What all you need to do to reduce high Cost per Click in AdWords?
By: Dinesh Thakur
Tags: Google Adwords Tips, PPC, PPC Marketing, Google Adwords, SEM

Cost per Click is basically the price that you pay to Google or any other search engine when someone clicks on your ad.

It measures how much a click on your ads cost. It is one of the foundational metric of the AdWords Campaigns and acts as a building block for the further understanding of the AdWords Campaigns.

CPC are different for various keywords, ads, campaigns, etc. so you need to have good understanding of AdWords bidding strategy to optimize your CPC.

Usually the CPC are determined by the bidding competition.

It is the great metric to understand the basic level of campaign costs and the financial success of your ad campaigns.

Likewise in any other business the costs are meant to be kept low, same is the case with AdWords. As the name suggests, Cost per Click is the the cost that you incur when someone clicks on your ad. So as a rule of thumb, it should be kept low.

Given below are some tips that you need to apply so as to reduce your Cost per Click in AdWords.

1. Add Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are those keywords that have low search volume and a clearly identifiable search intent.

The more generic a keyword is , the more people bid on it and therefore the higher is the bid.

On the other hand Long Tail Keywords are specific keywords that have low search volume which means that they are not prone to irrelevant search queries and hence do not waste your ad spend.

Long Tail Keywords tends to have a higher Quality Score and having a higher Quality Score is the most effective way to lower the CPC.

2. Target the keywords that have low bids

While targeting the keywords, find out keywords that have comparatively low bids as these keywords are bound to have lower CPC. Cost per Click of the keywords also depend on how competitive your industry is. Some keywords are extremely competitive and thus have high CPC. Try to avoid using competitive keywords and when you are looking forward to lower your CPC.

Also, switch your bidding from automatic to manual because manual CPC bidding gives you more control over your CPC.

3. Use Negative Keywords

Negative Keywords also help in lowering the CPC. They prevent your ads from being triggered by irrelevant search queries that can lower your CTR.

A healthy CTR is important because a lower CTR would lower your Quality Score thereby increasing your CPC.

They let your ads show up to those people who are looking for your ad and are interested in your product/service.

Hence, by avoiding all the irrelevant search queries, negative keywords helps your CTR to increase that improves your Quality Score and lowers your Cost per Click.

4. Aim for 3rd or 4th position

Google uses an auction system to rank the ads and decide the Cost per Click of each ad.

As an online advertiser, you should also try to aim your ads for at least 3rd or 4th ad position.

To aim for 3rd or 4th ad position you will have you will have to work upon the relevance of your keywords, ad copy and the landing page.

Google determines the ad rank on the Quality Score and the Max CPC.

Here, you are focussing on lowering your CPC, so to improve your ad rank you have to first improve your Quality Score.

Higher the ad position means higher the Quality Score and higher Quality Score always lowers your CPC.

The ad rank and the Quality Score are interconnected. A rise in Quality Score leads to a rise in Ad rank and vice versa.

5. Focus on the Quality Score

Quality Score is Google’s rating for the relevance of your keywords, landing page and ads.

It determines the position of your ads as well as how much are you going to pay for each click.

When you start creating highly targeted ads which are more relevant to the search queries, then your CTR increases.

Increased CTR leads to an improved Quality Score thereby increasing your ad rank and lowering your Cost Per Click.

6. Create Tightly Themed Ad Groups

The more relevant your keywords, ads and the landing pages are, the more will be your Quality Score which will further reduce your Cost per Click.

One of the most recommended practices to achieve a high Quality Score and low Cost per Click is to create tightly themed Ad Groups.

To do this, you should structure your keywords and ad groups on the basis of different product and services that you sell and want to promote online.

After separating the Ad Group for each kind of your product/service, create relevant keywords and choose the best possible landing page for each of your ad groups.

Since, you have now created tightly themed ad groups making your keywords, ads and landing pages highly relevant, Google will reward you with high Quality Score thereby lowering your Cost Per Click.

7. Use Ad Scheduling

Ad Scheduling is another feature of PPC advertising. It is often an overlooked area with a lot of potential to save your ad spend.

It allows the advertiser to select specific days and times of the day to run the ad.

Showing your ads 24/7 can be costly for any business and will most likely lower your ROI.

If you are familiar with the day or time when you get the best response from your customers. You can schedule your ads for that day or time.

By this, you will be able to show your ads to your customers when they are most likely to convert. This will further reduce the possibility of getting irrelevant clicks which will lead to a lower Cost Per Click.

With the help of Ad Scheduling also you can save up your ad budget by preventing the display of your ads at odd hours or days. Thereby preventing irrelevant clicks as well.

8. Apply Geo Targeting

Geo-Targeted helps you to focus on advertising in the areas where you will find the right customers for your business.

For each AdWords Campaign, you can select the location where you want your ads to be shown.

There are multiple locations targeting type. You can target the entire country, city, areas within a city, region or postal code and radius around a location.

Geo Targeting has the potential of taking your AdWords campaigns to a new level.

To target specific searchers with a PPC campaign, marketers give geotargeting the nod as their most effective tactic.

Targeting PPC campaigns to a group of searchers within a city, metropolitan area, or state is useful to marketers with a physical location in that area.

With Geo-Targeting, your ads will only get displayed in those areas where your potential customers reside. This will increase your CTR, which will eventually improve your Quality Score thereby reducing your Cost Per Click.

Final Thoughts

The 8 outlined points above are just a few tips to lower your CPC. There are other ways of lowering CPC such as conversion tracking, using as extensions, adjusting bids according to location, devices, day and times of the day.

Lowering your CPC is just a part of your overall goal of reducing ad spend but it is not the ultimate one. Therefore, you should try to improve other aspects of your campaigns so as to make your AdWords campaigns more effective.

About the Author: Dinesh Thakur is the Co-Founder of Pathvisit which an all-in-one marketing tool for conversion tracking, callback generation & reporting.

Pathvsit helps you to track website phone calls, convert more visitors, and create marketing reports in one unified platform.