Price difference in keyword tool

[Hogrill]

Ive just started researching the use of adwords and have been experimenting with the keyword tool and am surprised at some of the results.

Some words were showing an average cost of over £3 to get positions 1-3 but when I altered the bid price to 10p it said to get positions 4-6 on average is 8p.

My questions are, how accurate are the average costs and if they are then is getting to positions 1-3 normally worth that sort of extra cost.

Thanks

David

[Duncan_W]

In my experience, the bid prices stated in the google keyword tool & traffic estimator tool are not that accurate, and are usually understated.

To give an example, I recently added a load of keywords to a campaign from the keywords tool, where they had an estimated bid price of 4p

When added, I discovered to get on the first page, most needed to bid 20-40p, and closer to £1 to get a no 1 listing.

[Hogrill]

In my experience, the bid prices stated in the google keyword tool & traffic estimator tool are not that accurate, and are usually understated.

Thats slightly thrown me as I was expecting the answer to be that the position 1-3 figure may possibly be a bit high to encourage bigger bids.

I hadn't considered the opposite may be true.

Interesting, thanks Duncan.

[directmarketingadvice]

Duncan is right.

A couple of days ago, I had a client ask me about doing PPC with one of his other businesses.

Google said it would cost 40p to get pos 4-6, but there are around 20 pages of ads for those terms. It's just not going to happen. Probably £2.50 would be about right.

Steve

[admagic]

One thing to bear in mind.

Dont tell google...but I once bid on the same keywords from different accounts with different landing pages, to see what effect quality and CTR really had on price.

It was not an exhaustive test only a snapshot....but at times the ads were adjacent and the higher up (better quality and conversion ad) cost only 30% of the price per click of the one lower down....

With such big variations the only way to really know is to test...

And if you want to be lazy and dont want to create sites or pages until you are sure., just point a campaign at someone elses site for a while, and see the results.

[Hogrill]

Thanks to both for the input.

I see what you are saying about the better quality ads helping reduce the costs and thats something I will putting the effort into as I assume this is going to help with the conversion rate as well.

Ive also been looking at words that are relevant but don't have the volume that some others do and am thinking of trying a larger number of these rather than a few of the more popular ones.

[admagic]

Thanks to both for the input.

I see what you are saying about the better quality ads helping reduce the costs and thats something I will putting the effort into as I assume this is going to help with the conversion rate as well.

Ive also been looking at words that are relevant but don't have the volume that some others do and am thinking of trying a larger number of these rather than a few of the more popular ones.

Be incredibly careful with large numbers of words!! Walk before you can run!....

Unless the ads are matched to your keywords, and landing page is matched to the ad...click or no click you are wasting money!!

eg if someone types "jvc cameras" - they want to see stuff about jv cameras - not one specific model.

If someone types " jvc XYZ1100 camera" they want to see specifcially that model

if they type "camera revew" they want to see a review.....

If they type "cameras" their mindset is probably differnet from "camera"....

And so on....

So match of keywords to ad to landing page is vital...

And if you get this wrong...so that your ads are not relevant to your keywords and noone clicks thry ...your CTR will drop, the price witll go up for the clicks you do get.

If your landing page is not relevant to keyword but the ad is OK they will click thru and not buy....so your cost per sale wiell increaase

Large numbers of keywords is not a good strategy for novices....because knowing how to group them is vital!!

[admagic]

On a more positive note...I have no idea waht you sell but

(a) Find relevant sites carrying google adsense ads which have your kind of customer - eg sites high ranked organic for your keywords. IN THE FIRST FOLD of the site.

(b) Pay to advertise - placement on those.... Use CPM to get a triple size ad - and if you dont get a click for 100 impressions try another site.

(c) More advanced ...use image ads, not text ads, bright colours get people to click!!

CPM based placement targetting can get lots of very cheap clicks done right

[Hogrill]

Appreciate the info and taken on board what you say Admagic.

Ive been lurking and hopefully learning a while now but the test will be in the new year when I put the theory into practice.

[Hogrill]

CPM based placement targetting can get lots of very cheap clicks done right

To be honest when researching about adverts on Google I saw this and decided to study PPC in more depth and ignore CPM to start with as I didnt want to confuse myself.

I will definately have a look at this when ive got a better understanding of PPC, Analytics and Optimizer.

Cheers