Does anyone have any insight into how much to spend on a keyword before deleting it? For instance, if an acceptable cost/conversion is 50$, do you delete a keyword when you spend 50$ and don't record a conversion? Or, do you let it run for longer, adjusting other factors like avg. position before deleting it?

If it is broad or phrase, I would research possible negitive keywords to filter out unwanted traffic first off. Ie if you sell new products have a negative keyword of "-used".

If it is an exact match keyword, I would search for that keyword and see if there are any other types of products/services that are typically found under such a keyword. If so perhaps delete that keyword and build a list of exact keywords in which modifiers are added to the original keyword to help focus the targeting. Ie instead of "wedding" have "wedding cakes".

Then I would look at your web sites stats, bounce rates, top exits, etc, and concentrate not on your AdWords campaign but on your web sites navigation, user friendliness, and other various parameters that may have a impact twoards a conversion.

If you are converting well for other keywords, then possibly the previous step is unnessesary, although improving your web site is never a bad thing. In which case, after running the keyword for awhile (at least a month in my opinion) and getting unsatisfactory conversion rates, I would delete it and concentrate more on building other keywords that would be better suited twoards people who are going to convert.

Also, now that AdWords allows your Ad's to run at specific times, I would look at when people are converting the most and cut out the times when people are converting the least.

I have only been doing AdWords for 10 months so far and when I started out I was getting a cost/conversion of around $80. After doing all of the things listed above, my cost/conversion hs dropped to $15. The most important change, in my case, was greatly improving our web site's accessibility twoards a conversion.

Hope this helps a bit.

NiV23

Good advice... work negatives hard... play with the landing page - get rid of any major distraction (use a analytics tool that shows you what links are being hit on your sales page sand if you see them escaping through a couple remove them and see if that improves your conversions etc.)

We have been tweaking the landing pages and site structure constantly, and some words have still not been converting well. I have used keyword tools to try to find popular searches that dont apply to my business, for negative keywords, but are there any other good methods to find them? At what point do you make the decision to delete these keywords?

We have been tweaking the landing pages and site structure constantly, and some words have still not been converting well. I have used keyword tools to try to find popular searches that dont apply to my business, for negative keywords, but are there any other good methods to find them? At what point do you make the decision to delete these keywords?

I would give them a final shot at exact match and see what happens.

Finding new terms are best gained through your organic search or other methods that people find you without PPC.