So you’ve launched your Google campaign and you see that you are getting tons of impressions for your keywords, but no clicks. When you take a look at your keywords you see that Google recommends a higher first page bid estimate than what you are currently bidding. This estimate is higher than your bids for other keywords, but a particular term is very targeted and important to your campaign. It’s time to make a decision. What do you do? Increase your bid.

On the Keyword Analysis tab within the Google Adword’s interface there is a metric labeled “Estimated bid to show on the first page”. This metric is also called the first page bid estimate and it approximates the cost-per-click (CPC) bid needed for your ad to reach the first page of Google’s search results. The estimate is based on your Google Quality Score and current advertiser competition for that particular keyword.

Meeting your first page bid is not a guarantee of placement. Ad placement will still be dependent on Quality Score, your cost-per-click (CPC) bid, your budget, account settings, and user and advertiser behavior.

A common misconception about increasing cost-per-click (CPC) bids is that it would instantaneously eat away at your budget. Although this may seem apparent, it’s not always true. Depending on your keyword’s potential to result into a conversion; the return on investment should be evaluated, therefore increasing the cost-per-click bid if needed accordingly.

Lastly, while increasing your cost-per-click bids, remember that Google sets daily spending budgets for each campaign. As long as you set a realistic budget, the increase in cost-per-click cost should not eat away at your ad budget.

Have you launched a Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaign recently?  Are you considering advertising your business or service using Google AdWords?  If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then be sure to invest the time and research to formulate a bidding strategy.  Simply using a keyword tool to identify the high volume search terms is not enough.  In reality, it could set you up for failure before you even activate the campaign.  I recently wrote a blog discussing the importance of analyzing your campaigns and optimizing your keywords based on real-time performance.  While I believe that is essential to a successful campaign, it doesn’t diminish the importance of proper keyword research before the campaign launches.

Keep in mind that perception and reality are usually on different ends of the spectrum.  You may think because you sell shoes online that the keyword “shoes” is an important term for the success of your campaign.  If you go into Google using one of their keyword tools, you will see that term has extremely high search volume.  However, there could be thousands of different reasons “shoes” is used in a search query and many of them have nothing to do with the searcher looking to buy shoes.  Instead, think about how you can incorporate keywords and key phrases into your campaign that drives visitors to your site who actually want to buy shoes (instead of driving visitors who may be researching shoe design, for example).  In this way, you may have a smaller set of targeted keywords that truly attract visitors ready to buy shoes.  It seems like a simple idea, but many first time entrants into PPC marketing make this mistake.  They bid on the most generic term possible in hopes of gaining a larger audience.  In the long run, these suggested high volume keywords spend too much of your budget and gain too little in revenue or new leads.

It comes down to simple math really.  What would you rather have: 1000 visitors a day and 2 sales or 50 visitors a day and 10 sales?  Obviously this is a rhetorical question, but it’s important to point out that in terms of the number of keywords and the type of visitors to your site, quality over quantity is the key to a successful campaign.   Do not be tempted by the allure of driving huge numbers of visitors to your site simply for the sake of traffic.  Think before you bid on the highest search volume terms and be sure that the keyword is in line with your campaign strategy.

Any advertiser who has experimented with image ads within Google AdWords has probably asked themselves ‘how do I know my ads are being seen by the right audience?’  Recently, I had the opportunity to answer this question for a client.

Image ads are also often referred to as display ads.  Image ads are a vital component for any cost per click (cpc) campaign since these types of advertisements rely on a visual aspect, versus text ads.  Implementing image ads can attract visitors to your site who may not have visited through traditional text ads.  Since image ads are only available through the Google content network, many advertisers become concerned whether or not their ads will appear on relevant websites for their brand, brand or service.

Google’s placement targeting feature gives marketers the opportunity to pick and choose which sites they wish their ads to be featured on.  Although each site is different, each site only allows image ads of specific dimensions.  It is best to use the Google placement tool to see which image sizes are most common and create image ads based on these specifications.  By selecting the sites or genre of sites you want your ads to appear within, advertisers can rest assured knowing that the image ads are being seen by the ideal demographic.

Once your image ad campaigns build momentum and begin to generate impressions, advertisers can run paid placement reports.  Paid placement reports are helpful when optimizing the image ad campaigns as they allow advertisers to see which sites are generating impressions, what cpcs should be increased, which sites are leading to conversions and much more.  When selecting a placement site genre, advertisers can transparently see which sites are producing, or not producing traffic within the new Google AdWords interface.  Placement targeting also allows the opportunity to remove or block certain cites from receiving clicks and impressions.

Google’s placement targeting feature can not only ensure that your ads are featured on relevant pages, but can also help you improve brand recognition and most importantly, conversions.