There are only two ways to pay less for Google adWords clicks.

1. Lower the bid
2. Improve the ad rank

Lower The Bid

This gives immediate results. You pay less for each click in the short term. It can seem like the only viable option especially if the campaign isn’t giving a positive return.

It will also have the effect of lowering the ad position. The most likely effect of lowering the ad position is to lower the click through rate which over time will lower the quality score which will then cause an even lower ad position.

Improve the Ad Rank

The quickest and easiest way to improve the ad rank is to raise the bid. This is very counter-intuitive when the goal is to pay less for clicks. However, paying for a higher ad position will almost certainly improve the CTR which will increase the quality score which will result in an higher ad position. At this point you can lower the bid and still retain a spot in the top few positions.

Raising the bid isn’t the only way to improve the ad rank. Ad rank is max bid * quality score so improving the quality score will also achieve this goal. CTR is the predominant factor in quality score. Ad position makes a big difference but so too does effective, relevant ad copy.

Conclusions

• Beware short term fixes that can have a negative effect on longer term success
• Give a campaign time to improve. Click through history must be established before results of changes can be measured.
• Be aware of all the variables and test to get the optimum combination
• Keep in mind that although it’s good to pay less for clicks, its only one part of the profit equation.

Every keyword in an adWords campaign is given a quality score by Google. This score is extremely important because it determines:

1. How much you actually pay for each click
2. Whether your ads will run at all
3. Your ad rank (position)
4. Whether your ad will show for all broad matches of the keyword

The finer details of the quality score algorithm aren’t made public, however:

Quality Score is determined by CTR (click through rate), ad relevancy and landing page relevancy. At this point, the landing page relevancy only affects the minimum bid required for the ads to run at all. However a senior product manager at Google indicated last November that landing pages will at some point be taken into consideration when determining ad rank.

The quality score was introduced to provide a better experience for searchers by giving prominence to ads that are the most relevant to their search query.

The amount you pay for your adWords campaign doesn’t determine your position on the page. Good PPC advertising can mean that you pay less than a competitor and are also in a higher position if your quality score is higher.

Everybody (well almost everybody) is talking about the threatened legal action from the US Pork Board against breast feeding advocate Jennifer Laycock. One of her TShirt slogans is “The other White Milk”.

Plenty of bloggers have covered it already so I’ll just link to Kalena Jordan who has a good write up on it. I recommend you look at her blog anyway, and she’s in Australia