost-Per-Sale (CPS) - The amount or percentage paid per each sale.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - The amount or percentage paid for each click that is made on a link, banner or product on an publisher’s website.  Many people use search engine pay-per-click, such as Google Adwords, are called PPC Advertisers.  When you use Google Adsense on your website to generate revenue, you are PPC Publisher.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) - The amount or percentage paid for each click.

Impression - Occurs when a banner, link or product is viewed on a website. The visitor does NOT need to take action (i.e. click the link or banner) for an impression to be registered.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR) - The percentage of clicks made for each impression.

    Formula:  CTR = 100% x (Clicks/Impressions)

Lead - When a visitor registers, signs up or downloads something from an advertiser’s site.  This is usually accomplished by a visitor filling out a form on the advertiser’s website.

Cost-Per-Action (CPA) - This is the rate/fee that is set for every action that is taken by on visitor which is promoted by an affiliate.  This usually refers to, by not limited to, Pay-Per-Lead and Pay-Per-Sale transactions.  CPA, as Cost-Per-Action usually corresponds to Pay-Per-Lead while CPA, as Cost-Per-Acquisition usually corresponds to Pay-Per-Sale.

Cost-Per-Thousand-Impressions (CPM) -  This can also be called “Pay-Per-Impression”.  Here, the advertisers pay based on the impressions their link, banner or product is displayed per 1000 views on the publisher’s website.  The “M” refers to the Roman Numeral for 1000.  Old Google Adwords Site Targeting used to be based on CPM metrics.

Earnings-Per-Click (EPC) - This is a metric to measure the effectiveness of being able to turn a click into commissions.

    Formula: EPC = (Clicks/$Commissions Earned)

* Note, come companies, like Commission Junction (CJ’s) change the definition slightly.  In CJ’s case, EPC refers to earning per 100 clicks.

Formula: Commission Junction EPC = (1/100)*(Clicks/$Commissions Earned) 

Effective Earnings-Per-Click (eEPC) - This is very similar to the EPC definition but in this case, if it referring to the effectiveness of being about to turn 1000 clicks into commissions.  (Where CJ is 100 clicks/$, eEPC is 1000 clicks/$)

Formula: eEPC = (1/1000)*(Clicks/$Commissions Earned)

As you can see, EPC is an important figure of merit which can predict the effectiveness of selling a certain product but its definition varies by the network.  Be sure to read your network’s definitions to understand this further.

******************************

This is a just a start to some of the important figures and lingo associated with CPA networks (and online marketing, in general).

Do you have a term that I don’t discuss here or would like further description and details of???  Let me know in the comments…I’ll be sure to add it!

cheers…matt

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13 Responses to “Definitions: CPA, EPC, eEPC, PPC, CPL and more”

  1. talk of BIG money! How can these type of Vegas conferences, to say at $10,000.00 per person work when the economy is at an all time margin line low at this point of time?

    Posted by: donald
    December 6th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

  2. So how much is this “course” going to cost ?

    Posted by: Chris
    December 7th, 2008 at 9:14 am

  3. 1) The product will be launched in a few days (that is when the price will be released…

    2) Yes, the economy is at a low, but online sales is actually up (9%) these days (check out this article: http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2008/12/08/daily4.html)

    Posted by: Matthew Bredel
    December 8th, 2008 at 9:56 am

  4. [...] Definitions: CPA, EPC, eEPC, PPC, CPL and more [...]

    Posted by:   Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Part 1) by Inside the Internet Marketing Mind
    December 8th, 2008 at 10:37 am

  5. Hello,
    My main purpose was to provide good information and had no idea. You could use to monetize your blog.

    Posted by: Saif Seo Service Company
    December 9th, 2008 at 3:18 am

  6. Hey, thanks a lot for the information post . I have wondering if you make money from pay per post too? I heard that is not bad for a good page rank blog.

    Posted by: Fanny Dixie Get Cash
    December 9th, 2008 at 3:20 am

  7. I personally do not participate in pay-per-post, because frankly it is not worth my time. In fact, I hire people to do postings for me. (And this is one way how I can increase page rank on my own blog).

    Posted by: Matt Bredel
    December 9th, 2008 at 8:00 am

  8. [...] Definitions: CPA, EPC, eEPC, PPC, CPL and more [...]

    Posted by:   Arbitrage Conspiracy Review (Part 2) - CPA Networks by Inside the Internet Marketing Mind
    December 10th, 2008 at 8:44 am

  9. Nice site! I am loving it!! Will come back again - taking you feeds also, Thanks.

    Posted by: Guadalupe
    March 25th, 2009 at 5:23 pm

  10. i was hoping to find an explanation to the term “pixel” as it refers to affiliate marketing. All i know is that my CPA manager asked for a “pixel” when i questioned him about tracking my campaigns through google analytics….

    thanks

    naji

    Posted by: Naji
    May 11th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

  11. Hey Naji,

    A “Pixel” is usually either a 1×1 pixel image or iframe that is placed on a conversion page. Whenever someone lands on this “conversion” page, this 1×1 pixel is fired (usually on a remote, tracking host) to account for the conversion. For example, when I work with CPA networks to have them promote one of my products, they will usually give me this pixel to place on my conversion (usually Thank You) page. It is a little different than Google Analytics. cheers…matt

    Posted by: Matthew Bredel
    May 11th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

  12. [...] Re: does any buddy know about PPC or EPC different No, you have wrong definition of PPC. Because PPC stands for pay-per-click while EPC stands for earnings-per click. PPC which means you need to pay someone if they click your website while EPC you can earn money if someone clicks on your website that is their different but much related. Definitions: CPA, EPC, eEPC, PPC, CPL and more [...]

    Posted by: does any buddy know about PPC or EPC different
    June 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm

  13. Interesting post, keep the good stuff coming, good content appreciated!

    Posted by: Andrew
    June 10th, 2009 at 2:47 am

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