PPC Ranking – Explained

So many businesses that are utilising the paid search option to promote their services or products fail at the first hurdle in this exercise because they don’t truly understand the complexity of PPC Ranking and how this is achieved.

More often than not the designated person that manages the Pay Per Click Campaign has little time to grasp the basic ideas that can increase PPC Ranking and save costs. This leads to complacency and unnecessary expense to the business.

Too many advertisers think that Pay Per Click Ranking positions are gained due to the amount of money they are willing to throw at the campaign. True in many cases, increases in keyword bids will result in better PPC Rank, but there are many factors that contribute to the final position your ads will be listsed at and at what cost.

“MORE MONEY DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN BETTER PPC RANKING!”

Google has a very sophisticated algorithm that dictates the final Pay Per Click Ranking position of each subscriber……..

The algorithm and finite Ad Ranking formula is made up of a combination of the CPC (cost per click) and the advertisers Quality Score.

PPC Rank/AD Position = Quality Score X CTR%

What is Cost Per Click

CPC is the total amount that the advertiser will pay each and every time a searcher clicks on their advert on the search engine. This figure is defined by the advertiser and maximum bids per search term can be added, however it is useful to remember that you may not pay this amount each time. This is also a key part to optimizing the campaigns and setting the most productive CPC bids for your Return on Investment.

What is Quality Score

This is based on Google’s interpretation of the following factors.

1. (CTR) or Click Through Rate —Calculated by the number of searchers that click your advert and visit your site divided by the amount of impressions (times your ad is displayed.) your ad received. If someone searches for “dresses” and your ad for Shoes shows up not many will click and this will result in poor CTR%. If your ad gets 1000 impressions and 50 clicks, then your Click Through Rate (CTR) is 5%.
2. Ad Copy Relevancy — Based on how well your ad copy matches the keyword being bid on
3. Searcher History and Trend Data — This is based on how specific terms have performed in the past and also competition.
4. Quality Of The Landing Page —How relevant is the page that your adverts direct through to. An ad that promotes shoes and directs to a home page with dresses as the subject would be an example of a poor landing page

Here is Google’s Artistic Impression on Quality Score….

So can you improve your PPC Rank?

Yes and save budget at the same time.

Creating campaigns with relevant keywords and ad copy, a strong Click Through Rate on Google, and a high Cost Per Click bid will result in a much improved position for your ad. The reason for this is because Google’s ranking system rewards well-targeted, relevant ad text, you can’t be locked out of the top position as you would be in a ranking system based only on the bid price. Also, the AdWords Discounter monitors your competition and automatically reduces your actual CPC so you pay the lowest price possible for your ad’s position on the page.

Whilst many businesses will sit back and let Google decide what and when to Rank their PPC Campaigns here at Clickvision we stop at nothing to seek out the best PPC Rank positions for your budgets and to gain the best possible ROI for your business.

Visit our PPC Strategy page to find our Top Ten PPC Ranking Improvement Techniques that will help you get better PPC Rank for your budget.