How To Use Position Preference To
Maximize Click-Throughs

Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 6 of October , 2008 at 7:53 am

One feature many pay per click advertisers are not aware in Google AdWords is the position preference feature. It’s a useful feature if you care where your ad appears in the line up. Advertisers who want to appear in position 1 or 2 for branding purposes will want to set their position preference on 1 or 2. Most advertisers, however, whether for budgeting purposes or proper targeting will want to set their preference lower.

Setting the position preference is done at the campaign level, not the individual ad level. So choose the campaign that you want to set your position preference for. It will take some experimenting and you will likely not get it right the first time so don’t fret if you have to go back in and tweak it later. You want to bid high, not low, because Google tries to get you the position that you want but it doesn’t guarantee that you will have that position every time.

After you find the campaign you want to set your position preference for, click Edit Campaign Settings then check the Enable Position Preferences box. Pick an ad group and click Settings. Next, go to Position Preference and click Edit. Now you can set your highest and lowest preference. I recommend a range and not just one number because if you just say position 4 then you narrow your chances that your ad will run at all. Google may not run your ad if you get slotted for position 5 or 3. So you are better off choosing a range such as 3 to 5 or 4 to 8.

Be patient. It might take a couple of days for Google AdWords to recalibrate your settings and get your position preference started. If you have an average position of 4.5 when you set your range for 3 to 5, you might want to raise your bid because you could be losing impressions for lower positions. Be sure to monitor your ads closely after selecting your position preference and note if you see any wild fluctations in impressions or other stats. If so, you may need further adjustments.

                      Category: PPC Management                      

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