Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Great, thanks for that!

Hi Keri,

Status of ads is 'eligible' with quality scores of 10/10 for brand terms (trademarked) and related brand terms (not trademarked).

Any idea how the twitter person established "stuck in eligible status purgatory"?

Thanks,Davinia

Hi Stephen,

Have tested using the Adwords 'ad preview and diagnosis' tool as well as logged in and out, removing cache and on different computers - no change, always at the bottom.

Hi Don,

I don't know what to say.... I can't stop giggling. There is NO WAY you get a better CTR with ads appearing at the bottom of the page. Like you I also have plenty of data to back that up.

This issue continues to occur for one of my clients.

Perhaps consider testing on smartphones only - I'd imagine more people would see the whole first page of results on a smartphone than they would on a desktop. I'd also recommend getting your SEO up to scratch so you are placing top of page for organic listings and Google Places.

Will let you know if I find anything new......but am still scratching my head as well.

Davinia

I appreciate your time, thanks.

Ads only display in New Zealand so you won't be able to see them, but thanks for the offer of PM anyways.

Am using legacy but didn't think this would cause any problems as enhanced is geared towards mobile. But it could very well be the cause?

Keywords are position 1 for all and have viewed placement by 'ad preview and diagnosis' and it still appears at the bottom.

So, I'm stumped!

Hi Zach,

Thanks for your reply.

Quality scores on all keywords are 10/10.

I've been running these campaigns for a year and only seen this twice (both in last 7 days). So am wondering if maybe something has changed with Adwords?

Thanks,
Davinia

Hello,

I'm running a sale promotion on a brand only Adwords campaign (I have the only account with trademark authorization) and have noticed that my ads are appearing at the bottom of the first page on Google.

This happened last week so I split the campaign into three Adgroups and that fixed the problem but today I'm running brand only and there is no way to separate them.

CPC has also increased dramatically. Normally it's less than 10 cents and now it's sitting at between $2-$4.

Has anyone else seen this? Any ideas/advice on how to stop this happening? It's playing havoc with my CTR and conversions.

Much thanks,
Davinia

It makes them unique yes but you might want to add a little more. If search engines don't think your meta tags are a true representation of the page or if they are duplicated across the site then the search engine will choose whatever content it wants, and often this isn't a compelling introduction to the website.

Private message me your URL if you like and I can have a look and see if there are any additional automation opportunities for your tags.

First see if you can automate the meta descriptions so they are unique. So create a rule that changes one or two words. Easy to use terms for the rule would be things like product names, product models, product size, category names etc.

Or, if the pages are so much the same would canonical tags be possible? This will communicate to search engines which one page is the priority page. That way your duplicate or light content on other pages shouldn't cause any penalties.

Have a read of this page http://www.seomoz.org/blog/retargeting-basics-what-it-is-how-to-use-it half way down it has a paragraph on remarketing and how it is Google's 'word'.

If you are looking into retargeting I highly recommend investigating multiple stage remarketing (link above).

The blog you listed, well yes, I think you are right to search for other sources of reference

On top of social networking as Chris and David mentioned you can also use your content to reach your target market and earn back-links by getting the content promoted on contest websites specific to your location/industry and also approach community websites to promote it.

oDesk is my recommendation as well, but you should always ask for a sample of writing before hiring anyone. I also specify 'English speaking' in the job title. For a safe option you should take the referral from Francisco, good price and recommended.

If you are wanting to save some monies you could always write it yourself and just have a SEO copywriter polish it up for you.

Add a permanent 301 redirect from your /index page and point to your root domain (i.e. non /index pages).
 - You need to do the redirect over canonical because it's a duplicate page/URL rather than a page with blocks of similar content.

Update all mentions within your website that link to the /index page so that they only link to the non /index page. With CMS's you'll need to look where things get automatically added, like links in sitemap, footer, breadcrumbs, the 'home' link and sub-navigation.You may need a developer to remove them if not accessible via the CMS.

Then your duplicate content issues will be gone.

First explain that without using the variations on the website it will be challenging but you are going to try some work-rounds that may or may not work.

You can add the variations to alt tags, title attributes in navigation, in the footer, try title tags and meta descriptions (not on the actual page but will come up in SERPs) and build external links with the variations as the anchor text.

You could also investigate schema mark up and if you can add the variations in there somehow and also look at Google+ and linkedIn which you can link back to the website.

You could try get an About Us page and make the content fun and engaging and also add the variations in there "john smith, also known as X and X, ....'

Good luck!

Go to the post, click edit and at the bottom of the page there is two radio buttons where you can select 'question' or 'discussion'.

It maybe that they are adding your website under the article in the 'related internet links' section. Set up a Google Alert and you will get emailed when links appear on the website; then you might be able to locate them.

Private message me if you want to discuss further

Okay, then when you check for your URL on the page how are you doing that? Do you search for your URL in the source code? It would be good to locate exactly where on the page the URL is placed and from there you will have a better idea of how it's getting put there, or rather where to investigate next! The link might not be obvious on the front page, it could be an image link etc.

Are you running Adwords?Could be paid advertising on BBC news website that is pushing traffic to your site.

In your traffic report have a look for that URL and filter by a secondary dimension of 'medium'. This will tell you if it is referral traffic or paid advertising. If it is referral then there is (or was) a link to your website on that page. If it is ppc (paid) then it is the Google Ads.

I'd supply clients with a glossary so that they have a point of reference. I'd also stick with your own terminology and explanation, I think it's important otherwise you will end up having one word that is used differently across multiple clients.

What you have written explains the three just fine. If you wanted to, in the directory explanation you could expand it and say that there are primary, secondary and niche directories with different levels of benefits.