And the Numbers Are In: CPC Stats from May 2008

It seems every time you go to the grocery store, food costs have increased yet again. Well, the same holds true for costs associated with search engine marketing.

Given the current state of our economy, I have been keeping a close eye on the monthly Cost per Click (CPC) statistics, as reported by Search Engine Watch. To no surprise, some industries show more than a 10% increase in click costs (retail, insurance, and mortgage).

With this in mind, while many campaigns are built with all the time and thought in the world, business owners often do not stay on top of the changes in their competitive environment, over time resulting in a non-optimized campaign.

It is important to check your CPC bids and keywords at least once a month to ensure they are still translating into the most effective positions for your target cost per conversion, lead, or sale. In addition, the engines place a significant importance on the bids, daily budgets, and keyword relevancy within a campaign. This will fluctuate not only when changes are made to a specific website, but when changes occur in the general landscape of search. There are some tools to help automate this keyword bidding process, but should not be used in lieu of detailed, personal attention to a search engine marketing campaign.

Keep up to date with changes, stay competitive with your bids, and don’t let your campaigns go stale!