How to improve the quality score (QS) when bidding on competitor brand names in Google Adwords?
-
Hi,
I have researched few sites on this topic and I could see that the competitor keyword should match with the add text relevance, landing page relevance and CTR.
Any other factors more to be included to improve the quality score?
Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2285536/Google-Updates-How-AdWords-Quality-Score-is-Reported
-
It depends what you want to achieve! You will never get 8 but you can really play with match types sometimes
broad
with right negatives can be cheaper than exact. test it! Get tight ad groups, research misspells and close variations and uncheck in settings close variations targeting. Work on your ad copy! test and refine. Improve page load times.Hope it helps!
Igor
-
Competitor campaigns work very well. Just make sure you are targeting a competitor offering a similar product.
Brian gives good advice...I structure my competitor campaigns similarly..separate campaign...separate groups for each competitor. Be careful about Dynamic Keyword Insertion....I've used it before in competitor campaigns, and it generated high CTR, but also generated complaints. I do not use DKI for competitor campaigns any longer.
I found that I can get high CTR if I show why my product is great, not focused on my brand or my competitor. ie. I will use Coke vs Pepsi in an example. If I am Pepsi, and I am targeting keyword of "Coke"... My text ads would say thing like, Cold Refreshing Soda, Summer Soda Sale, Refreshing Beverage, #1 Taste Test Winner, Caffeine Free Beverage, etc. Focus on the product, not the brand. Why is the customer looking for this product? They are thirsty... show how your product can help the customer...they will click on your ad and buy your product.
My competitor campaigns perform very well...they are a great way to gain market share.
-
Why not spend your time and money on improving your own listings and content rather bidding on competitors names? The CTR is going to poor whatever you do because it isn't really what the customer is looking for.
-
CTR in my experience, has the greatest impact on your QS in adwords.
If I needed to improve my QS on a competitors branded name, I would do the following:
- Create a new campaign titled "competitor x"
- Create ad groups for each of the competitors products
- Create ads that are transparent that you ARE NOT the competitor but offer a similar, if not better, value.
- Employ dynamic keyword placement in some of your ads (test with and without)
- Build landing pages that contract your business with your competitor (again transparency will avoid problems from people feeling duped that they clicked on your ad when they were looking for your competitor.
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
-
How to Measure Impact and Potential Strategies for Competitors with Similar Brand Name in the Same Industry
Hello Everyone, So we have a site (brand1.com) but one of our competitors has a very similar brand name and domain (brand2.org). They’re similar enough that could be confused by users and search engines and target the same topics. When you do a manual brand search they would come up and both have about the same Domain Authority. Assuming we can’t have them take their site down do any of you have any thoughts on how we could potentially measure potential impact they might be having or ideas on how best to approach this? Our thought was to track what they are and are not doing so we could do it at a higher level or fill in what’s missing. We would also emphasize differences with an emphasis on local optimization (they’re in a different area). We would love to be able to have some concrete data on whether they’re having an impact so thought we would find out if any of you have any experience or insight? Any help would be very much appreciated. Please let us know if there’s any further details we could provide that might help. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thanks in advance. Best,
Branding | | Ben-R0 -
Local branding messed up - advice needed
Note: not real names, services, locations used: So we are a single health clinic in Vancouver. Our natural name is GSF Health Clinic. As the most important search term is Health Vancouver by far, we decided to kind of change our brand name to 'GSF Health Vancouver' years ago. Our main competitors name is Health in Vancouver and had had a hard time getting above them in local SERP. But actually, since the change in name, we haven't really improved. As there are also searches for Health Clinic Vancouver, some of our citations are actually GSF Health Clinic Vancouver just to get that keyword in. This variation even happens on our site. Now, looking back, we should have just kept our natural sounding brand name and more importantly, kept the same exact one everywhere. However I'd like advice going forward. So the decision is whether we need city in the brand name - does it make much difference? The options are: GSF Health Clinic Vancouver ("Health Vancouver" is not together, but we still have city name. Current citation on G+ and a few other places. A bit of a mouthful) GSF Health Clinic (Sounds nice, but poor SEO and also no exact citation matches currently so this is a major name change) GSF Health Vancouver (very targeted SEO, sounds okay but not amazing when in a sentence) BTW our domain name is health-vancouver.ca
Branding | | Cooper10 -
Best Practices for Google+
I have a client that has a decent following on Google+ on his personal account but his business profile doesn't have many people going to it. The law firm he owns has roughly 14 attorneys and all of them write for their blog. Since they are all new to Google+ except for him, I'm wondering what everyone things that the best practice is to get the information shared. When we post the information on his personal personal profile, he generally gets between 50 - 75 +1s and a dozen or so shares. If we put it on the business profile we don't get more than 10. The issue is when one of the attorney's that is new to G+ posts on their timeline and then we share it via the business, we then have to share it via the owners timeline to get any traction. We need to build followers for each of the attorneys new to G+, that's obvious, but what do we do in the mean time? Since the owner is also the brand, what is your suggestion of the best strategy?
Branding | | DarinPirkey1 -
Importance of Google+ name?
Greetings Mozzers, I'm working on some Google+ profiles currently and have one interesting case where I'd like some advice. The name of one of my clients' web addresses, company name, and Google+/Google Local verified local business names all reflect the same thing. [Name] Surgical Associates However, on Google+ it looks like it has a limited number of characters so it reads: [Name] Surgical Ass... How important is it to keep the name identical to everything else on the web? Could I get away with just changing the name on Google+ to [Name] Surgical I appreciate in advice on this matter and what would occur if I changed it here. Thanks.
Branding | | MonsterWeb283 -
Google Local & Google+
Hi All I'm looking for a bit of a steer on which direction to go in here. I have a new client and the client has a 'branch' in London. The brand is about to be franchised across the UK. They currently have a google places page in London (old style Google places, not a plus page) and nothing else on Google +. I don't really want to touch the Google place (local page) because it ranks well for their business and far higher than their organic search result. In terms of adding to their social presence, I think a Google Plus 'Brand' page would work as a generic brand, with several additional local pages being created as franchisees come on board. They have a safe and strong brand and have plans to reinforce through social. I'm about to set up the brand page and wondered if anyone has any thoughts, words of warning or points to consider? I don't know why but I feel somewhat tetchy and fearful of Google places that have yet to be merged. Thanks
Branding | | littlesthobo0 -
Has anyone had problems with thier google maps page after the google plus intergration?
About a month ago Google contacted one of my clients to inform them that the Google places is discontinued and their Google plus page will be the new Google places. They gave my client an $100 adwards credit for adwords express so their location will still show up for their business name during the change from Google places to Google plus.. When you type in the business in a local area or on a GPS now.. It is no where to be found. You have to know the address to get directions or go there on a mobile devices. The Google plus page for all of these locations is not currently showing up either. I have contacted Google and Once again something has been released without implementing it correctly. No one seems to know what is going on... after talking to three people. Does anybody know what is going on ???? This is a huge deal when being a local company.
Branding | | JohnParker27920 -
Capturing Brand Search
Hi, How do you capture as much brand results as possible in search results? I know Mike from Koozai recently did a video about brand reputation, but this is slightly different. The current issue i'm having that the client's brand name is also a specific geographic destination, hence the confusion in SERP's. This means non-related industries are eating up the client's potential market share and traffic. My objective would obviously be to capture as much traffic as possible for brand related keywords for the site, so that we can focus more on long tail product terms. Any help would be appreciated. Obviously re-branding is out of the question. Regards, Vahe
Branding | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
Brand(keyword) - dominate on SERP
Hi, I'm opening this topic here, to discuss about brand domination, but maybe more concentrated for europe countries than google.com Write here your suggestions,tactics, and more about social profiles and mini-blogs. For example, if we like to dominate for keyword "seomoz" than we will take some social profiles and miniblogs with seomoz, but write mroe about tactics to rank this profiles and miniblogs higher. Not only to create, but what kind of things to do regularly to have this profiles on top #10. ( miniblogs i mean like user.wordpress.com, user.blogger.com, user.tumblr.com etc.. ) Write here your tactics, but only if you are experienced on this! Thanks.
Branding | | leadsprofi0