Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Here at JumpFly, there’s a feature in Google AdWords that we use on a very limited basis, but can come in handy, and that’s Position Preferencing. Google AdWords Position Preferencing is a feature that allows you to pick your favored position (like #1) or range of positions (like 2 to 4).

It’s powerful and handy for those who know which position brings them the most ROI or for branding purposes. But beware of the Position Preference trap: if you don’t bid high enough for the positions you want, your ad will just not show. That’s right, instead of showing in the positions you want, you don’t show at all. And this is a trap that advertisers can easily fall into.

When you select position preferencing, you need to set your bids high, maybe even triple what you would normally pay, just to make sure you end of showing like you should. (Unless of course you really don’t want your ad to show unless it’s in the position or positions you specify.) You also need to keep in mind that Google AdWords takes position preferencing as a suggestion. I have one client who prefers to be in positions 2 to 4, and if the max bid is too high, she regularly shows up in position 1, until we reduce her bid enough to get her in that range. The problem occurs when one of her competitors makes a bid change, which throws the position preferencing range out of whack, which means she either ends up in first again, or not at all, until we tweak the bid enough.

A couple of tips if you decide that Position Preferencing is right in your Google AdWords Campaign:

1. Broad is better: you’re better off selecting a wider range of positions than a narrow range. Positions 3 to 8 are likely better than 2 to 4. You’ll get more impressions, and you’ll have a better chance of showing.
2. Your best bet is to leave the bottom end open, like 3 to 10+ and increasing your max bid to the most you’re willing to spend. Most likely you’ll show in position 4, but won’t lose out on any impressions that might occur at a lower position.
3. Only do position preferencing on a select number of keywords. You can do it on every one of your keywords, but the management and monitoring can become a nightmare. You’re much better off doing it on only those super-competitive keywords where you know what the ROI is for certain positions.
4. Use patience. Position Preferencing can take a few days to “gather performance data and calibrate its targeting.” You could potentially start showing in your range right away, or it can take awhile, so give it some time. And every time you make a change it could potentially take a few days to recalibrate so keep that in mind if you start playing with the positions.

Google AdWords Position Preferencing can be helpful, if you use it carefully and sparingly. One more thing to keep in mind is that if you are targeting position number 1, be prepared for an exponentially higher cost-per-click (CPC) than in lower positions (this is for those of you who have never tried for position 1 before), be prepared to start a bidding war if it’s an extremely competitive term and you’re “dislodging” someone who historically has been in number 1, and be prepared to evaluate whether the money spent on position 1 turns into more business, or just more spend. Number 1 in position doesn’t necessarily mean number 1 in sales (View my previous article about PPC Advertising and Ego-Bidding).

Learn More About Nikki

It is very important for advertisers to understand the difference between a keyword’s search volume, and the impression number provided on reports.

When viewing reports, a search term’s impressions represent the total number of users who actually visited a page that an ad appeared on when a search was performed for that term. Therefore, according to Google, if an ad appears on the third page of search results and the user does not get past the first page of results, it does not count as an impression for the term searched for.

In contrast, a term’s search volume indicates the approximate number of times a term was searched for over a specific time period. Google recently made this valuable data available for searches that were performed at Google and its search network. This resource can be incredibly useful when developing and managing PPC advertising accounts.

It is important to understand the distinction between these two numbers. When viewing reports, advertisers might view a term’s impressions and mistakenly think that term does not receive much traffic, when in reality the term may receive plenty of traffic, but nobody is finding their ad because the positioning is too low. It’s certainly something to beware of.

Where is your sweet spot when determining your position on the search engines? What position brings you the best return on your PPC advertising investment? You don’t always have to be in the top positions to generate solid positive ROI. We find a combination of various positions that are “above the fold” work very well in the pay per click arena. “Above the fold” — for those not aware of what it means — is an old newspaper term for the top area on a newspaper that is visible as it sits folded in its sales stack. It’s the area clearly showing before you have to pick it up and unfold it to reveal the full front page layout. This area is analogous to the area on a search engine that is immediately visible when the page first loads, the area that a searcher sees before having to scroll down the page to reveal whatever else is there. This is the area where you will want your ads to be showing for the vast majority of your keywords.

Sometimes the #1 spot will be your sweet spot because your conversion rate is high enough to make it profitable, or perhaps you only have a few competitors and that top spot is not very expensive to hold on to. Quite often, however, the upper right position is a position that delivers a good return because the average cost per click in that spot can sometimes be much lower than those very top positions on the left. Even the second through fifth or sixth positions on the right side of the page can be very lucrative spots to be in. These can be anywhere from 2nd to 8th position, depending on how many ads Google or Yahoo show in the upper left area. Regardless, they are all “above the fold”. They are all visible immediately to a potential customer without requiring them to do any additional effort. Even though it may be as simple as scrolling down the page, it is an extra step that a customer has to take to see your ad, and some people never make that extra step.

Think “above the fold” and you may just find a sweet spot that keeps your smile rising along with your PPC advertising profits.