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Reasons You May Not Be Seeing Your Paid Ads

paid ads
I try to answer questions that I hear most often from my clients when I’m writing my blogs. My goal is to publish these answers to that others can easily find them instead of thumbing through other resources. So, I was thinking about some of the more basic questions that I receive on a regular occasion, and I realized that some of the most basic of questions can have multiple answers depending on different variables. So my blog today will cover some of the possible reasons that you may not be seeing your ads show up in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) such as Google, Bing and Yahoo Search Engines. Some of them are going to seem “Duh”… but believe it or not (♫♪…I’m flyin’ on air; I never thought I could be, so free..e..eee…♪♫…sorry about that…), I’ve addressed every single one of these before.

 

<>Are You Using The Correct Search Engine?

 

“Hello, Hello, anybody home? Hey, think McFly..think”. I know, I know. Is this really an issue? Truth is I’ve had it happen multiple times when a client is running in just one Search Engine, and they are looking in another to see their ads. I won’t spend any more time talking about this as it’s self-explanatory, but please make sure you’re looking in the correct search engine folks.

Was Your Credit Card Declined During a Recent Payment?

 

Most clients have their accounts set up for auto payments (Google requires this now in new accounts). If you have changed your email since you first started using Adwords, Bing Ads or some other Paid Search Account, then it’s possible that you aren’t getting your notices for “Declined Payments.” In this case you would see your ads paused until this issue is resolved. Take a look into the “Billing” section of your account and fix this right away.

Is Your Daily Budget Being Exhausted on a Consistent Basis?

 

I’ve had many clients ask why their ads are not showing later in the day only to find out that their daily budgets have been depleted before the end of any given day. When you have a fixed monthly budget you are going to divide that by 31 days and set your daily budget. If your traffic numbers for your keyword pool are high, then chances are that you are going to exhaust your daily budget before the end of the day. There are only a number of things you can do to remedy this:

  1. Increase you Daily Budget
  2. Decrease your bids during certain parts of the day that you feel are less likely to show any conversion metrics, and increase bidding (or leave it be) during certain times of the day that you see an increased chance of conversions.
  3. Ad Scheduling. Schedule you ads to show only during certain days, or certain times of day, that you feel are going to show a return on investment. Determine what your absolute highest CPA (Cost per Acquisition) can be in order for you to see a reasonable profit, and cut out the other time of day, or day of the week.

 

 Is Your Site or Ads Being Disapproved?

Google and Bing both have policies that need to be followed, even though we may find some of them to be ridiculous. However they are there to level the playing field and give all advertisers the same opportunities to rank well and offer positive, transparent and relative information on any given search. If your ads, or website, do not abide by these policies you will find that your ads, or website, will be flagged as “Disapproved”. In order to get them back up and running you will need to fix the issues that are mentioned in your disapproval notice. If you find that you are having trouble with getting these issue remedied you can always call their support line for help. You can find this in the “Help” link of your reporting interface.


 

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Are You Outside Your Set Geo-Targeting Area?

 

If you have an eCommerce site chances are that you are currently targeting a very wide area, most likely the entire United States and Canada or even overseas. However, if you offer a local service such as an “Air Conditioning” service or a “Restaurant,” you’ll find yourselves targeting a much smaller local area. I’ve had clients ask me why they can’t see their ads only to find out that they were searching from their homes and not their business itself. If your home is outside your targeted location then you will not see your ads in the SERPs. However, you can use the Ad Display tool inside your paid search account to set a specific location in order for you to test if your ads are showing or not for any specific keyword. You can also hover over the icon next to each keyword under the “Keyword” tab in Adwords to see if your ad is currently showing for that term. By using either of these two practices to see if your ads are showing you will help keep your CTR higher by not adding unnecessary impressions to your account total.

 

Do Your Keywords Have a Low Ad Rank?

 

Lastly, let’s address Ad Rank. The two major factors to Ad Rank are each keyword’s Quality Score and the CPC set for that specific keyword. Now there are many other factors contained inside this equation, but what it all really comes down to is CPC (Cost per Click) and relevancy. CPC is easily adjusted up or down. If your Ad Rank is low you can always just increase your Max CPC to compensate for it. However, you are going to see that this will affect your CPA right off the bat. The better way to address this is to increase relevancy which will help increase your Quality Score. Each keyword needs to have relevancy with its Ad Variation and the Landing Page that you are sending it to. If your keyword is “Orlando Air Conditioning,” then our Ad needs to have that term in it as well as the Landing Page. With increased relevancy you can see your Quality Score increase which will result in a lower CPC need to rank higher than your competition which leads to a lower CPA.

 

– Ed Cehi, Senior SEM Manager

 

With fourteen years of Internet Marketing experience, Ed Cehi joined That Company as a PPC Account Manager in 2008 after previously working at another high profile Florida Web Design and Marketing Agency located in Ocala, Florida for the six years previous. He started his career in Internet Marketing as a Web Designer after graduating from The International Academy of Design and Technology in Orlando Florida with his degree in Web Design. He soon moved on to Search Engine Optimization and then graduated into Paid Advertising following that. Ed now holds the position of Senior SEM Manager at Th@t Company located in Leesburg Florida, just outside of Orlando. You can find him online in multiple social mediums such as Twitter (@edsaxman) and LinkedIn.

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