BSPhotog Offline Upload & Sell: On
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giddyup wrote:
I agree with what others have said about SEO, however if you live in a small city and most of your clients are outside of that city or in larger cities nearby, than Adwords can be useful because you may rank well in your own city, but not the cities where your clients actually live and where they are searching.
Adwords has a steep learning curve. If one does not set it up for success, than it's a waste of time. There are a lot of little tricks to it. I use it, but only at certain times a year because that's all I really need it for. I use it from Jan - March and from Sept - Nov.
Few tips:
Have a separate landing page. It increases quality score - higher quality = higher ranking = more clicks = cheaper CPC
Landing page should use relevant keywords but also be appealing to person landing on it. Don't bog it down with huge images because loading speed also affects quality score.
Choose keywords carefully. Using keywords like "wedding cake" may get you clicks from people who are not interested in wedding photography. Bad keywords = high bounce rate = low quality score = lower ranking = higher CPC
Learn different ways of using keywords - broad, modified, exact, negative, etc. They all have a time and place. And they will affect quality score.
Use negative keywords! You can really focus the audience with them - otherwise you'll be getting people who just want to look at your pictures or learn about what gear you use, or people looking for workshops, classes, cheap vendors, etc. I always use these neg keywords: -gear -classes -workshop - cheap -mentor -degree -camera -lens -affordable and a few others I can't think of off the top of my head. You figure it out as long as you keep track of who is typing in what to click to you.
Unless you are a destination wedding photographer, customize your geographic reach. I go one step further and make sure people who see the ad also live in this area. You may lose a few who live in other states but are having their weddings in your area, but I've discovered that most of the out of state clicks are not buyers.
The ad itself will benefit from having a keyword or two in it. I also put my starting price range - which is 2-3 times higher than other adwords ads. That way price shoppers don't click, and those who are in my price range do. You will get more clicks if you do not post a price range, but experience has shown me that I get less conversions. If everything else in your campaign is tight, then being this specific will not affect quality score enough to make the loss greater than the advantage.
Just looking at my records, I made 10x the amount of my Adwords campaign this year. These were bookings coming from Adwords. I have it all set up so I know exactly how much I spend vs how much I make.
I suggest not going into Adwords blindly, like I did, and learning it all through trial and error - Instead, buy a good book on Adwords that costs $20 on Amazon. I read this one: Advanced Google Adwords 3rd Ed. Wordstream, a website, has a great blog with all kinds of tips and tricks.
Good luck.
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Thanks, super helpful. I won't write it off completely, but may research it in the winter doldrums.
Just out of curiosity, what is your market like? I'm in a mixed, semi-rural area, but also serve a handful of cities with 100-200k population.
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