Today I want to talk about why you should always start out with higher CPCs.

You already know that Google is going really crazy when it comes to quality score. If you have a high quality score, you can pay a lot less for the number one position in Google, then another advertiser is paying for the number five position. I’m not going to go through all the details again of how Google ranks the ads, because I already in different place about that, but quality score is a huge part of that.

The quality score basically consists of three things. One is the relevancy of the page that you are sending people to. And that makes approximately 20% of your quality score. Of course that number is an estimate. Nobody except the secret Google crew who knows that. Another thing that makes about 20% of your quality score is your on page SEO. So that means basically you title, the meta keywords, the meta description, the H1 tags, pictures and so on. That again accounts for about 20% of the quality score.

The single most important factor when it comes to how Google evaluates your quality score is your click through rate. If you have an ad that gets lots of clicks, then Google will give you a lot better quality score.

And in some cases it might actually be cheaper to write an ad that gets more clicks with lower conversions than it is to write an ad that gets less clicks and a higher conversion rate. Simply because you might pay way less for each click with a high click through rate than you pay for each click below click through rate.

So you should always start out with a high cost per click price. Because you want to be positioned high in the search engines so that your keyword of choice triggers your ad in a top position in Google. This way, you will have high click through rate, and thus also a better quality score.

If you are on a limited budget, then what you want to do is simply to limit the daily budget of that particular campaigns to an amount that you can afford. But you still want to have a high cost per click. You still want to show up in the top position in Google. Because at this point in time you simply want to get a great quality score. That’s what it’s all about. Because this quality score can make a huge difference in the cost of your ad. Yes, it’s only a couple of cents per click, but those cents quickly can add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a single keyword.

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Cheaper PPC With British English

by admin on October 1, 2009

The British like to do things the british way. And so they writie bBritisch too. There are a lot of words that are written differently in England, than they are internationally, and when you target THESE keywords, you can often get a lot cheaper PPC costs when targeting the British market – specially if you have a .co.uk domain.

Here’s a good overview of different spellings between the US+the rest of the world and the British:

http://www.tysto.com/articles05/q1/20050324uk-us.shtml

Go through the list and see if there are keywords that are worth setting up own ads & maybe even landing pages for. Despite being such a small country in size, the British still spend a lot of money online.

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Google’s New Keyword Tool

September 28, 2009

Google has released a new keyword tool. You will have to log into your adwords account, go to the keyword tool, and then click on the link to the Beta version. One thing it does, it that it shows you mobile searches too.
I could write a lot about the new features, but other’s have done [...]

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Sitemaps For PPC?

September 28, 2009

Image via Wikipedia

One thing you can do to give your quality score rating a little boost is to include a sitemap. A sitemap won’t be a huge difference in your AdWords quality score, but as you know – it’s all about those small, little incremental improvements. Apart of benefiting you quality score-wise, a search engine [...]

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Adwords Recommended Budget – More, Less, Or Their Recommendation?

September 24, 2009

AdWords has a recommended budget for your campaigns. Should you spend more, less, or follow their advice?
I found that I really get the best results when I set my daily budget to 150% of their recommendation. (So, if they recommend $200, then I set it to $300).
This get’s me not only more clicks, but also [...]

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Use Google Ad Planner

September 24, 2009

If you are not yet using the Google Ad planner, the time to do so has come now.
I highly suggest you check it out yourself, but to give you a quick idea of what it is and does:
it helps you (the advertiser) to find websites that people who you want to show your advertisements are [...]

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AdWords Ranking – How Google Decides Where Your Ad Will Rank

September 17, 2009

Here I want to talk about Google quality score and how it can influence your rankings in the sponsored links section of the Google search engine results pages.
Maybe you’re wondering how Google is coming up with the prices they charge you per click, and what exactly determines your rankings. After you read this article, you [...]

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Click Fraud – Are You A Victim Of Pay Per Click Fraud?

September 10, 2009

Google has done a good job with reducing click fraud. But let’s face it, there will always be a certain amount of click fraud.  If you see an unusual spike in traffic that you suspect is due to click fraud, here’s what you should do first:
Click Fraud Check 1:
Did you change anything in your campaign [...]

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Lower AdWords Position, Higher Conversions?

September 3, 2009

David recently made the point that lower AdWords positions can actually increase your conversion rate.

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Get Your Campaigns Right From The Start

September 2, 2009

When you are starting out a new campaign, you really should put some effort into it and make sure it’s good from the start. Many people just throw up something and say: “I’ll improve that later.”
The problem with that strategy is that Google will penalize you for campaigns that are set up bad and ads [...]

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