Although the profit margin on the product or service offered is a large factor, tests have proved that the first ad position on the first page is, generally, not the most profitable. Yes, it gets the most clicks, but it’s often a spontaneous action by the surfer Buy Google Reviews before studying the ad. Sometimes the surfer is merely browsing the subject and is not ready to buy (commonly known as “tyre-kickers”).

Tests show that the further down the page an ad is, or, occasionally, even on the second page, the greater is its conversion rate. The surfer has taken the time to read the ad carefully because he is ready to buy. Furthermore, the clicks are fewer; so, your overall pay-per-click bill is less than for a higher-positioned ad. The downside is that the click-through rate (CTR) of the lower-positioned ads is lower, which affects your Quality Score adversely and raises your cost per click.

A happy medium is to aim for positions 4 to 6 on Google’s first page. (You can use the “Show Estimated Ad Position” and “Estimated Avg CPC” columns in the on-line Google AdWords Keyword Tool to determine the cost-per-click to bid for each of of your exact match keyword phrases, and then you can set those bids accordingly. These figures can, however, be notoriously inaccurate. Always check your keyword phrases’ positions afterwards in the ‘Avg Pos’ column on the Ad Group’s ‘Keywords’ index tab or by testing with a search on the main keyword phrases.)

You can specify different maximum bid amounts for these various types of advertising. Because the quality of their traffic tends to be lower, bids for the Content Network (“entire network” option) and Search Network (Search Partners) (see Tactics > Search Network) should be kept lower and be more tightly controlled than those for Google Search traffic and the Content Network (“Placement ads” option). In the early stages of a new Google AdWords campaign, it is advisable to go with only Google Search traffic and switch other options off, to help you to control costs. Once you’ve discovered the keywords that produce the highest return on investment (ROI), you can enable other options for those keywords to see what results they produce.