Adwords: Improve your search position without spending more

Paying a higher click cost does not necessarily mean you will appear above your competitors. It is possible to pay less and be seen above them in the sponsored links.

Every time your advert is shown for a particular keyword it is given an "ad rank". The higher the ad rank, the higher the position your advert will appear.

Ad Rank = Quality Score x Max CPC

So how do we improve your ad rank for each keyword?
We need to look at the criteria needed to improve your quality score or you can simply increase your bid. Since we want to reduce our bid then the latter is out. Let us look at improving our quality score.

Your ad will appear higher and cost less as it has a higher ad rank.

The most important factor which affects quality score is the click through rate. The higher your click through rate for a keyword, then the higher your quality score. Click through rate is the number of times your advert has been clicked divided by the number of times it has been seen.

Ideas to improve Click through rate

• Group relevant keywords together in separate ad groups
• Remove keywords that provide high impressions and low clicks
• Add long tail keywords (longer keyword phrases) - more relevant to your products or services
• Make sure that there are words relevant to your keyword phrase in your advert.
• Target specific pages related to your keywords and ad group in your url (destination url)
• Improve the landing page performance (speed the page loads)
• Use negative keywords to stop irrelevant searches showing your advert

Factors Google looks at

• Keywords
• Ad text
• The landing page url
• The overall click rate of the account
• The history of your domain in google adwords
• Historical Keyword Performance (a badly managed account can take a while to put right).

Quality score is only calculated on exact match keywords, phrase and broad searches are the same as exact. Quality score is updated approximately once a week.

Related Information:
Choosing Keywords