“Increase quality or bid $5.00 to activate” – Solutions For Google Adwords

If you've ever done a Google Adwords campaign, you might have come across this message for one of your keyword which reads "Increase quality or bid $5.00 to activate."

Why do you think Google sent that message in the first place. Google wants to make the most money possible from their adword campaigns. They know that PPC ads that deliver the most relevancy for any given subject will be clicked on more often – and cha-ching – they make more money. Therefore, they evaluate the importance of your adword campaign by the relevance of your placements (perceived relevancy in this case) to the selected adwords (as discussed in my earlier Marketing Insight ezine). If Google feels that your ad does not relate to the keyword – it de-activates it. What the search engine giant is really saying is that, if you don't know how to use Google Adwords, you should pay 3-10 times more till you figure it out! So, how do you deal with this?

WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO: Don't be desperate when buying Google Adwords. They make bundles from advertisers who are so frightened of being rejected that they'll pay anything to save the keyword placement - literally at any price. Rolling over and paying this increase is a huge mistake and will cost you dearly. Your lead cost for that keyword can go up by 500 percent!

Here are two far better options you can try:

1.Start by removing the keyword from the adword campaign and put it in another group of ads that are more closely related to the keywords you selected; or create an ad group campaign that has the keyword in the headline. You need to group related keywords together within the campaign so they make sense.

Following are examples of titles Google doesn't ike, vs titles they do like. Let's say the keywords selected are: "Home Business", "Earn Money", "Online Business", "Make Money Fast"

• INCORRECT KEYWORDS GROUPING – A less relevant ad would read: "Make $20,000/mo From Home". Even though the ad might be good, the keywords in the title are too different from the keywords selected so they don't match the ad, therefore your ad is perceived irrelevant and is deactivated. (this ad would fit keywords such as "Make Money From Home")

• CORRECT KEYWORDS GROUPING – A better approach is to set up 3 separate ad groups for the above keywords and employ related, similar keywords in the titles. One group could focus on – "Home Business", "Home Based Business", "Business from Home", etc. – Examples of ads that that are relevant are – "Best Home Based Business" or "$1,000/Day-Home Business" (some of the keywords are in the title)

Then create another ad group for each of the other keywords such as – "Earn Money", "Earn Money from Home", "Earn Extra Money", etc. Your next ad group would include some if not all keywords in the title like – "Earn Money Fast", "Earn Money While Sleeping" "Earn $3,000/Day", etc.

The bottom-line is, when you have the keywords matching the selection of words used in your ad, and your keywords appear in the headline, your ad will rarely be deactivated.

Following this principle, you just accomplished two things…not only will you not have to pay the higher price, but more likely, your cpc will drop even lower than what you paid before they asked you to increase your bid. Plus, your click rate is even higher because the ad is more relevant, which will lower your CostPerClick price.

2.) The second option is to just delete the keyword for a few days and put it back up. Most likely, you'll be back to the original bid price when you re-post it.

Learning to understand Google Adwords will save you (or make you) lots of money. It rewards you for relevancy and will charge you extra for generality. So, next time you get this message, do the smart thing and rearrange your Google Adwords campaign just a little and save! Don't just pay the requested increase!