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SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING ARTICLE :
Pay Per Click Bid Management Strategies
(page 2)
Don't bid for spot #1
Contrary to what the search engines themselves recommend, it's usually
foolish to bid for the top spot. Why? Two reasons: 1) It's often
prohibitively expensive, and 2) Most web surfers usually try a few
different search queries until they've found the right one that fits
what they're actually looking for. A click from a surfer in the midst
of refining a query usually doesn't result in a conversion.
Tailor bids to actual search results
Track your paid traffic by keyword. Look to see which sites
bring the bulk of your traffic and build your bidding strategy accordingly.
Google ads will likely come primarily from www.google.com and aolsearch.aol.com
while Overture ads will likely drive traffic from search.yahoo.com and search.msn.com.
Run search queries for your keyword phrase on the search engines that send the
bulk of your results and see where your paid ad ranks. Note how many ads are
on each page and whether they're full ads or brief ads. Know where you want
your ad to show up in the search results. Do you want your ad to be above the
fold on the first page or is anywhere on the first three pages of results sufficient?
Your max CPC will limit your choices.
Take advantage of bid gaps
Normally, bids are separated by a penny or two. Bid gaps occur when there's a significant
price increase to move up one spot in the PPC rankings. Looking at the top bids for "nike shoes"
on Overture's system:
1) 0.51
2) 0.50
<-- Bid Gap
3) 0.33
4) 0.32
5) 0.31
<-- Bid Gap
6) 0.16
7) 0.16
<-- Bid Gap
8) 0.11
9) 0.11
10) 0.10
11) 0.10
Is it worth almost twice the price to move from spot #6 to spot #5?
Now that Yahoo is showing more ads per page and fewer search results, it is probably not worth it.
Big advertisers blindly set a CPC across a large group of keywords, causing these bid gaps.
Take advantage and fill a bid gap. For example, if your initial max CPC for this phrase
was 32 cents, maybe it's worth only bidding 17 cents.
Next Page: Overture PPC bid management strategy >>
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