Hi Jill!

Here's a tough question...I've been frustrated by the thousands of dollars a month I've been spending with Overture. It seems ridiculous to keep lining their pockets, so last week I decided to put all my terms offline and see what a difference it made in sales. So far, not too much of a difference; I'm doing way better than I was afraid might happen, which is amazing to me!

I'm concerned as to whether or not this will hurt my high ranking in Google. Does Google give me a higher ranking because of my thousands of terms in Overture and all the links that would come from there? Or just from regular sites that link to me?

I'd appreciate any news you might have on a situation like this.

Thanks!

Cathy Pedigo

Hi Cathy,

Your regular Google rankings have nothing to do with any ads you might run with Google AdWords or Overture, so rest easy! Google and the other search engines are smart enough to tell the difference between most PPC ads and real links. Thank goodness, or they'd have a real problem with their rankings and relevance otherwise.

On another note, your situation brings up a number of things that may be of interest to others. The fact that you didn't notice much difference in your sales can mean a few things. It might mean that you're simply not doing a good job with your Overture ads, and therefore are not seeing a good return on investment (ROI). Are the keywords you're bidding on too general? Do they exactly describe what your site offers? Are your bid amounts reasonable for the keywords you want to show up under?

I'm certainly no PPC guru, but I do know enough to understand that there's a delicate balance between what will provide you with a decent ROI, and what will end up costing you money. You might want to check out Andrew Goodman's "21 Techniques to Maximize your Profits on Google AdWords". Yes, it's geared towards Google ads, not Overture, but the same techniques should apply to both in many cases. The idea is to get your bid amounts down and your clickthroughs up.

The other thing that struck me when reading your email was that your sales may not have changed much when you stopped advertising on Overture simply because everyone's using Google to search these days. Since you have high rankings with Google, it may very well be all you need. Plus, you can always purchase Google AdWords to supplement any keyword phrases you may not be able to target through their regular results for whatever reason.

Hope this helps!

Jill