Bidding Wars In The World Of PPC

So you have finally decided to start a pay per click campaign to bring more visitors to your website. You have set a budget that you are happy with, you have done hours of keyword research to identify those words that are both cheap to bid on and are likely to attract a lot of visitors to your site, and you are ready to get started.

That’s just about the best start you could make in the world of pay per click advertising– a start that is cemented in by good research. So now is the time to sit back and see the results of your labors.

But then the inevitable happens. You’re getting pretty good results from your pay per click campaign to begin with, but then you notice that someone else has been doing their research too, and they have decided to bid slightly more than you on your best key phrase to rank higher and get more visitors.

What do you do? We’re a competitive lot by nature, so the initial reaction will probably be to go into your account and up the amount you are bidding to get ahead of them again. But is that really the best choice? After all, that is now going to cost you more money, and while you might have been getting good traffic and results from that option there may still be other and better ways of getting a result from this form of advertising.

If you are unfortunate enough to find yourself in this position – and in truth a lot of people will go through this situation at some point during their progress in the world of pay per click – then the best thing to do initially is to go back to your keyword research again.

Were there any other phrases there that could bring in equally good results? Try researching your keywords again in case any others come up that you hadn’t spotted before. PPC advertising is a very fluid market and is constantly changing; while one keyword phrase may look to be the best on one day, it could be that once you lose that top bid to someone else you can go back and find something else to bid on that will get you even better results.

The solution is not to panic and immediately go in over their heads and bid above them again. You might end up doing this anyway, but think about it before you do. Look at the whole situation and think about whether the increased bid would be worth putting in for the return you were getting before.

If it isn’t, then it’s time to explore new territory.