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What’s your threshold for pausing a Google ads keyword?
I’m curious when you deem a keyword as poor quality.
For me, I have this rule of thumb:
– has to have spent a minimum of $150 on the keyword (my target CPA is around $80 but I get many conversions under that).
– if the above is true, no conversions at that minimum spend, and CTR is under 5% (generally I see CTR vary greatly but in the teens is normal for my account)
– as a last check I will review search queries… occasionally I’ll let a keyword go longer if the queries look right, and just add some negatives
Edit: sometimes I pause keywords with low conversions that are well above my CPA.
Do you have a system for this?
I use a fair amount of broad and phrase match and it works great for me.
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1 Reply
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Roughly the same as yours. If it’s not converting or consistently converting at >50% higher CPA than the campaign average I’ll punish the bids over time or simply just pause it.
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If manual bidding I will use tcpa X conv rate to get bid. If no conversions i base the conv rate on next click gets a conversion. The bids are then gradually lowered until the keyword no longer shows or has its bids pumped because it’s converting. Then simply automate it all.
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My rule of thumb: if your product has no LTV, don’t spend more than the net profit on the item sold.
If CPA is getting too high on specific keywords, but it’s still related to your products, I’ll segment those keywords into a separate campaign, set the CPC as low as possible while still getting impressions and then keep an eye on it before pausing them all together.
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Roughly same – but there are lines I draw. For example, if it’s a mechanic that specializes in Mazdas & “Mazda Mechanic Near Me” isn’t converting – I’m going to be hammering that with the client & in the account till the client says ‘no more’ as they should be converting that. When an audience or keyword that should be a layup overly struggling – I’m a strong believer that’s a sign it needs fixed as it’s a sign of a greater issue for the business.
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not converting over 30 days will pause it. My AOV is $100k+ so if I think it’s worth testing out I will let it run to a couple hundred bucks.
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If it doesn’t convert you must abort.
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Similiar to yours, sometimes split underperforming keywords into a separate ad group for a specific analysis
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The strategy you are following seems good. I may suggest you to take the search terms history for that particular keyword and find some highly converting terms from that list. Use them as a new keyword if not already in use.
If you miss this step before pausing your ineffective keywords, it may cause you to lose traffic from those converting search terms as well.
Hope it helps a bit.
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For me there needs to be close to or more than 1k clicks on a keyword before you can have confidence in the conversion rate. There are some cases where you could go with less, but $150 in spend is likely not enough considering an avg cpc you probably have less than 100 clicks at that stage.
Do some reading on click requirements for conversion rate confidence. Lots of data and research on the topic to explain targets and reasoning.
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