How Much Does Your Adwords Position Impact Ctr?, is being first that important? Options

[bobfirestone]

How important it is to be in the first position relative to the third?

If you are in the third or fourth position, does it make enough of an an impact on click-through to bid higher so that you are in the first adwords position?

Also, how much will it boost click through if you make sure that your ad is served on the the first search results page, rather that the 2nd or t 3rd?

I would love to hear what you all think about this! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

To answer my own question, I am thinking that if there are 4 or less adwords ads, then it does not matter if you are in the 1st or 4th positions. If there are six, I think it is best to be #1 or #6 ... thoughts?

Also, I think you do get lower CTRs on the the 2nd and 3rd seearch results page, but what percentage less. It may be a waste to even be deeper that the 3rd search results page.

Thoughts or ideas on the importance of position? Obviously, if position is not as important as we think it is, then we can bid less and increase our ROI.

Thanks!

- Bob

[AussieWebmaster]

As you can find stated throughout the web, 1st position will bring you a higher number of clicks and thus the click thru rate is better for higher placement... but the next step is ROI and CPA... you can get them to come but can you close them... the traffic is also generally looser - has the window shoppers - and thus the CPA is lower... this is the advanced part of tracking and ROI decisions... you have many numbers to watch and you can improve the Cost Per Acquistion but decrease the number of actual acquistions... so so long as the price for getting a client is still profitable you want to take them... so the true SE ROI specialist will work to give you the best of both that is attainable.

[Jill]

Welcome Bob! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

Jill

[bobfirestone]

Good answer, Aussie. Thank you.


Let's drill down a bit more on this question.

Anyone have experience with adwords in particular where you are getting good CTRs but on the second or third search results page?

Is the traffic more qualified (fewer tire kickers) on 2nd, 3rd, 4th pages?

~ Bob

[Haystack]

Welcome, Bob.

That's an interesting question. I haven't seen any research to definitetively answer one way or the other. Since the traffic to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pages are so many times lower than the first page, it would take a while to generate enough traffic to determine whether the ads perform better or not.

Assuming you've bid on the terms at a higher cost per click in the past, you probably have a known conversion rate for the terms. Based on that, you can quantify how much you can really afford to spend per click for the terms. So how about loading the terms at those prices, then keeping an eye on conversions to make sure they stay where they were?

[AussieWebmaster]

Welcome, Bob.

That's an interesting question. I haven't seen any research to definitetively answer one way or the other. Since the traffic to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pages are so many times lower than the first page, it would take a while to generate enough traffic to determine whether the ads perform better or not.

Assuming you've bid on the terms at a higher cost per click in the past, you probably have a known conversion rate for the terms. Based on that, you can quantify how much you can really afford to spend per click for the terms. So how about loading the terms at those prices, then keeping an eye on conversions to make sure they stay where they were?

The thing about the adwords system is while you may be on the 2nd, 3rd, etc pages most times.... if the impressions for those pages is low you eventually get a few shots at the front page if there are people who hit their budgets ... the optimizing element in the Google adwords equation can move your placement as they try and get the most spend for the impressions they can...

[PPC Expert]

Hey,

Here is my advice.....This might not work on Adwords but it works on Overture and other PPC Search Engines.

Take a minute to look at which companies are actually bidding over you. I did manage a campaign on Overture and I saved a lot of money by using the following strategy:

Let's say I was managing a campaign for a company selling candy...(IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I then found out that the best keyword related to candy was "Great Tasting Candy."

I found that the number 1 bid was for a company trying to get people to sign up for a pay service that gave great recipes for candy. Hence, people signed up, paid money and got a recipe telling them how to make Great Tasting Candy.

The number 2 bid were selling a really bad product.

I therefore, chose to go as the number 3 bid, because I really believed that 90 percent of the people searching for "Great Tasting Candy" wanted to buy Great Tasting Candy.

The best part was that the number 1 bid was trying to intimidate the bidders buy bidding over $1.00. The crappy product company then bid .99 so I bid .98 but only paid around .35 cents for every click.

This way the people looking for "Great Tasting Candy" clicked on the number one bid. They found out that this was not what they were looking for. They then clicked on number 2 just to see that they had a crappy product. Then they clicked on the company I was bidding for and boom....I had made my two biggest competitors lose a buck each.

It took around 2 weeks before they realized that they could not compete and crawled behind me.

However, be aware this was an exceptional case but it illustrates that you need to know what companies you are bidding against. In Adwords it might be harder to see who you are bidding against but it can be done.

I hope this helped...sorry for the long post.

[cline]

I have some campaigns getting good CTRs on pages 2+. The circumstances in which this happens are:

* Hyper competitive, both with SEO and PPC.
* Shopping-oriented searches
* Lots of variation in product offers

The effects of the hyper competition cause heavy spamming of the editorial results, making the PPC results relatively more valuable. Within the PPC arena there are lots of competitors, many of whom can only afford similar bids.

In such cases users are drilling down deep into the listings to find what they want. Meanwhile, Adwords is randomizing the listings (to some degree). In other words, an ad that gets 2nd page listing only shows part of the time on the 2nd page as it is being rotated with all of the other ads that are equally profitable for Adwords. In any given search the ad could appear on page 2 or 3 or 4 or 5....

[LeftoverJoe]

PPC Expert, that was a great example of a good strategy after careful study of the market. I think that is one of the main things that set a good SEO campaign apart from the others. Thanks for posting that...I'm a recently hired paid search specialist for an SEO firm and I am trying to soak it all up.

Cheers!

[torka]

Hey, LeftoverJoe, welcome to the forum! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

--Torka (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[netdogz]

Hello,

It really depends on the cost/competitiveness of the keywords you are targeting. If you are targeting a keyword that has a lot of other people bidding on it to be listed at the top (1-5), it might be more cost effective to target variations of the main keyword that cost less. You can spend less and get just as many click throughs.

[LeftoverJoe]

Hi Torka, thanks for the welcome. It's good to be here. I can tell that there is a lot of good information here and everyone seems really helpful. See you around!

Cheers!

[Diman]

Hi
Does anyone know detailed statistic data on what portion of all clicks that come to the sites in the listing is received by the resources bidded highest: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on?
Thanx.

[janetldriscoll]

Bob,

I actually have some good data on that for you. I work for an online survey company, and we recently partnered with iProspect on a survey to determine surfing trends of various search engine users.

Our findings showed that:

1. 77% of users click on natural search in Google as opposed to only 23% clicking on AdWords.

2. We further found that 41% clicked on the top AdWords position, and 29.6% clicked on the second position. That being said, the top two positions garnish the most CTR with a whopping 70.6%.

The study was done having folks choose the search engine that they use most, then showing them a screen shot for a particular search. They then clicked on the image to show where they would click first on the results shown.

My rule of thumb now is that if you're not in 1 or 2, the rest is just branding your company -- but it doesn't necessarily lead to click through.

We also find through our own tracking, as an FYI, that many people who use AdWords and find us that way come back later to us through searching again and clicking on the AdWords link. That's sort of frustrating because they don't just type in our URL and we pay again.

Janet

[PPC Expert]

Janet,

I do not know exactly how accurate your research is. However, if it is true it is extremely discouraging (unless your name is Google).

I think the PPC Search Engine that can guarantee that you will only have to pay for the same visitor once will be able to take a huge share of the market. The PPC engine could, for example, guarantee a 3 week cookie.

In addition, this will make affiliate programs grow even more.