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.

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.

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 that already:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=25476

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020848.html

Very cool!

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 friendly sitemap will also help you SEOwise. Even though many PPC marketers really don`t care about SEO, it’s getting increasingly important because of the ever evolving algorithms that Google implements into the AdWords secret sauce

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The easiest free way to create a good, search engine friendly XML-Sitemap is by simply hopping over here:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com

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 sometimes can lower the CPC.

One possible reason for that might be that some competitors run out of budget at some point – at which there is less competition for that keyword, thus the ad price drops temporarily. But that’s just a guess

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 probably visiting. So you can place Google content network ads on these pages. Currently, it’s only available in English, but it will surely become available in other languages too.

If you do demographic or geographic targeting, then you’ll love the ad planner.

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 will be clear about that.

Hopefully, you already know that Google gives each keyword quality score. The quality score is determined by a number of factors, it’s mainly about relevancy and the user experience of the person that clicks through your ad, and your CTR (Click Through Rate).

If Google decides that you have a quality score of 10, then that is as good as it can get. But if Google decides that you have a quality score of four, and it’s very bad. And I will tell you why it’s really bad.

Because your quality score influences where you rank. For example, let’s say that your maximum cost per click price is $1.20.

You have a quality score of four.

Your competitor has a maximum cost per click price set at one dollar. So you should rank above him, because you’re willing to pay more per click. But, the competitor has a quality score of 10.

Now let’s look under the Google hub. What’s going on in there?

Google calculates where your ad will rank by multiplying a maximum cost per click price with your quality score. Let’s do the math here for a moment with our example.

Your maximum cost per click prices $1.20 and you have a quality score of four. According to my supersecret NASA computer, $1.20 times for equals 4,80.

Your competitors maximum cost per click price is one dollar, and he has a quality score of 10. Again, consulting with my super secret NASA computer, one times 10 equals 10.

So where does that leave you? Way below your competitor. Because you score 4.8, while he scores 10. If this number that determines the ranking of your ad on the search engine results page.

If you want your ad to be displayed higher there are only two things that you can do. Either you just increase your maximum bid price until you all to your competitor, or you improve your quality score.

My suggestion is that you improve your quality score, unless you have a fetish for giving your money to Google.

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 settings in the past days? If you have raised your budgets or your CPC prices, then that can be the reason for a spike in traffic. Also, if you have put up new ads in the content network, maybe it took some time to get approved, and it was only after your ad has been approved that your traffic started to spike.

Also, if you are promoting an acne product, and then the New York Times writes a front-page article on a new acne cure, this might cause a spike in search volume and ad impressions.

Click Fraud Check 2:

Do you see lots of clicks from the same IP? In some cases it may be click fraud, but often it is just that a group of people uses the same IP address. Some ISPs (internet service providers) give the same IP address out to all their customers in a specific region, instead of individual IP addresses.

Click Fraud Check 3:

Maybe a competitor stopped advertising – this made the field clear for your ads, and now you are the dominating player in the market, and all the clicks that your competitor received previously goes to your landing pages.

Click Fraud Check 4:

If you are promoting a season product, then that sometimes might trigger high search volumes – and more clicks. (e.g. if you are promoting flowers around valentines day).

If you can rule all of these out, you might want to contact Google and request a click fraud investigation.

For more AdWords tips, claim your complimentary copy of the PPC Secrets MiniCourse.

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

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 that don’t get good CTRs – and it’s difficult to get rid of that downgrading, even when you go in again and improve your campaigns.