Ad Position - Get Better Ad Position...For Less

Ad position plays a pivotal role in pay-per-click marketing.

Obviously, in an ideal world, you'll want your ad to appear higher in paid search results. The reality, however, is that higher search rankings are more valuable real estate. Those positions cost more.

Finding the right balance between trying to have your ad appear higher on the page and attempting to control your costs can be the difference between search marketing success and failure.

In the coming paragraphs, we'll introduce you to a means of either:

Achieving Higher Ad Position for Less.
Paying Less for Your Current Ad Positions.

Which, obviously, will help you to achieve your goals while staying within your budget or targeted cost-per-acquisition.

AdWords Ad Position

Google AdWords and the other search advertising networks utilize a fairly complex auction system to sell ad inventory.

On Google search, what determines your ad position in the Google sponsored links is a formula Google calls Ad Rank. Google defines Ad Rank as:

Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

CPC bid refers to the maximum bid you designate that you're willing to pay for a given keyword.
Quality Score is the grade Google gives your ad, based on a "keyword's click-through rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the keyword and ad to the search term, your account's historical performance, and other relevance factors".

This calculation is depicted in this chart, created by Google and offered on their site:

AdWords ad position is calculated using a combination of maximum CPC bid and Quality Score, as pictured.

Higher ad positions generally lead to higher click-through rates (click-through rate refers to the number of clicks per the number of impressions your ad gets; more prominently featured ads are more likely to be clicked on).

That said, higher ad positions are also generally awarded to advertisers willing to pay more per click.

Unless, of course, you can boost your AdWords Quality Score across your account in such a way that achieving solid ad positions for cheap becomes a possibility.

maintain your average ad position for less

WordStream addresses the problem of keyword position pricing with two core tool-sets:

Quality Score Solutions - WordStream offers tools for every stage of campaign creation:
Bid Manipulation and Account Editing Tools - The application also offers a sophisticated account editor which enables you to make complex changes to numerous facets of your account at once (including raising and lowering maximum CPC bids).

improving quality score for keyword position

WordStream is specifically designed to aid in the creation of Quality Score friendly accounts.

Regardless of your strategy where ad position is concerned (some people choose to pay less per click and remain in lower ad positions, while others are willing to pay the extra cost for the additional exposure offered by higher ad positioning) raising your Quality Score can help to gain you higher positions for cheaper.

WordStream provides you with multiple means of raising your Quality Score:

Relevant Grouping and Ad Positioning

WordStream's keyword grouping tools enable you to create numerous keyword groups in minutes:

Ad position is influenced by quality score, which is largely impacted by keyword grouping.

Note that in the image above, 125 keywords containing the phrase "html editor" have been found in less than a second. These terms can now be grouped with the click of a mouse.

Clicking "Create Keyword Group" means the creation of a new html editor group:

Keyword position is largely determined by Quality Score, which WordStream's keyword grouping tools can improve.

You can then repeat this process with various keyword groupings.

In fact, you can even receive grouping suggestions from our PPC automation and management tools.

The beauty is, all of the keywords within these newly created groups will be very closely related. For instance, each and every keyword within the "html editor" group contains the terms html and editor:

Ad positioning is heavily dependant upon close semantical keyword groupings, such as this one.

The close relationship of the keywords within these Ad Groups makes it exponentially easier to target your ad text to an entire group with a single ad.

Ad Text's Effect on Keyword Positioning

Crafting your ad text so that you improve your quality score leads to a virtuous cycle:

Improving Relevance Improves Ad Position
Better Relevance Improves Click-through Rate
Improved Click-through Rates Raise Keyword and Overall Quality Score

And on and on it goes.

How WordStream Helps

WordStream helps you to target your ad text to your keyword groups by making the groups more intelligently structured, but it also offers ad text creation tools which provide ad text content suggestions aimed at improving your message's relevance, click-through rate, and Quality Score:

Ad text that targets your keyword group can help improve Quality Score and clickthrough rate.

What WordStream has done is provide ad text recommendations based on high traffic keywords actually contained within the Ad Group you've just created.

While you should certainly edit these suggestions (including a call to action and proper capitalization, along with coherent messaging) the software has suggested to you keywords that will improve both your Ad Group's quality and its click-through rate (as people respond to specific messaging which matches their query with clicks).

effecting account wide ad position

In addition to Quality Score optimization tools, WordStream also offers account editing tools which enable you to make numerous, sweeping changes to your account with very little effort.

WordStream's account editor (not unlike Google's AdWords Editor) enables you to quickly and easily make account changes within the same dashboard you are creating keyword groups and editing ad text from:

Ad position is impacted by the maximum bid you set, and WordStream offers bid manipulation tools, which are pictured.