Is it wise to bid on keywords that are already ranked high for?

[Raymond]

I am struggling trying to find new ways to raise traffic. I have been considering if I should bid on keywords/phrases that the site is already ranked very high for. I am not sure if this is redundant and probably not very effective.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated. Thank you.

[briggidere]

hi,

i always bid on the words that i get a positive roi for, whether i am in the top spots organically or not. If there are ads in the paid listings they will be getting some traffic from the term, so by you adding your listing to those as well you can increase the amount of traffic you get for that term.

one example -

we have a no 2 spot in the organic listings and are in position 3-4 in paid listings as well.

a competitor who has the no 1 spot in the paid listing gets more traffic on this term than we do with the no 2 organic and position 3-4 paid. meaning that in this industry, being in the top paid listings is more important than a reasonably good organic position.

This would not be the case in all industries. It is only on one of the sites we run we have seen this happen.

So it would be worth trying it and just keep an eye on how much you spend and on what your conversions are to make sure you are running at a positive roi.

Remember - for every visitor you do not get, a competitor will get. I would rather run on a lower roi and get the business rather than miss the sale. Keeping my market share up is important as long as it is profitable.

hope this helps you.

Briggidere

[mjtaylor]

A couple of years ago one of my clients (a fishing captain) stopped his Adwords and Overture ads for a while when his boat burned and he couldn't take charters.

The website ranked #1 on all relevant keyword searches in free results and he also always paid for the top position in both SEs ... when we dropped the ads while he searched for a new boat, his leads from the Internet, both in emails and phone calls, dropped by 2/3 ... so despite his great ranking in the free results, the paid ads seemed to be performing 2 to 1.

When he got his new boat, we put the ads back on and the inquiries jumped back up to normal. I have seen similar, though not always as dramatic, changes in traffic and leads for other sites I manage. So, I always recommend using PPC even when a site has top free results. I am not sure why that's true, except I believe when people see a name twice they are more likely to trust it.