Understanding PPC bidding is critical to the success of your Google Ad campaigns. Whether you’re using manual CPC or an automated bid strategy there are plenty of ways you can prevent over bidding and reduce wasted ad spend. Many believe that to show up in the top ad spot you have to be the highest bidder – but it’s not that simple! Yes, you have to have a competitive bid, but your ads relevance is just as important. Furthermore, your landing page, ad copy, and keywords should all convey the same message. Using appropriate ad extensions can also improve your ads relevance, which affects other things like your search impression share and click-through-rate.
Here are some other ways to prevent overbidding:
Improve Keyword Quality Score
It’s not enough to drive clicks anymore. You need to show that your ad performs as it should so that you can earn a good Quality Score and have your ad push down other advertisers. The higher your Quality Score, the lower your CPC will be. And the lower your CPC is, the less likely you are to be overbidding.
Lowering your cost per conversion (CPC) is just one aspect of this equation. The ROI gained from your high quality score can be even more valuable by showing you are valuable to the advertiser.
You do this by improving the quality of your ad’s landing page and making sure your landing page has a high-quality score.
Set Your Google Ad Budget Under Your Actual Budget
It may sound counter-intuitive, but you can ensure that you don’t overspend on PPC ads by setting your AdWords budget under your actual budget. Set your budget at a price that lowers the amount of money you end up paying for AdWords.
By setting your budget lower, you can lower your CPC bids, which can help ensure that you aren’t overbidding.
Focus on PPC Keywords That Really Convert
When you are bidding on PPC keywords, you need to focus more on keywords that convert. An ad showing up at the top of page one, but with 0 clicks, is less successful than an ad showing up on page two, but has a lot of clicks.
As a general rule, it is good to have a few keywords targeted to the people who are most likely to convert.
By targeting a few keywords and focusing on those, you can reduce the amount of money you spend on keywords that aren’t converting.
Understand Bid Stacking And Keyword Insertion
When you set up your keyword bids, it is good to know how bid stacking and keyword insertion work.
Bid stacking can be a significant problem if you aren’t careful with setting your bids. And if you aren’t aware of keyword insertion, you may be increasing your CPC by a significant amount every month.
Bid stacking occurs when your keyword’s ad position is higher than the top of page one, but your keyword is showing up below page one.
Keyword insertion is a similar problem. When you add a keyword to your ad, Google inserts it for you in the ad. However, some keywords are more expensive when they are inserted.
By understanding bid stacking and keyword insertion, you can avoid paying too much for your ads.
PPC ads are valuable when used correctly, but you need to avoid over-eagerness. To prevent yourself from bidding too much, make sure to focus on improving your quality score, setting your AdWords budget under your actual budget, and focusing on keywords that convert more.
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