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Thanks for that. This is definitely something for us to consider. We're pretty high up organically in the local pack already, but running a mobile-only call campaign would definitely interest us. Thanks for the suggestion.

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your help.

1. Why is an AdWords campaign more effective with those additional marketing campaigns in place? Beyond the quality score/ad rank going up, is there an additional direct benefit with those marketing facets occurring?

FWIW, we are in top 3 in a large city for many of the biggest KW's. Our local SEO is very strong, many of our organic hits are people typing in our brand name, we have 2 locations, etc. We don't do much  by way of articles/videos/social as we haven't seen much benefit in those. Our social is mainly to promote whatever campaigns we're running for whatever reason.

2. For sure. Thank you.

Hi Alan,

1. We are. We lagged before because we couldn't facilitate the amount of leads then. We're in a better place now.

2. We'll do mobile later once we have organic stats to the loaded mobile pages. Since our pages display much differently on mobile (as do ads within SERPs), I'd rather jump into that with a bit of foresight as to how our users interact. I suspect the data will be quite different.

3. Yes, definitely. I have a comprehensive spreadsheet with the numbers above that I'll be plugging into the ad numbers as we go along. Will be on my toes comparing my estimates to a decent sample size of real campaign estimates to adjust and tweak.

5. I don't really think we're in need of that just yet unless my numbers are so wildly off that I'm completely screwed, hehe.

More looking for critique on how I derived my numbers and if I'm missing any glaring metrics to compose a plan as far as bidding, reasonable performance expectation, etc. I am acutely aware that I can't just set a bid and leave the computer for a month.

Background:

We're a home service business with potential for recurring clients. In the past, I've run PPC campaigns for a much larger company, and was profitable, but the business model was vastly different. The campaign also took place during their busy season, allowing flexibility I won't receive here.

Campaign Details:

• AdWords only
• SERPs only (not partner network)
• Desktop users only

Data Available:

Lots of past data was incomplete, prompting my best estimates and judgment calls. For past leads data, I'm using Google as lead source (organic + local pack rankings), generated specifically from our quote form.

Since our quote form doesn't render on Mobile/Tablet, I omitted those visits from our Analytics data, and only target Desktop in the campaign.

I wound up with the following statistics:

Organic (any web search), Desktop visitors who viewed our quote form page:

1. Number of overall pageviews
2. Number of overall leads generated from our quote form
3. Number of overall leads which converted to sales

And for our sales/numbers end of things:

1. % our clients choose targeted package
2. Revenue of initial sale on that package
3. Profit generated from sale on that package

Using these numbers, I calculated the % of clickers likely to bounce, complete the form, convert to clients, etc. Using our sales records, I calculated revenue/profit expected from each. And with that, I calculated the highest CPC to break even (unacceptable, obviously), as well as the projected ROI from lower, more reasonable CPCs.

Notes:

• We're a home service business. Not all homes are created equal. Through data, I found our clients average home size and the average estimate for that home.
• Due to incomplete records, I can't know which Google _clients _are specific to our quote form. Some likely called through the local pack or manually dialed and said "Google" if our staff asked. To combat this, I found the % of Google _leads _who completed the quote form vs. phone call, email and applied it to clients for a reliable estimate (our system removes the quote form identifier upon lead to client conversion).
• I'm not factoring in the % of clients who become recurring customers as I don't have this data. Given that it's much higher than 0%, I think this allows a LOT of breathing room on my estimates. Many of our clients have stayed with us for years. If only a small number convert to long-term status, the current ROI shoots WAY up.
• Similar to above, I'm also not factoring in the % of clients who don't choose the initial package, but instead choose a lesser package. Again, I think this provides breathing room.

Any PPC campaign will have a plethora of variables, especially intangible issues (damages, refunds, etc). I feel I have the important things down, but I'm far from an expert. I'd love to receive any advice or things I'm overlooking.

Thanks.

I figured .htaccess would be the best route. Thank you for researching and confirming. I appreciate it.

Hi Tim,

Assigning a noindex tag to these files will not block them, only prevent them from showing in SERPs. This is the intended goal and the reason I deleted my robots.txt file which prevented crawling.

Unless I'm severely misreading the links provided, which I've read before, it seems Google is stating that they read, render, and sometimes index .CSS and .JS files. Here's an article written a week after the second article you posted.

The aforementioned WordPress plugin and theme files hosted on my server are indeed showing up in Google SERPs.

I do not want to prevent Googlebot from reaching these files as they're needed for optimal site performance, but I do want them to be no-indexed. Thus, I don't want robots.txt to prevent crawling, only indexing.

Let me know if I'm misunderstanding.

Hi,

Google has indexed a few .CSS and .JS files that belong to our WordPress plugins and themes. I had them blocked via robots, but realized this doesn't prevent indexation (and can likely hurt us since Google wants to access these files).

I've since removed the robots instructions, submitted a removal request via Search Console, but want to make sure they don't come back.

Is there a way to put a noindex tag within .CSS and .JS files? Or should I do something with .htaccess instead?

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the response.

The URLs were built through Google's URL builder and I believe they're valid. Thee view in GA is definitely raw. The only filters I have are to ignore the common spam bots like all-buttons and such.

I believe the dm_redirected is due to our mobile site being configured by a service called DudaMobile. So it looks like mobile users clicked the Facebook ad and were redirected to our mobile version, which Duda apparently tags themselves in the redirect? Would this wipe out the original UTM?

Hi,

We recently ran a few ads on Facebook and Reddit for a campaign of ours. Each of the URLs were properly attributed UTM links. Some of them register properly in campaigns, but the vast majority aren't.

I can only find the attribution by checking All Traffic and displaying the landing page and the source/medium. Our Facebook Ad Manager reports MANY more clicks than our Campaign section in GA is for the campaign name.

Here's the URL I receive for the landing page: /?url=http://www.ourwebsiteurl.com/our-landing-page?utm_source=facebook.com&dm_redirected=true

Is Facebook writing over our UTM with their own so all I receive is that it came from Facebook? The URL we used was complete with utm_source, utm_campaign and utm_medium, yet these aren't fully reported.

Any ideas?

Hi Kristina,

Thanks for the response. Your outline is honestly the exact steps I've taken, only I didn't use RMOOV or any other service to identify the bad links because virtually ALL of our links were bad.

Here's what I did:

I downloaded all of our links from both OSE and WMT and stripped duplicates. I then used an Excel add-in that stripped ROOT domains into the B column. I combined that with some Excel functions to compare a list of domains I'd created (good domains, such as our local citations) and return a result if they showed up. That way I could enter a list with Yelp, Angie's List, etc. and remove the "good" links. So I stripped out duplicates, good domains, and had the rest.

I got all the WHOIS information I could by using this Bulk WHOIS checker and grouped domains together with the same WHOIS information (as well as sites which were clearly part of the same network). I've sent out hundreds of requests and screen shotted all of them for when the time comes to prove our case to Google.

And I've been keeping the disavow sheet current as I go along, noting sites which have no contact information, appear to be down for now (still disavowing in case they return), and sites which demand payment to remove links.

And as you asked about in the end, I contacted the company which purchased/built these links in the first place. They claimed they still had control over them. When I asked them about removing them, they stopped responding. They're shady, and honestly I wouldn't feel comfortable paying them to remove links, because they could just generate more in the future and offer their "link removal services" to us down the line.

Thanks again for the response! I'm still plugging away at removing these crappy links. One day the profiles will be balanced enough to sustain Google's algorithm changes!

Sorry, the link is definitely follow and as you noted, an obvious exact match anchor. They're a huge site and are obviously aware of what they're doing. The link itself goes to the person's profile page and not a generic category page which is still pretty risky.

Hi,

Google has indexed a few .CSS and .JS files that belong to our WordPress plugins and themes. I had them blocked via robots, but realized this doesn't prevent indexation (and can likely hurt us since Google wants to access these files).

I've since removed the robots instructions, submitted a removal request via Search Console, but want to make sure they don't come back.

Is there a way to put a noindex tag within .CSS and .JS files? Or should I do something with .htaccess instead?

Background:

We're a home service business with potential for recurring clients. In the past, I've run PPC campaigns for a much larger company, and was profitable, but the business model was vastly different. The campaign also took place during their busy season, allowing flexibility I won't receive here.

Campaign Details:

• AdWords only
• SERPs only (not partner network)
• Desktop users only

Data Available:

Lots of past data was incomplete, prompting my best estimates and judgment calls. For past leads data, I'm using Google as lead source (organic + local pack rankings), generated specifically from our quote form.

Since our quote form doesn't render on Mobile/Tablet, I omitted those visits from our Analytics data, and only target Desktop in the campaign.

I wound up with the following statistics:

Organic (any web search), Desktop visitors who viewed our quote form page:

1. Number of overall pageviews
2. Number of overall leads generated from our quote form
3. Number of overall leads which converted to sales

And for our sales/numbers end of things:

1. % our clients choose targeted package
2. Revenue of initial sale on that package
3. Profit generated from sale on that package

Using these numbers, I calculated the % of clickers likely to bounce, complete the form, convert to clients, etc. Using our sales records, I calculated revenue/profit expected from each. And with that, I calculated the highest CPC to break even (unacceptable, obviously), as well as the projected ROI from lower, more reasonable CPCs.

Notes:

• We're a home service business. Not all homes are created equal. Through data, I found our clients average home size and the average estimate for that home.
• Due to incomplete records, I can't know which Google _clients _are specific to our quote form. Some likely called through the local pack or manually dialed and said "Google" if our staff asked. To combat this, I found the % of Google _leads _who completed the quote form vs. phone call, email and applied it to clients for a reliable estimate (our system removes the quote form identifier upon lead to client conversion).
• I'm not factoring in the % of clients who become recurring customers as I don't have this data. Given that it's much higher than 0%, I think this allows a LOT of breathing room on my estimates. Many of our clients have stayed with us for years. If only a small number convert to long-term status, the current ROI shoots WAY up.
• Similar to above, I'm also not factoring in the % of clients who don't choose the initial package, but instead choose a lesser package. Again, I think this provides breathing room.

Any PPC campaign will have a plethora of variables, especially intangible issues (damages, refunds, etc). I feel I have the important things down, but I'm far from an expert. I'd love to receive any advice or things I'm overlooking.

Thanks.