How low can you go?

What chance getting market share

[webdiversity]

I've just been looking at one of our client accounts. No menion of industries etc.. but it is one of the biggest and one of the most competitive.

One of the keywords we bid on has had 261 clicks so far this month, is currently in 18th position (and has been for most of the month), but has a CTR of 7.3%. When we check the quality of the traffic it is as good as any other traffic we get (so no click spam).

If we get that sort of CTR, what sort do the bidders in 1st - 3rd place who are bidding £1.82, £1.81 and £0.97?

The reason for the volume of clicks is Freeserve (it's an Overture keyword), who carry all of the results, so title and description can often get you more than just bidding high.

Anyone else with examples like this?

[martinibuster]

I'm experimenting with this myself. Others have praised the third position, but I also see ctr's of good traffic in the single digit percentages, like you.

I recently raised a keyword to the first position and started raking in/shelling out more. I haven't analyzed conversion rates yet.

Anybody else have experience with this?

[vibgyor79]

7.3% CTR for 18th position listing is somewhat fishy. But since you are happy with the conversion rates, I guess there is nothing to worry about. The listings above you perhaps have very poor ad copies.

Talking about conversion rates, my theory is that surfers like to check competition before making a purchase. Hence the surfers tend to check out all the listings until they make up their mind (This probably explains the fairly good CTR that lower listings get)

Hence, top listings have no real "conversion rate" advantage over lower listings. Top listings may get more traffic and slightly higher CTR but they may not get better conversion rate.

That's only a theory of course :)

[webdiversity]

or a theory backed up with a significant amount of anecdotal evidence.

I thought 18th and 7.3% was fishy also, but have scrutinised every click and there has been a lot of sales on the back of it.

It's often one of the questions people ask, if you can't bid in the top 3 is there any point, well if you find a PPC that offers the entire bidding population for a keyword and can write good copy then yes you do have a chance.

[vibgyor79]

It's often one of the questions people ask, if you can't bid in the top 3 is there any point

When it comes to Google AdWords, there is no point in a listing which is in the second page of the search results (Google has 8 ads per page only. 9th ad goes to the second page).

I have noticed that for most keywords, hardly 5 percent of Google's surfers go to the second page of the search results. Findings are based on comparison between impressions collected by the keywords when it was in second page, and later, when it sneaked into the first page.

Coming back to conversion rates, I think the issue of "quality of traffic" is a mystery in itself. Why is the conversion rate of traffic delivered by FindWhat (slightly) poorer than OVER/Google? I have also noticed that, for my keywords (and I have a lot of them), AOL surfers are wonderful buyers and listings in AOL convert better than even Google.

Aren't surfers using ANY search engine looking for commercial information with the intent of buying?