How can you can you compete against large companies with unlimited budgets?
There’s limited space on Google to show ads and everyone wants the top 4 positions, if Google AdWords uses a Pay Per Click (PPC) bidding model then surely your larger competition will increase their bids to push your ads out of site?
Does this mean Google AdWords is the modern day Yellow Pages?
Years ago the most popular way to advertise your business was through print, taking an advert out in the paper or on Yellow pages. Problem being, you and your competitors would start taking out bigger ads to compete for the audience attention.
Then how is Google AdWords different?
The ads you create contain copy and a URL you are sending traffic to, when a keyword from your list has been searched, Google will evaluate many factors including these:
- First Paint – rendering the first meaningful (visible) parts of your page to the user. Browser’s first stage of rendering.
- First Contentful Paint – the first images (including background images), text, SVG or CSS canvas have rendered. When users can start consuming content.
- DOMContentLoaded – the main HTML document has loaded (not waiting on CSS, Images etc). Important parts of the page have finished loading.
- onload – all page resources have finished loading.
| Factor | Definition |
|---|---|
| Click Through Rate (CTR) | A metric used to show the clicks on ads per impression or ad view. The average is different per industry, roughly 1.9%. |
| Landing page | Does your page rank well for your keywords? Is the content relevant and the landing page provide a pleasnt user experience? |
| Keyword Relevance | Are you using the correct modifiers on your keywords? Are you making sure your ads appear for the right searches? |
| Ad text relevance | How well does the search query relate to your ad? Check the Search Terms tab to see exactly what people searched. |
| Account performance | Has your account been suspended from breaching the guidelines? Or does the account have great CTR’s and high conversions (not applicable with new accounts) |
All of these factors are used to generate your Quality Score (QS).
What is the Quality Score
Quality Score is rating system out of 10 for each keyword, a keyword that has a quality score of 10 will appear higher in the results with less bidding than a keyword with high bidding and low QS.
The QS is determined by your ad content and landing page against the users search query. This is where optimising your website plays an important role – if you are ranking high for a keyword organically, chances are your QS will be very high.
This is how you increase position without paying more
Ad rank (average position where your ad appears) is determined by your QS x CPC bid, having a QS of 1 causes your bid to cost 400% more, while a QS of 10 reduces the bid price by 50%.
| QS | Cost per click | QS | Cost per click |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +400% | 6 | +16.70% |
| 2 | +150% | 7 | -28.60% |
| 3 | +67.30% | 8 | -37.50% |
| 4 | +25% | 9 | -44.20% |
| 5 | Benchmark | 10 | -50% |
For example, your competitor could bid $2.50 and have a QS of 2/10, resulting in and ad rank of 5. While you could bid $2.00 have a QS of 8/10 and have an ad rank of 16.
Optimising your landing page for the keywords will not only help your QS and save you money on AdWords, it will help your SEO and increase organic traffic.
