Happy February! This is round two in a series of posts focused on answering some of the most popular questions we've heard from small business owners who're managing their own PPC campaigns in Microsoft Advertising adCenter. If you'd like to keep track of this series, simply click on the "your questions answered" tag at the bottom of the page and book mark it for future reference.  In this installment, I'll be responding to your recent questions about keywords, bids, and cost per click (CPC).

 

KEYWORDS:

 

·       Where do you find your keyword relevance scores? At this time, adCenter does not show keyword relevance scores. Nevertheless, I can tell you that adCenter determines relevancy on four primary factors: (1) keywords (2) ad copy (3) landing page content (4) landing page user experience. You can find out more about relevance and quality in the adCenter Editorial Guidelines.

·       Do you recommend deleting non-performing keywords? Before deleting non-performing keywords, I would consider what types of search queries the keyword is having your ad show for. Maybe the keyword is not performing because you don’t have the proper negatives in place, or perhaps your position may be too low. At the end of the day, if you’ve added negative keywords and optimized for a higher position and the keyword is still not performing, then I would recommend pausing it. I suggest “pausing it” instead of deleting it because if you pause the keyword, you’ll retain its history in case you ever decide to activate it again later.

·       Do we want to omit long tail terms? I wouldn’t omit them completely, but I’d be conscious of how long your keywords are; it really depends on what your business is. For example, “knee physical therapist in Bellevue” I’d recommend the terms “knee physical therapist” and “physical therapist Bellevue”. It’s not bad to bid on the entire phrase, you just won’t receive as many impressions.

·       Do negative keywords apply to a specific keyword or the whole ad group? You can set negative keywords at the campaign, ad group, and keyword level. The negatives will apply at the level that you set them at. However, it’s important to know that only the lowest level (i.e. most granular) negatives will be used.  If you have campaign negatives and keyword negatives only the keyword negatives will be used. This is true for all possibilities - campaign and ad group, only ad group negatives will be used… ad group and keyword, only keyword negatives will be used. You can find out more about how negative keywords work in adCenter by visiting the Ad Optimization section of the Support Center.

 

Bids & Cost Per Click (CPC):

To start, I’m going to give a high level overview of what a bid is versus a cost per click (CPC). A bid is the maximum amount you’re willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad. A cost-per-click (or CPC) is the actual amount you pay when someone clicks on ad. Most of the time you will pay less than your bid amount, meaning your CPC is lower than your bid.

 

·       What’s the best way to determine a starting bid? Determining a starting bid is really dependent on what your goals are for search advertising and what industry you’re in. A tool I recommend using to get bid suggestions is Microsoft Advertising Intelligence. Once downloaded, this add-in for Excel 2010 can generate bid recommendations, traffic estimates, and new keywords along with many other things. Remember it’s an estimate though, not exact, so it should be used as directional information. Another recommendation I make to every advertiser is bid a minimum of $0.30. This will ensure you’re considered in the auction place. Also, if you’re creating a new campaign, ad group or keyword, I’d set your bids 20% higher for the first few weeks so you can develop a strong click-through rate (CTR). Once you’ve established some history, you can reduce your bids to what you’d like them at. A strong CTR history is a key element in the success of your account; in fact, a solid CTR can actually lower the CPCs you have to pay.

·       What is an incremental bid? How do I add it? An incremental bid is a percentage increase to your base bid which is applied when searchers meet a criterion you specify (e.g. age, gender, location, etc.) It’s a targeting strategy that enables you to increase your ad exposure to your target customers. You can add incremental bidding in the campaign settings under targeting. 

·       How do we know if we should adjust the bid? Just look at the average position? You know it’s time to adjust your bids when you see a drop in your account performance, especially if it’s your average position. Another time is when a keyword is not receiving any impressions. It may be a result of having too low of bid on that keyword, so I’d try increasing it.

·       Given my limited funds of my small business, will I be outbid by the bigger companies that can spend more money for keywords? adCenter tries to optimize for relevance, which can work in your favor when you’re up against a large company bidding on the same term. Remember, having a solid click-through-rate (CTR) indicates that your ad is relevant to the audience in which it’s being shown. Thus, CTR is a very important component to where you place on the page. If you can’t increase your budget/bids, I’d suggest making changes to your ad copy to make it more relevant or appealing to the advertisers. If you’re not already, create an ad with dynamic keyword insertion and look at what promotion offers you could include in the text. You'll find more recommendations about writing effective ads in the Support Center.

·       Why am I seeing a higher CPC than my max CPC? Your CPC can be higher than your bid (i.e. max CPC) if you have applied incremental bidding. Incremental bidding is essentially telling adCenter your willing to pay X% over your bid if someone fits the criteria you’ve specified. For example, if you have a $0.50 bid and incremental bidding of 10% for searches coming from Redmond, WA your CPC could potentially be $0.55.

 

I hope this helps! I’ll be back in 2-3 weeks with another post answering more of your questions.

 

All the Best, 

Erin

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