South West eCommerce

Do you advertise in Google Adwords (Sponsored Links)? Did you know that your ad position is determined by more than just your bid price? Here’s a few other factors that are taken into account when determining your ad position:

• Click Through Rate

  The more people who click on your advertisements, the more popular and relevant Google thinks it is, so the higher your ad will go. This is put in place by Google so that people place relevant and appealing ads. So as an example, if someone is bidding $0.50 per click and has very high click through rates, it is possible for them to rank higher than someone who is paying $0.80 per click, but has very poor click through rates.

  Your click through rate can be improved in two main ways. First of all, write compelling advertisements that stand out from the crowd. This will bring in more clicks, and boost your click through rate. The second way is to only bid on targetted and related keywords. The main factor in low click through rates is bidding on keywords that are not targetted enough. For example, if you sell shoes, and you just bid on the term “shoe”, there could be lots of people search for “shoe polish” or “horse shoe”, who won’t be interested in your ad. So it’s better for you to choose more targetted keywords like “shoe shop”, “buy shoes” and so on, which will increase your click through rate, and boost your position.

• General Relevancy

  Related to the above point, an advertisement that is relevant to the keyword, and takes you to a website that is relevent to the keyword, is considered better by Google, and therefore you will rank higher than a less relevant ad/website for the same bid price.

• General Quality Of Website

  Google does check which website your ad is going to. If your website is not relevant to the keyword, or is “spammy”, full of ads, or generally just a poor website, you will have a lower “Quality Score” and therefore rank lower for other ads of similar bid price.

• Bounce Rate

  A relatively new factor, bounce rate refers to the amount of people who visit your site and then immediately leave. If you have a high bounce rate, Google thinks that your site is not relevant or interesting for that keyword, and will again give you a lower quality score, which in turns means you will rank lower for your bid.

All of the above elements are desiged by Google to encourage businesses to provide high quality, relevant ads and websites, in order to provide a better search experience for their users.

So if you are advertising in Google Adwords, make sure that you provide good quality content on your site, appealing advertisements, and only bid on terms that are highly relevant to your business. It will mean that you will rank higher for your bid (or alternatively, pay less for the bid position you want).