Should I Rank 1st for My #1 Keyword

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Hi everyone.

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It's Regina from solutions eight.

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You're probably wondering.

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If you're running search campaigns, is it worth it to try to rank at the top of the

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page or even the absolute top of the page?

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Or is it better to just get the cheaper clicks down in the middle of

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the page or the bottom of the page, especially for your main keyword, you

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might see, your competitors at the top and that really, really irks you.

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And so you kind of want to get to the top as well.

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But is it gonna be profitable or not?

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So that's what we're gonna talk about today.

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I'll show you first, how to look up, how much of the absolute top

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of the page you're already hitting.

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And then we're gonna talk about some of the pros and cons of trying

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to get to the top of the page.

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And then I will talk to you about how to run an experiment, to see whether it's

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more profitable to try to do that or not.

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So before I dive into all of that, I just wanna say there's no straight answer.

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I wish I had a straight answer for you guys.

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I know you always hear this, the answer to this question of whether it makes sense

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to try to get to the top of the page or whether it's more profitable to hit in

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the middle of the page is like almost everything else in the world of business.

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It changes, it changes by industry.

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It changes by keyword.

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It can change.

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Based on what's on your website based on what your competitors are doing

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based on whether it's raining outside.

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I mean, there's so many factors that go into it.

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So the only way to know for sure is to run an AB split test.

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And I'm gonna show you how to do that.

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When you try to.

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Hit the top of the page.

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The clicks are going to cost more, right?

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It's a bidding system.

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So everyone's trying to get to the top.

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So those very top placements, showing up in the search results in the first

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placement is gonna cost significantly more than showing up, down on the page.

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So the cost per click goes up, however, The leads that tend to

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click on the ads at the top of the page, have wallet in hand, right.

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They're ready to buy.

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So the conversion rate also goes up.

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So yes, cost per click is more, but yes, conversion rate is more.

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And so at the end of the day, bottom line, does your cost per

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conversion go up or down, that's all that we really need to answer.

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And this could be a yes for one keyword and a no for another keyword.

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And so you might have to run several experiments and then it might be a yes

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for the summer and a no for the spring.

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And so you might have to run even more experiments.

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So really, it can be really granular.

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It depends on, how nerdy you wanna get with the data.

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How much you want to try to fine tune, every little thing to

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get to maximize your profit.

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So right now in this account that I have pulled up, this is actually an

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SEO agency that targets SAS companies.

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So it's one of our clients.

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And they were asking me this question on their favorite keyword, which is S E O.

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For SAS companies.

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And they said, we see our competitor always at the top.

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We wanna be at the top too.

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Is this gonna raise our cost for conversion?

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And my answer.

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Well let's try it out for a while and see, and I'll, show you why the answer is

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a little bit more complicated than that.

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So right now search top impression share is I can see 19% search

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top impression share is 28%.

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So the difference between these two columns, top impression share

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means top of the page, right?

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There's usually like three or four ads before the organic listings begin.

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We're showing up 28% of the time in that area this month.

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Cuz I have this month pulled up and then search absolute top

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impression share 19% of the time.

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Then if I go into this campaign, I can see, there's different ad groups.

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One of them is SAS SEO.

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So for this one, I can see that data here too.

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Right.

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36% of the time were.

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Oh, that's not the right column search.

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Absolute top impression share is 12% of the time for that ad group.

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And search top is 18%.

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So most of these keywords are pretty much our favorite keywords, SEO

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agency, SEO agency, cuz this is someone looking for an SEO service.

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For a SaaS company.

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But you can see this data here as well, by the way search

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absolute top impression share.

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You can see it on a keyword by keyword basis.

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So some of them are 20%.

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Some of them are less than 10%.

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It's just kind of all over the place and it's up to the algorithm because

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the way that we are bidding right now is we're just using max cost per click.

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And sometimes we fine tune those bids, right?

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So we might pay $50 for one.

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Keyword $60 for another and only $15 for another.

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Some keywords are more expensive.

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Some keywords have proven to get us a high conversion rate or a high quality of lead.

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And so over time we started to fine tune those.

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And that's just how we're doing the bidding over here now.

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What I would recommend.

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Is to set up something called an experiment.

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And if you're not familiar over here on the bottom left, there's

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a section called experiments.

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And when you start to set this up, it has you choose a campaign and

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it almost duplicates the campaign.

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And then you can tell it to run 50% of that campaign's add.

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Daily budget to this version of the campaign.

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So that's how experiments work and I started one here.

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It's not quite set up just yet, but one thing that we could do is.

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For this experiment before we launch it, just change the settings.

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So that the way that we're bidding is, either we're significantly increasing

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, the cost per click, or we could change the bid strategy and let the algorithm

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handle it and just say, Hey, target impression, share, absolute top of

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the page a hundred percent of the time.

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And that that's gonna kind of just max it out.

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And we could send half of the budget to that.

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For a while and see how that goes.

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So the thing is if, and when you run this experiment, you wanna make sure

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that you have the patience for it because you can't just run it for a week.

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You can't just run it for two weeks.

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You have to run.

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For as long as it takes for you to get a significant body of data and to

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be able to see the averages in each section of the experiment, right?

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, the real campaign, which is section a and the experiment, which is section B, you

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need to have, I would say at least five conversions Ideally more in each, so 10

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conversions in total and for a company like this, with the ad spend that we

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have and the leads are pretty expensive.

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We're maybe getting a couple of conversions a month.

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So, this is a simple math equation.

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You take the daily budget, the average cost per click and just try to figure

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out or the average cost per conversion, rather just try to figure out how

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many months you're gonna have to run this experiment and sending 50% of the

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budget towards this before you're gonna be able to see the averages, right?

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Cause you need an average cost per click on the experiment, the average

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conversion, click through conversion rate on the experiment you need to

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have, at least five conversions in each to get those averages and to see.

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At the end of the day, is the cost per conversion going up or is the cost per

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conversion going down in my experiment?

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So that's that I do encourage experiments.

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I would be running experiments.

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All the time.

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If I was a small business owner and here at solutions eight, we do, we have often

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run experiments for things like that because you just never know, the strategy

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that we find successful for most of our clients might not apply for your business.

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So experiments are always helpful and always worth it.

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Well, I shouldn't say always worth it.

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sometimes it's gonna be a waste of money, don't run it, but if you're not

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sure run it and you don't have to send 50% of your budget there, by the way

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you can send if you're not willing to Invest in experiments that quickly,

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you can always just send 20% of the budget towards the experiment and

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run it for a longer period of time.

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That way the investment in testing new strategies won't be as great.

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It'll be spread out over a longer period of time.

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You do run into a little bit of a, seasonality issue.

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But I don't think seasonality is the biggest factor here.

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Everything else is bigger than seasonality when it comes to this type

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of thing, like competition coming in and outta the market, that type of thing.

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So anyways, best of luck with this and let us know how your

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experiments go in the comments.