How to set an appropriate Adwords max CPC?
-
How do you gauge setting your initial max cost-per-click for specific keywords?
For example, you have a keyword that has an estimated "first page bid" at $6.25. If you are wanted your ad to show competitively with your competition, how much should you start at? Two times the "first page bid?" Three times?
I'm working on revamping some ad campaigns to help with our paid marketing expenses. I do have quite a budget to work at, but we are hoping to cut down some of this cost. We just spent the past few months trying to spend our way out of some poor quality scores and CTR's. Our metrics have improved drastically, now I want try and cut down our CPC, which is over $19! Our ROI is hard to calculate due to the fact that it can take a few years to obtain profit from the market we are in. Our conversion rates are over 9% from paid advertisement to leads (which is pretty decent for our market).
I am all eyes and ears on this subject... I am ready to start playing around with prices tomorrow to see how we fare, in hopes I get some solid responses before then.
Thanks in advance!
-
This is another great suggestion and YES I do this on a weekly basis. IMO, your answer fits right in with the discussion.
I usually like to pull my full reports from AWStats from within the server. I then "weed" out certain words that should be within my negative campaigns and find others that may be worth running.
-
It's one step away from your question, but have you looked at your search query report recently, to see the actual keywords people are using? If you can raise your CTR by getting rid of irrelevant impressions, you can hopefully lower your CPC, and also avoid paying for some off-target clicks.
-
Lol. No worries! Always reply with great responses. Never know who may be looking for that answer as well.
Right now, we are not running location specific campaigns. Only nationwide 24/7. Haven't had the time to really "fine tune" this account due to the massive amount of keywords, landing pages and ads running already.
Job security maybe?
-
Totally. Sorry if I sounded too generic but it's always difficult to figure out the back story on someone's question. It sounds like you're doing all the right things. You're likely doing location specific and day parting as well where applicable.
-
Excellent information and well put together answer!
I don't want to take away from it, but I have already done all of my homework (as you have already suggested above). I was merely searching for a modest starting point at cutting down our CPC to a certain extent.
I would have to imagine I have answered my own question while asking it. I need to simply adjust my pricing (decrease max CPC) till I feel satisfied with our positioning and our conversion rates.
-
First, I'd spend a little extra time on getting at the value of your leads, if at all possible as this is a key component of answering your own question. Perhaps you can find that number in generalized industry data, or you can extrapolate from what you currently have.
Next I'd begin breaking the high cost CPC keywords into their own very specific ad groups and/or campaigns so that you have maximum control over the ads running, split testing, and placement.
After that I'd begin lowering bids until I'm in the 2nd or 3rd place slot and then split test ad titles and descriptions to find my sweet spot, as well as continuing to run conversion tests on the landing pages. At the same time I'd be looking for content placements on highly applicable sites and see if I could find some markets where I'm plugging in to my target demographic but at a lower cost than search.
Finally, lather, rinse, repeat. Keep working the system to increase current lead/sales volumes while decreasing costs.
But to answer your first question, typically I aim high at the beginning in cost and then work my way down with the price as the data comes in.
-
use http://www.semrush.com/ to get ideas of cpc prices - but i normally just start first page page bid or low then watch positioning
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Adwords landing pages with no site links
Adwords best practices say to focus landing pages on conversions, with no navigational links to the rest of your website so they don't get distracted. However, now that Google Ads in the SERPs look so similar to organic results, visitors may click the ads instead of the organic result because that's what they see first. What is the risk of turning off these visitors who come to a landing page with a form, instead of a way to navigate through the rest of your site? Discussion question: Trade-offs between a form-focused landing page and providing navigation to the rest of the site?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JannetteP1 -
How to add Adwords rating stars extensions to my ads ?
Hi guys, In trying to add the rating stars extensions to my ads but i have 0 knowledge on this. I triad to so it through the Google plus account, but its not working. Any good instruction on how i can add it to the ads ? Any help are welcome! Thx
Conversion Rate Optimization | | EdmondHong870 -
Has anyone ever used Adwords' Forwarding Numbers as a Call Tracking Service?
Hi, I was taking over a client's Adwords account from a previous agency. It appears the former agency added the Google Forwarding Number (for call tracking on call extensions) and added it to the client's website. Therefore, if anyone calls that number from the website, it would register within Adwords (just not as a conversion but as a click under "call extensions") The problem: you can't filter by phone number (the same number calling +1 would indicate spam) you can filter by device (so tablet / computer) can be considered spam generally. Questions: Anyone ever used this before? Your thoughts? Does anyone know if there is spam coming from mobile devices now-a-days? Please tell me what I'm missing. Any advice / anyone else seen this / done this? Thanks Moz Community, Cole
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ColeLusby0 -
Using my Adwords budget
Hi, I have a huge budget for adwords but I only seem to be using about 1/10 of it daily. How to I go about using more budget but also keeping my conversion costs and % around the same? And should each campaign have its own set of unique keywords? Should these keywords never appear in more than 1 campaign? Any tips on maximising budget and increasing conversions would be great. Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | YNWA1 -
PPC Bid Strategies for Adwords PLA Campaign
I am managing a Google Adwords Product Listing Ads (PLA) campaign. The campaign is granular and specific in that each product is targeted via its corresponding ad groups. The structure of the campaign is : Campaign->500 Ad Groups (each ad group targeting a unique product selected by "product_id". I would like to get some ideas and feedback on bidding strategies. The granular structure of the campaign allows me to set a different Default Max CPC and a Max CPC for each unique product. I am unable to find within Adwords a column that shows what the competition is bidding. Is there a methodical procedure to extract this bidding information? I have recently enabled "Search Impression Share" and "Search Impression Lost (IS Rank)", but there is not enough data yet for those stats. What do the PPC experts have to say?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | amitramani0 -
Inheriting Adwords account and establishing baselines
Hi guys! I'm a complete newbie to the Adwords/PPC world. Right now I've been put into the situation where I'm in charge of my company's adwords account, but I'm trying to figure out the baselines and KPI's. I'm currently going through PPC Hero's resources, but I just wanted to reach out to the SEOMoz community for those people who are doing paid search in-house for their own companies. Right now, I haven't done much to our account other than add/delete a few keywords, and pause few campaigns that weren't relevant anymore, as well as some light reporting. What have you done in terms of an action plan to start moving the meter for your own respective companies whilst inheriting accounts? Would appreciate any resources that have helped you get a stellar ROI for your own companies! Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | will_lam0 -
Google Adwords Quality Score Driving me I-N-S-A-N-E
Here's my issue, I have an Air Conditioning client for whom I've been managing their SEO and Adwords PPC for the past year. The SEO is going good, we are seeing tangible results every month will soon be on page 1 for their most competitive keyword. On the adwords side, we are having some major issues though and I'm racking my brain. We are somehow getting quality scores in the 2's and 3's on the regular. I've streamlined my campaigns down to the city and within those I've streamlined my keyword groups into the following groups: City (Campaign) - AIr Conditioning (keyword group) - AC Repair (keyword group) - Fix AC (keyword group) - Contractor (keyword group) - Air Conditioner (keyword group) Every keyword we're bidding on falls nicely into one of these keyword groups and we're putting about 10 key words in each. Landing pages have exact phrase match in page title, h1, bold words, contact form and a coupon image with all the meta tags indicating the image offer matches the offer in our ads. We are running 3-4 ads in each keyword and testing new ads almost daily. Still getting 2s and 3s on the highest trafficked keywords (air conditioning & ac repair). I've read everything out there, I signed up for wordstream which had some decent recommendations (basically break your ad groups into smaller verticals) which I've implemented to no avail. I'm beginning to think Google is just hustling all these companies in service industry who they know rely on adwords to get phone calls in the summer - especially the HVAC industry. I'm running out of ideas here other than just going to Vegas and putting all my client's on black at the roulette wheel. Seems like a much more fun way to piss away thousands of dollars and at least they'll give me some cocktails.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | BrianJGomez0 -
Can anyone recommend software for recording phone calls through Adwords?
Hey Mozzers, I want to start recording phone calls as a result of PPC campaigns. Can anyone recommend an easy to implement system for setting this in place which will allow me to track calls placed as a result of PPC advertising. The ability to record the calls for training purposes would be a bonus. Thanks in advance Geoff
Conversion Rate Optimization | | SEM-Freak0