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Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

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Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#161

Post by cconcepts »

Taek wrote: post #157
cconcepts wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spammy links thing fascinates me. I don't know much about search algos or SEO but on our small, industrial business site we couldn't understand why, after many hours and thousands of dollars spent on the procedures that Google recommends, our organic ranking in SERPs for a very niche product (of which we are one of only three providers in our region) was appalling - often page three. It wasn't till we realised we…

Nah, if there's money on the line there's a lot of reason to target you for a penalty. Scammy sites can't get attention if there's a legitimate site in the search results. SEO is a big industry and taking down competitors is a part of being the top N results.

So how do I combat against this? We're a small, honest company providing great products and services for the companies that need them but we're getting killed online because no one can find us.

I've forked out a lot (for us) on adwords and the return has been negligible to say the least.

Does this mean that the democratizing power of the internet has been swallowed up for small, lean companies like us who cant afford a mega adwords budget?

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#162

Post by mordant »

ar15saveslives wrote: post #113
usaphp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your product specialized to technical users? I've noticed that businesses with more technical clients have harder time getting customers via ads, because most technical users don't click on ads

I sell an OSX app for advanced users, and as you said, they don't click on ads and it would make more sense to heat my house with $20 bills instead sending them to fb/adwords. However, I ran 2-day flash-sale and it went unexpectedly good. I never thought devs and tech-savvy people visit websites like that.

Link?

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#165

Post by ChuckMcM »

Yup, pretty much. Probably 99% is closer to the truth. If you want to not give your ad budget to crooks you need to buy 100% cost-per-action where you only pay if the click converts. The other end of that spectrum, impressions, is really like throwing bills out your 10th story window into the crowds below.

"Click fraud" is rampant and Yuuuuge. Because it is both easy and it doesn't get the international police on your back like stealing CC's or user accounts do. So it is a fun game for smart people who make anywhere from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars a day just for writing clever code.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#166

Post by rokhayakebe »

cconcepts wrote: post #154
rackforms wrote: post #114

I've got a long history here, stretching all the way back to 2007. At that time 80% of my traffic was organic, and most importantly, was spread equally between MSN, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. I paid for ad's through HotScripts, and this was a solid source of leads. This mixture, along with a fast, secure, easy to use site and great word of mouth lead to an annual growth rate of around 30%, ending up in 2011 with a mont…

The spammy links thing fascinates me. I don't know much about search algos or SEO but on our small, industrial business site we couldn't understand why, after many hours and thousands of dollars spent on the procedures that Google recommends, our organic ranking in SERPs for a very niche product (of which we are one of only three providers in our region) was appalling - often page three. It wasn't till we realised we…

1) Update your Disavow file properly, which I am sure you've done

2) Email Google directly. It is sometimes difficult to find a way to email, but once you do they'll take care of it.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#167

Post by ehnto »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #158
rackforms wrote: post #114

I've got a long history here, stretching all the way back to 2007. At that time 80% of my traffic was organic, and most importantly, was spread equally between MSN, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. I paid for ad's through HotScripts, and this was a solid source of leads. This mixture, along with a fast, secure, easy to use site and great word of mouth lead to an annual growth rate of around 30%, ending up in 2011 with a mont…

>My site was targeted with millions of low quality links Are you saying competitors maliciously sabotaged your ranking? Or that you bought SEO services from an unscrupulous company?

Either could be just as true, and you can't always tell which SEO company will be unscrupulous. They are masters of the spin, after all. I have resolved to never use the services of an SEO company. Having both been burnt and worked in the industry itself, I would rather not work on a project that relies on "SEO" for important revenue at all. As noted above, it is a fickle and ultimately brittle way to prop a business up.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#168

Post by somid3 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #165

Yup, pretty much. Probably 99% is closer to the truth. If you want to not give your ad budget to crooks you need to buy 100% cost-per-action where you only pay if the click converts. The other end of that spectrum, impressions, is really like throwing bills out your 10th story window into the crowds below. "Click fraud" is rampant and Yuuuuge. Because it is both easy and it doesn't get the international police on you…

I'd love to hear more. I'll email you tmrw. Interesting background.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#169

Post by kyledrake »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #158
rackforms wrote: post #114

I've got a long history here, stretching all the way back to 2007. At that time 80% of my traffic was organic, and most importantly, was spread equally between MSN, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. I paid for ad's through HotScripts, and this was a solid source of leads. This mixture, along with a fast, secure, easy to use site and great word of mouth lead to an annual growth rate of around 30%, ending up in 2011 with a mont…

>My site was targeted with millions of low quality links Are you saying competitors maliciously sabotaged your ranking? Or that you bought SEO services from an unscrupulous company?

Does Google actually punish sites for buying spam SEO, or is this speculation without evidence? They don't publish page rank scores anymore, so how can one know? How does one determine their site is "punished"?

I have seen the consequences of paying for SEO. They spam your site URL on random web forums. If you pay for SEO, you are very likely paying people to use bots and sweatshops to spam your site url via low quality garbage links dumped on Twitter, on web site hosts, in comment sections and forums. A lot of this traffic originates from criminal botnets. Seriously, don't do it.

As an example I just pulled out of our filter, here's what you're really paying for when you pay for SEO: https://twitter.com/karenhall191

Unfortunately, as a web hosting provider (neocities.org), I have to deal with some of the fallout from this. Google's business model creates this problem, but they provide little support and few tools to help us deal with it (reporting API please?), and we're largely forced to go it alone.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#170

Post by rokhayakebe »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #160
vivekd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I don't know much about digital marketing but I know that anecdotal evidence, which is all the author is presenting, is next to useless. I've heard other claims from people about how they made enormous sums on facebook. The real issue is that neither of these claims constitute data. Only large scale research tracking traffic across many websites would let us come to meaningful conclusions and that sort of re…

Who says ads are a goldmine? I'd like to read up on that.

Goldmine for the seller.
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