You know when it says 0.05 min. bid for your quality score. Well have you guys ever actually cost your AVG. CPC down that low? to 5 cents a click? Where it actually matches that? or is it always way higher then that?
my min. bid for certain keywords is 0.05 but I have never gotten a 0.05 click. I saw this video (can't remember where) that was talking about how to get 0.10 clicks and kind of reverse engineering the google slap. Check out creativedigitalmedia.com
That not bad man... If you don't mind me asking was you paying way higher then that in the beginning for the same keyword? The reason I ask for is because my cpc is extremely high which it seems to be going down after time, but I'm paying super high 4 times as much as you I was paying 8 times in the beginning, but was your CPC higher then that in beginning for the same keyword?
The Min Bid is a reflection of your Quality Score which provides an element of the Rank calculation Max CPC x QS = Rank Your Actual CPC is calculated by dividing the rank of the next advertisier by your QS then adding $0.01. If there is no advertiser below you, you are charged your min CPC. I have had a few campaigns where I am charged 1p per click, where there are no competitors
In general, the closer you bid to your minimum bid, the lower your advert will appear (yes, they are different Quality Scores, but in general, I think they are similar). But appearing near the bottom of the search results is rarely the most profitable place to be, unless the clicks are worth very little to you. The only reasons (I can think of off the top of my head) to appear low in the search results are: 1) Very limited budget 2) You can't convert traffic as well as your competitors (so clicks are of low value) 3) A lot of people are bidding over the odds. 4) You are operating on very tight sales margins. Since it's generally more profitable to bid more (and hence get more conversions), our clients do that.
I was told from a super affiliate that positions 5-8 are higher converting, but 10 times cheaper clicks.
They can often have a higher conversion rate, but since there is less traffic lower down you don't get as many sales. It's generally more profitable to be higher, like 3,4,5 position, since you get high traffic and reasonable conversion rates. You also get fairly cheap clicks unless as CustardMite says, people are paying over the odds.
well I do know from experience position 3 is the position to be in seems like spot 1 is just click happy also since quality score and cpc is measured by position it won't hurt your ad being in position 3 at all as long as its getting better ctr then the other advertisers. Also the person that told me to stay in positions 5-8 is doing over 90k a month in affiliate commissions.
Can't argue with that! I don't do much affiliate marketing but I would imagine competition is higher so 5-8 may be more reasonable.
I have a pretty good budget IMO and NO I didn't start high. What I did was used a tool called HexaTrack and looked at different keywords and then chose one's that wern't the most "popular" but still got decent traffic. Started my bidding for each keyword at $1.20, got a good CTR (7 or 8%) then moved the bids down to $0.75 (For search network) ... I also use the Content network and for me it works great... Used the same formula there but lower starting bid than search network ($0.55) As I mentioned in another thread, I just got ass slapped by google this morning for no reason at all. Logged into my account and all my keywords were not showing and they wanted my bid to be raised to $12.00!!! So, I just deleted that campaign and started a new one...I guess I'll start the process over again, which is no big deal as it only takes 5 minutes to set up ... The one I just deleted ran really good for 2 months though, so I'm happy with it
Yea, definitely stay away from position #1. Its just not worth it unless it is not a high volume search term. I would say positions 3-6 are usually the place to be. As for ad quality and cpc. Relevancy is everything. You can pay practically nothing just as long as you present your self as the most relevant site for the search. The less relevant you are...the more money your gonna have to pay per click. Cheers
I've actually been messing around with minimum bid stuff over the past two weeks just to see what I could do. Started two week ago with in the $0.30 range and got as low as $0.02 while keeping the top spot. At $0.02 though could not get above the results, always on the right. Have been playing with the bids over the past 3 or 4 days to see what the minimum is to appear above the results. All on Google.com - no content or search networks. As far as some spots being better than others in terms of conversion...the only time that's universally true (and there are even exceptions there) is in relation to spot #1. Anyone saying spots x - x are the best converting isn't really presenting the whole picture. Conversion has a lot more to do with your landing page/offer (and how it relates to your keyword selection and ad) than your ad position. You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over an expecting different results right?
Am I right in assuming that you accept that number 1 position is generally the worse for conversions? As you get people who are just clicking out of interest. Clicking because it's the first thing they see. For a lot of my keywords position 3-4 has been the best. But I also think perhaps the lower down the listings your website is, the more qualified your visitor is - they aren't just looking at 2 or 3 and settling, they are interested to know more about the product/service and so are taking time out to look at more websites.
Generally spot #1 will be one of the least cost effective positions in terms of conversions. You may get more conversions but you get a lot of curiosity/habit clicks too that don't convert which can drive up your cost per conversion. Like a lot of things related to AdWords, there are exceptions to the above statement. Testing the #1 spot is usually a worthwhile exercise.