At present I am an affiliate advertiser sending traffic directly to a company's website. I'm fairly confident that the ads and keywords (with many negatives) are well-targeted, but the competition is somewhat fierce. My average position is about 6 but I am getting a 3.75% CTR (not bad considering its position) and the average CPC is 18 cents. I would like to continue to optimize (in particular, lower the CPC), but my options might be limited since I can't make direct changes the landing page. Are there any specific strategies that anybody employs that can lower CPC or raise their position without making changes to the landing page? I know about the 'ol "tweak your ads" and "add more negatives", but I guess am wondering if anybody uses any other more advanced creative solutions? Are there any particular thresholds that ads have to meet for the system to re-examine ads positions (such as # of clicks), or does it just happen on the fly? etc etc.
All you can do without access to the landing page is keep trying to increase your quality score by: increasing your CTR making the ads as relevant as you can to the landing page and keywords adding more negatives to reduce unwanted impressions If you want to assume more control over quality score, you should consider constructing a landing page. Ad positions are re-examined every time quality score is calculated, which is before every impression.
As recommended you should look into your own landing page. Direct link marketing should only be used as a trial to see if there is a market available for a product or service. As far as optimizing your campaign 1. increase CTR is the best way to reduct CPC per click 2. position keywords into prime positions 3. use broad and exact 4. use tracking software to extract the exact searches the broad match sends you 5. add more exact matches and position them 6. remove and delete non performing keywords