Terrakon Blog

Ad Positioning and Conversion

What’s the best PPC Ad Position for conversion? That’s a loaded question, but the answer appears to be: it depends!

It depends on a number of interdependent factors and the only way to truly find out the answer is to test, test and test some more. Some of the factors that will determine the best ad position for conversions include:

• Industry
• Product or service offered
• Competitive ads
• Organic search results where ads appear
• Keyword phrases used
• Time of day
• Day of week
• Time of year
• Ad copy headline
• Ad copy body
• Ad copy display URL
• Landing page or destination URL
• Top-level ads (blue area) or not
• Pay-per-click program used
• And more

What I can tell you with some degree of certainty is that you should not assume the top position will result in the most conversions and especially, the best ROI.

Here’s a study Terrakon did with one of our clients to identify the best ad position for conversion. This study was based on results over a nine-month period and included thousands of conversions. Conversions in this situation were purchases. It’s important to note that these results include a number of keywords combined and over an extended period, so we’re not giving anything away and please don’t assume these results will fit your situation – they most likely will not.

As you’ll note in the graph, the number one position did not fair very well for conversions when compared to most all of the other PPC ad positions. For the cumulative number of keywords this graph represents, we would probably look to position ourselves somewhere between position 2 to 6. Of course, we’d be very happy sitting consistently in positions 5 or 6 if we could generate enough clicks there at a much lower cost than positions 2 or 3.

The most important pay-per-click myth I hope to break with showing this graph is the belief that you have to bid for the top position every time to make the most money. Simply not the case if conversion is your primary objective – and it should be!

Keyword Phrase Length May Affect Your Rank.

Post: I ran across this interesting data on the SearchEngineWatch blog. This post discusses data based on 2 million visitors. They ranked the number of words that are used in search phrases.

Here’s how the top five breakdown:

1. Two-word phrases — 28.38 percent
2. Three-word phrases — 27.15 percent
3. Four-word phrases — 16.42 percent
4. One-word phrase — 13.48 percent
5. Five-word phrases — 8.03 percent

The percentages begin to drop off signifcantly after five-word phrases. So, when you’re conducting keyword research for your pay per click campaigns, you can use these figures as another means of prioritizing the keywords and phrases that are most likely to be searched on by potential visitors.

For instance, it is usually a good idea to focus on two or three-word phrases because those phrases are searched on the most and they tend to provide more qualified visitors. One-word phrases, on the other hand, are typically searched on a lesser amount and tend to send less qualified traffic to your website.

In some niches, though, you can still be very successful with one-word phrases. With one of our clients, for instance, we use a one-word phrase that provides a signficant amount of qualified traffic that converts very well. However, it took a little while to get the keyword to oustanding profitability by constantly testing new ad copy and adding negative keyword phrases to better focus the traffic.

Syndication Header: Terrakon Marketing is an internet marketing firm in St. Louis that specializes in helping clients optimize and manage more profitable pay per click campaigns.