Placement is key but does that mean you always have to be number one? Regina shares if and when it would be profitable to rank at the top of the page, its pros and cons, and how to build an experiment to test if ranking first would be worth it.

A lot of competition results in a higher cost-per-click (CPC), and this is why you don’t always need to be at the top of the page.

You need to find a balance between being at the top to gain leads that convert, and spending within your marketing budget (a lower CPC).

In this episode, Regina discusses why ranking for your keyword is important but why it’s not always important to rank first, as well as the following:

00:00 Intro: Should I rank 1st for my #1 keyword?

02:25 The metric that truly matters

05:43 How to create an experiment to check if it will be profitable to rank on top of the page

06:57 The factors to consider when running the experiment

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Hi everyone.

It's Regina from solutions eight.

You're probably wondering.

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

page or even the absolute top of the page?

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

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

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

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

But is it gonna be profitable or not?

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

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

of the page you're already hitting.

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

to get to the top of the page.

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

more profitable to try to do that or not.

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

I wish I had a straight answer for you guys.

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

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

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

It changes, it changes by industry.

It changes by keyword.

It can change.

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

based on whether it's raining outside.

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

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

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

When you try to.

Hit the top of the page.

The clicks are going to cost more, right?

It's a bidding system.

So everyone's trying to get to the top.

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

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

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

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

They're ready to buy.

So the conversion rate also goes up.

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

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

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

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

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

for the summer and a no for the spring.

And so you might have to run even more experiments.

So really, it can be really granular.

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

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

get to maximize your profit.

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

SEO agency that targets SAS companies.

So it's one of our clients.

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

For SAS companies.

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

We wanna be at the top too.

Is this gonna raise our cost for conversion?

And my answer.

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

a little bit more complicated than that.

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

top impression share is 28%.

So the difference between these two columns, top impression share

means top of the page, right?

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

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

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

impression share 19% of the time.

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

One of them is SAS SEO.

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

Right.

36% of the time were.

Oh, that's not the right column search.

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

And search top is 18%.

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

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

For a SaaS company.

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

absolute top impression share.

You can see it on a keyword by keyword basis.

So some of them are 20%.

Some of them are less than 10%.

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

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

And sometimes we fine tune those bids, right?

So we might pay $50 for one.

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

Some keywords are more expensive.

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

And so over time we started to fine tune those.

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

What I would recommend.

Is to set up something called an experiment.

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

a section called experiments.

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

it almost duplicates the campaign.

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

Daily budget to this version of the campaign.

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

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

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

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

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

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

the page a hundred percent of the time.

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

And we could send half of the budget to that.

For a while and see how that goes.

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

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

You can't just run it for two weeks.

You have to run.

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

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

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

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

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

have and the leads are pretty expensive.

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

So, this is a simple math equation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

conversion going down in my experiment?

So that's that I do encourage experiments.

I would be running experiments.

All the time.

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

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

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

So experiments are always helpful and always worth it.

Well, I shouldn't say always worth it.

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

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

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

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

run it for a longer period of time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

experiments go in the comments.