Positioning your Pay per click

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July 4th, 2008 by Mike

Pretty much the main discussion that I have with my clients as a ppc account manager is in relation to ad appearance and position on Google. Often this is from my clients who run smaller budgets.

There seems to be a common misconception that being in the top two positions in the sponsored links is the place to be, beating off the competition and pushing them further down the listings. In reality this isn’t the case.

Deciding what positions to achieve in Google needs to be based on a variety of factors here are a few:

- Pay per click budget
- Long/Short Tail nature of keyword
- Industry

If you are advertising in a competitive industry you need to be smart with your budget. After all, the key is to attract the most users possible to your site for that budget. Aiming for position 1-2 could blast your budget within hours in certain industries, meaning your appearance on Google becomes limited.

The nature of the keyword is the most important factor in deciding position. You have to think of the user's state of mind when they are typing their search term into the engine. Short tale keywords are more general and will provide a different type of user to that of a long tail keyword. It is important to think of this when positioning your ads.

Looking at your industry is also important; in the e commerce retail arena position 1-2 isn’t the most effective to aim for to achieve the best conversions. Positioning yours ads lower is catching the user further along the buying process and makes them much more likely to buy something from you.

Of course, you can only truly tell what works best for your campaign once you have set it live and are pulling data back from Google. You can then optimise your account accordingly and position your ads to achieve the best results.

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