Written by Chris Barling
Wednesday, 13 July 2011 00:00
In general, the higher position that your ad appears on the search results page, the more clicks you will get. The biggest determiner of the position you appear is the amount you bid. The less important factor is the quality score and other tips explain how to improve this.
There is an optimum amount to bid which will balance the cost you pay per click with the amount of traffic you receive. One twist is that not all lower positions are equal. If there are three ‘sponsored results‘ above the organic listings, then the fourth position will be at the top right, which is likely to be advantageous. You can set a position preference in Google – this may well be worth doing, particularly to get position four in the situation described above. Specifying position can sharply reduce how often your ad is shown, as bids will be lowered but not raised to achieve the target. Having said that you could bid very high along with setting the position. Remember that conversion rates can be higher for lower positions if you have a more relevant ad than the higher ranked competition. Traffic drops by around 10% for each lower position and by more at the top – typically 30% from first to second and 20% from second to third.
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