The Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog recently told its readers not to shoot for the No. 1 ad spot in every instance. I can’t think of any better advice for a search engine pay per click blog to give. In other words, the could just have well said, “We love your money, but not so much as to see you throw it down the PPC drain and never get it back.”
The search engines have an incentive for seeing you be successful. If you make money on your PPC campaigns then you’ll spend more of it on advertising.
The No. 1 spot, as Noah Belson says, is not always the best spot. When bidding on your keywords, only bid on the keywords that will deliver you the most conversions. General keywords will usually cost you more and will usually provide you fewer sales conversions, draining your budget and not giving you any sales, lowering your ROI. You might even end up with a negative ROI.
Do your keyword research carefully and figure out which keywords are most profitable for your campaign and use only those keywords. Then bid on them optimally so that your ads run longer. This will increase your chances of realizing a positive ROI.
