Pay-Per-Click Placement Tips

February 24th, 2006 by Michael Gray in SEM

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In my opinion part of any good pay-per-click campaign consists of two parts. The first part is getting good ROI, or getting the most conversions from the fewest amount of clicks and for the lowest price. The second part consists of making sure your competition is paying the most and getting the lowest ROI. To be clear I AM NOT ADVOCATING CLICKING OR CREATING CLICK FRAUD ON ANYONE’S ADVERTISING.

What I am suggesting is you use a bidding and placement strategy that makes people you are bidding against pay as much as possible, and lower their bids. This strategy works best there are only a few people seriously bidding on a word or phrase, or when you are trying to get your ad from the right side to to left side. What you want to do is keep raising your bid each day until you reach an amount where you displace the person above you. If you displaced the ad above you by outbidding them then back off your bid price just a little bit and let it sit there for a little while. While the person above you may actually be paying less than you due to a favorable quality score they will be paying a higher percentage of their bid price. Keep this pressure up as long as necessary, with the goal of getting the bidder above you to drop their bid price. What usually happens is the person relents due to loss of ROI. If people follow human nature they won’t drop the price by a nickel but instead they will drop it back down to price they are more comfortable with. Wait a week or two and slowly start dropping your price, being careful not to drop it so low you go below the person you displaced.

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One Response to “Pay-Per-Click Placement Tips”

  1. PaulH Says:
    February 25th, 2006 at 5:30 am

    Great tips.
    Works really well against new advertisers who bid way over the going price in an attempt to be on the left. If you spot them quick enough you can cost them so much in few days they give up completely.

    If you have two or more accounts you can also position the competition in a less favourable place – for some campaigns i’ve found 2nd on left when there are 3 is awful, adjust until competitor in squeezed in the middle.