hey folks.. i'm still rather new in the ppc game.. this is my third week and have learned loads.. and also lost loads.. but at least each week my loses are decreasing. so far i've only concentrated on ppc due to the lack of time (have a 10 hour job) and i really want to get this right.. though i will be beginning other tactics this week.. anyhow.. for one of the products i'm promoting i've managed the get an excellent QS for most of the kwords and i've been either weeding out bad ones or optimizing my landing pages to improve my score... now that i have an excellent QS google says my minimum offer is 0.02 - 0.03 what exactly does this mean? currently i'm paying about 0.27 - 0.29 (these prices are killing me) and have an average position of 2.7. if i was to lower my max ppc to the suggested min. price will my ads still show at the same position? if not then what does min offer mean? how is it of help to me? thanks.
Minimum offer is the minimum amount that you can offer for a particular keyword. If you reduce your maximum cost per click, you will appear at a lower position, as there are others who have a higher bid amount per click, and they will show above those with lesser bids.
ok, so this could mean that if i was to lower my max ppc i would end up being listed on 2nd or 3rd page... not too useful then
You could try lowering your CPC by a penny or two at a time and see how that makes a difference. I find that being in 4 to 6 spot, I have a better conversion rate than in 1 - 3. I've even had 10th position perform really well. Definitely do not drop from 0.27 to 0.02 because you will see a major drop in your position. But if you go from 0.27 to 0.25, you may find you only drop one position (if that) and you'll save a couple of cents per click. Google rewards on relevancy. If your ad/site is optimized and deemed more relevant to the keyword you are using versus someone else using the same keyword, your ad will appear slightly higher than theirs, even if your CPC is lower than theirs. There are people in the top positions paying only pennies for their clicks because Google deems them to be the most relevant site for the keyword(s) in question.
at 0.02 cents, if you bid $0.02, you ad will be legible to show up or the Google Search, so its a good thing. But if your competitor is bidding $0.25, he will be higher up in the ad positions. If your ad has been around for a while, you can equal his position with that low cost bid... that takes time and some capital for google to allow this...
if you are already earning more then your spends why are you cribbing... most of the guys do not even reach break even.. Just kidding... if you have great score on your pages, then you must already be paying less than your max CPC.. concentrate on optimizating your ads and keywords..
min offer or min cpc is just the lowest bid google will allow you to have for that keyword. If bid 0.02 then you will probably show up very last, as this is the very min you can bid The higher you bid, the higher your ad will be on the page. If you cant afford 0.27 per click, try lowering a few cents below your average cpc. so if your bidding 0.50 but your average cpc is .25 then change your bid to .24. You will probably only drop 1 position in rank. So if your in position 2.1 then you will probably drop to 3.?.
thanks folks.. it's just seems a bit odd to me that G says min bid 0.02 and not actually let me lower it to 0.02 at once.. i guess i have to play the game... though i lowered my ppc today a little today as suggested and my average ppc has gone down by 1 cent.. which i'm really happy with... now another question would be (sorry to ask so many questions) how often can i tweak/fiddle with my max ppc with out pissing G off? if i was to lower it by 1 cent a day would this work?
you can lower it 100 times a day, google will not complain or do anything about it, but its not very effective to change bids so often. I would say just make sure you collect enough clicks in between each bid change to ensure accurate numbers. This basically means once per day, maybe 2 times if the avg cpc drops below max bid later in the afternoon from your 1st bid change
thanks mate... i'll keep on playing with cpc... i'm not far away from a good cpc price.. it's just a matter of being able to hold on long enough (though i finally broke even yesterday - really good news for me)