Mike Seddon - Profile

Hi Sandra,

Fancy finding you here. Yes, very long time. Hope you are well.

Mike

Hi Ray,

Steve's pretty much answered your question spot on. It really does sound like you have quality score issues.

The fact that your keywords were running fine for a while and then stopped suggests a few things. It might have been a manual review of your adverts that caused Quality Score to drop. It might be you changed your landing pages and that caused Quality Score to drop.

Is this happening to all your keywords or just a few?

Check your email as well because you may have an email from Google if you adverts have been stopped due to a major quality score issue.

Just to add complexity the Quality Score you see as per Ray's instruction below is not necessarily the Quality Score you have!

That is an average number and only for your keywords. You also have a quality score for adgroup, campaign, display url, account, landing page and more. None of those are shown to you.

That's about as helpful as I can be without looking at your account but it does sound very much like a Quality Score issue.

Cheers
Mike

Hi Barney,

I'm Google Certified.

It's a bit harder these days since they updated the exams a couple of years ago.

As a minimum you have to sit two exams. One fundamental and then one specialist area. Both are over 100 questions each.

If you genuinely manage Adwords accounts daily then you should pass it without any problems.

The biggest issue I sometimes have is that the answer to the questions are not always the right ones. You have to answer how you think Google would want you rather than what you know will work in Adwords!

It's a bit like passing your driving test. We are all taught how to pass the test but once you pass you then really start to learn to drive.

I always say to people that if someone has passed the exam then it shows some commitment to their craft but it doesn't guarantee competence.

I certainly would not hire an Adwords professional who did not have the qualification because if they are too lazy to take the exam then I'd guess they are too lazy to manage my account properly.

Cheers
Mike

Hi Steve,

I'd suggest people worry slightly more than whether their adverts stop appearing. When Google using words like proactive enforcement they are probably talking about suspensions and bans of accounts not just ads.

Frankly though anyone who's been using this technique to send traffic to just one page has missed out on the true power of it anyway. The real value is in having links to different pages of your website that each will fit the specific need of the person searching.

BTW - They've just launched Enhanced Site Links. It's been in beta for a while and these are very impressive. Same rules apply though!

Cheers
Mike

Hi,

I've come to this thread late but if it's any help I'm a bit of an Adwords Expert

I agree with the earlier comment about Perry Marshall. It was him who trained me all those many, many years ago. I've now gravitated from being his pupil to being in his Mastermind group. You would do very well to buy his book.

I've also written a book about Adwords which is intended to get the complete beginner up and running fast.

It sells on Amazon for

Totally agree with your points about Adwords Management. I'l admit bias as I'm an Adwords Manager and any work with us is always carried out by someone who has passed the exams.

I recently wrote a short piece on questions you should ask before you hire an Adwords Manager. If anyone is interested here's the link (you can also get it as a pdf for ease of use later).

Seven Questions you Should ask an Adwords Manager

Wait until you see me in full flow. That's when you'll get full on gibberish. I usually post those late on Friday night after the odd pint of falling down water.

I expect this will start a run of blond jokes now. Better go sort out my best ones!

Hi Steve,

Yes we met last week at the Stratford show and I said I'd sign up. I was going to post something onto the thread you created about the show but as I have less than 10 posts I can't just yet!

No not an old IBM guy. I was actually brought up on ICL back in the days of DME and VME machines.

This Mainframe was HP as I recall.

I remember everyone running around turning lights out because we did have some sort of a connection from the backup generator but because it was in the middle of a service it was running on limited supply