Founder at M16 Marketing and a Forbes Agency Council member, Don is a leading marketing technologist on a mission to create success stories.
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When you’re running a Google Ads campaign, pay attention to your ad positions. Google’s Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool will reveal where a given ad is eligible to appear on a search results page. Known as ad position, this will influence how many users see, as well as click on, the ad.
Search ads are displayed in select areas of Google’s search results page. In the past, Google displayed them at the top, bottom and on the right-hand side of its search results page. Google, however, no longer displays search ads on the right-hand side. With fewer placements available, you need to optimize your Google Ads campaigns for higher ad positions.
Here are some ways to do that:
Raise Your Bids
The easiest way to secure higher ad positions is to raise your bids. A bid is the maximum amount of money that you’re willing to pay for each click. Google Ads doesn’t charge advertisers a flat fee. Rather, it allows advertisers to bid on clicks. You may pay less for clicks, but you’ll never pay more than the amount represented by your bids.
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Raising your bids will often lead to higher ad positions. Bids are one of the main factors Google uses to calculate ad positions. If you bid higher for a keyword than all other advertisers targeting the same keyword, you can expect a high ad position. Your ads, in fact, may be displayed in the first paid placement on Google’s search results.
Target Longer Keywords
The length of your keywords can affect your ad positions. When you create an ad group, you’ll have to enter at least one keyword. Google will only serve your ads to users who search for your specified keywords. And you’ll have to enter bids for these keywords.
Targeting longer keywords will typically result in higher ad positions. In general, advertisers are more likely to target short keywords than long keywords because of their high search volume. While short keywords reach more users, they have more competition than long keywords. You’ll probably encounter less advertising competition by targeting the latter type of keywords, which can indirectly lead to higher ad positions.
Improve Landing Page Relevance
Improving the relevance of your landing pages can help you secure higher ad positions. Landing pages are the destination pages to which your ads are linked. Each ad must be linked to a landing page.
Ads linked to a relevant landing page are more likely to earn a high ad position than those linked to an irrelevant landing page. Landing page relevance is a Quality Score factor, and Quality Scores affect ad positions. You can view Quality Scores by adding this metric as a new column to the keywords page.
For improved relevance, make sure your landing pages match the copy of your ads. Aim to create a seamless transition from your ads to your landing pages. When users click one of your ads, they’ll expect to see content related to the ad. Ensuring that the landing page matches the copy of the ad will promote a smoother transition and higher Quality Scores.
Improve Landing Page Experience
In addition to landing page relevance, landing page experience is a Quality Score factor that can affect your ad positions. What is landing page experience, exactly? It’s the ease at which users can navigate and interact with a landing page. Even if a landing page is relevant, it may have a poor user experience.
As a Quality Score factor, landing page experience affects ad positions. Landing pages with a poor user experience will likely have lower ad positions than their counterparts. Fortunately, you can improve the experience of a landing page in several ways.
Reducing the landing page’s average load time, for instance, will improve its experience. A long load time will create a poor user experience. Some users may even abandon a landing page if it’s excessively slow. By reducing the landing page’s load time, users can navigate and interact with it more easily.
Removing clutter from the landing page will improve its experience as well. Whether it’s a landing page or an organic webpage, cluttered design is distracting. It will divert users’ attention from the main content. If a landing page has a cluttered design, clean it up by replacing unnecessary elements with white space.
Use Extensions
You can use extensions to secure higher ad positions. In Google Ads, extensions are ad features that expand text ads with additional information or content. You aren’t required to use them. Rather, extensions are optional.
Using extensions will often result in higher ad positions. They won’t remove or replace any of the default copy in your ads. Your ads will still have a headline and a description. Extensions simply add new information or content to them. You can use the sitelink extension to include up to four additional links in your ads, or you can use the callout extension to include promotional callout messages in your ads.
Extensions are easy to use. After logging in to your account, you should see a drop-down menu for “Ads & Extensions.” Click this menu in your account and select “Extensions” from the available options. You can then select the type of extension that you wish to use.
Keep in mind that extensions can be used on different levels. You can use them on an account level, meaning they’ll affect all of your ads. Alternatively, you can use extensions on a campaign level. Campaign-level extensions will only affect ads in the specified campaign. You can also use extensions at an ad group level. Ad group-level extensions, of course, will only affect ads in the specified ad group.
Keep in mind that ad positions are calculated in real time. Each time an ad is eligible to be served to a user, Google will calculate its ad position. For consistently high ad positions, though, you can raise your bids, target longer keywords, improve landing page relevancy and experience, and use extensions.
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Author: Don Dodds, Forbes Councils Member
