Position on adwords

How to know what to bid to be #1

[Buckley]

Hi,

My position in adwords changes quite often. I would like to bid higher to be closer to the top but i don't want to bid to much. There is a function where you can put a higher bid in and calculate all the results...like daily cost and position. Is this accurate? Is there any way to know how much to bid whithout going to high or will the system make sure you don't pay to much more than the next bid?

Thanks for your help.

[vitaplease]

You can set your bidding price a lot higher.
Wait a while, check results and re-bid.
Its trial and error.

Bidding high enough to be no1 does not mean you will stay number one.
Depends on click-through rates of other advertisers and their bidding price changes.

The price you pay per click can be lower than your listed max. bid. All depends on the click-through rate of your ad.

It all takes a bit of fooling around and some time for settling to get a hang of it (and some inactive bidding from your competitors).

[gypsychild]

When you set up a new ad and enter a keyword, I notice when you get to set the bid something is already in the box. I've always assumed this is what the top advertiser is paying (or possibly one unit more in order to achieve the #1 spot). Difficult for me to tell for sure though as I only ever pay the minimum, but from a couple of terms I looked at just now the amounts seem about right.

If this were the case, you could easily open up a new ad, enter a keyword, find the top price, delete and so on.