While the previous two posts in this series addressed steps you can take to improve your click-through rate (CTR), this one is a bit different as I’m going to cover the related topic of maintaining your ideal position once you’ve achieved it.

Most savvy search engine marketers know that a strong, competitive bid is crucial to secure a strong, competitive position.  However, bids alone aren’t enough to keep you in the position you want once you arrive there; you need a strong CTR in combination with strong bids to maintain your position on a consistent basis.  Here are some tips to make sure you’re able to keep your “sweet spot” once you find and secure it.

Check Your Position

After you’ve identified and obtained an ad position that’s both within your target cost per click and gives you prime visibility on the first page of Bing search results, your attention should now turn to making sure you consistently stay there.

Just like Ebay, you need to be vigilant about making sure a competitor hasn’t begun to outbid you, thereby pushing your ad down in position.  I’d recommend checking in at least once a week to make sure your ads are where you want them to be.  Microsoft adCenter makes it easy to review your average position within the user interface (UI), simply click on the ad group you want and on the keywords tab, review the values under the “Avg Position” column:

 

Bid Individually on Each Keyword

It goes without saying that different keywords will require different bids to reach competitive positions, so while adCenter does let you choose whether to enter one bid that will apply to all keywords across the board, I recommend bidding on keywords individually so you have more granular control over achieving the position you want.

After you make any necessary adjustments to your bids, you can easily review estimates for the new projected position by clicking on the “More” drop down menu and selecting “Update Performance Estimates”:

 

Budget More for Specificity

Over time as you fine-tune your campaign, you’ll see that the more specific the keyword or phrase, the higher the likelihood of conversion (a sale, inquiry, newsletter sign up, etc.).  Because relevance and specificity equate to higher quality traffic coming to your site, it only makes sense that the keywords bringing in those conversions are worth more.

Spend some time testing out ad and keyword combinations until you’re able to identify those terms that convert best for your campaigns.  Once you accumulate enough data in your account to get a feel for the best performers, you’ll be better able to set  your bids in such a way that those top performers are given the largest chunk of the budget.

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