I’d appreciate some advice. I’m a novice with PPC but an experienced SEO. I keep hearing about watching the minimum bid in Adwords only I don’t see it anywhere? Am I crazy? Is the current bid the same as the minimum bid? Or is the max bid the same as the min bid? What’s the deal?
Also, how do I do any bid jamming, bid surfing, etc. if I can only see the current bids?
Feedback would be terrific.
bid jamming
Just try writing good ads with an honest presentation on your landing page. You'd be surprised how well it works.
Guess I'm just old fashioned ;)
Israel
Google works a bit differently than Yahoo - where bid jamming, surfing, etc. are strategies. (I assume you're using Atlas OnePoint - the creator of those funky names.) At Yahoo, the "bid landscape" is public so you may directly impact another's bid (jamming) or find a strategic position (surfing). Additionally, at Yahoo the "minimum bid" is flat across the board at $0.10 per click.
On Google, there is no public "bid landscape" and there isn't an 'across the board' Minimum bid, so to speak, as each keyword has a unique Minimum - some as low as $0.01. (To find out each of your keyword's Minimum CPC, pull a Keyword report and look in the Keyword Min CPC column.) Keep in mind - this amount may change over time based on the performance of your CTR. The Max CPC is the amount that you set. The Current, or Avg. (Actual) CPC is what you pay... which is less than your Max and must be higher than the keyword's Min in order to run. The actual CPC uses your Max CPC as a guide, but it is discounted based on Google's Quality Score (CTR x Max CPC) formula. Bid jamming isn't as much a strategy on Google as each bid directly impacts anothers, but because of the Quality Score component - you cannot decipher the exact impact.
Anywho... forgive my rambling and good luck!
