Understanding Keyword Bid Management

Work on algorithm in the vintage computer lab

How To Manage Automated Bids For Keywords

Automated bid management can take one of three forms: as part of a solution provided by your ana- lytics or PPC program provider, as desktop software, or as a hosted service. Many analytics providers (like Google Analytics) and PPC program providers include some form of keyword management reports and capabilities with their products. These reports are great for basic keyword and PPC cam- paign management, but they often lack the functionality that desktop software and hosted services provide. However, if you’re only managing a handful of keywords, the capabilities provided by your analytics provider should be all that you need.

If you’re managing more than a handful of keywords, you’ll need something much more powerful to help you stay on top of your keywords and PPC campaigns. Desktop software is one option. This is software that you install on your computer. You maintain the software, and it helps you to manage your PPC campaigns and keyword bids. Most desktop software is sufficient for your needs, but because it requires that you maintain the resources to operate the software, manage the software updates and upgrades, and in general manage and monitor it, you may decide that a hosted bid. management application is the better choice.

Hosted bid management applications are those provided by third-party vendors. The vendor manages the software, the resources required to maintain the software, and all of the mainte- nance for both software and resources. An added benefit of using a hosted application is that often the application is much richer and more robust than one you could manage and maintain. on your own.

There are dozens of companies offering bid management services. Just a few among them are WebSide StoryBid, Searchignite, PPCPro, KeywordROI, and BidRank. Each vendor offers some similar and some different features for the applications that they provide, and the cost of hosted bid management software can be from $125 per month to more than $1,200 per month. The cost depends on the number of keywords you’re tracking and the different features that are available to you. Some management application providers will also allow you to create custom management applications that also fall into the same cost range.

When you’re considering an automated bid management product, you should look for several features. The most basic of these include:

■ A single interface for multiple PPC campaigns. You will most likely be running PPC campaigns from several different providers, so you need a solution that allows you to manage all of those campaigns, regardless of provider, from a single control panel.

■ Conversion tracking, including conversion rates and cost per sale for each keyword that you’re tracking.

■ Global change capabilities. When you make a change to your PPC campaign, whether it’s changing a word, changing your strategy, or changing your bids, you may need to have those changes reflected in multiple places. Good bid management software offers the abil- ity to make global changes-you make the change one time, and all of the campaigns you specify are updated automatically.

■ Keyword monitoring capabilities. Bid management software should let you see where your keywords are performing at any given time.

■ Automatic bid-management capabilities. One trick some companies use to keep the competition at bay is called bid jamming. Because keyword bids, unlike those in a tradi- tional auction, are dynamic and can go both up and down, the auction isn’t over when you’ve paid a lot and won your word. You’d like to rebid it at a lower price. And here’s where the keyword jammer, by offering only a penny less than your inflated bid, tries to keep you at that level and drain your SEO budget. (Of course, you can play the same game by letting the jammer have the word and then becoming a bid jammer yourself.) Automatic bid management can keep you from going crazy by ensuring that you’re bid- ding at the most efficient level all the time.

■ Fraud monitoring and documentation. Click fraud can be very costly. A good bid man- agement software will monitor your PPC campaigns for signs of click fraud.

■ Reporting capabilities. Nearly every bid management application includes the ability to generate and share reports. What those reports contain varies from vendor to vendor. Be sure to check the types of reports that are available with the solution you choose.

In addition to the basic features that you should look for in bid management software, you may wan to consider some additional features. These are not essential features, but they offer additional value and make monitoring your PPC campaigns and keyword bids a much easier process.

■  Rank Management: Most bid-management software is based solely on the bidding guide lines define. However, some software includes the ability to have your  bids automatically adjusted according to the rank of a given keyword. This can be helpful if what matters to you is the rank that your ad reaches, rather than the cost of the click.

■  Balancing Strategies: These are capabilities within bid management software that maintain a steady conversion rate, by adjusting bids according to the number of conversions. This also helps to ensure that your ROI remains steady, rather than fluctuating according to the cost of your bids.

 

■  Gap Management: In PPC bidding there’s a phenomenon called a gap that appears between bids. For example, the cost per click, according to ranking, might look like this: $.56, $.53, $.49, $.28, $.27, $.26. The large drop from $.49 to $.28 is called a gap. These gaps are caused when large companies bid the same amount for each of their keywords, regardless of the average bid or the bid necessary to reach a specific rank.

 

When you’re looking at a gap in bidding, it’s often possible to “fill the gap” and still reach a great ranking. Using the preceding example, if you were to bid $.30, you could jump to the fourth position. But to make it to the third position you would need to increase your cost-per-click a full 21 cents. For the difference between the number four and the num- ber three spot, the additional expenditure doesn’t make sense.

 

Some bid management software offers gap management, and will alert you when there is a gap of which you can take advantage. And taking advantage of these gaps can result in lower PPC costs with the same or better results.

 

■  Keyword Suggestion Tools: Keyword suggestion tools aren’t necessarily part of the bid- ding process, but they can still be useful and should be considered when you’re consider- ing bid management software. Keyword suggestion tools can provide additional resources or options for your PPC keywords, which can result in finding lower-cost keywords that perform as well as those that cost considerably more.

 

Bid management is a time-consuming process. But you can take advantage of bid management appli- cations and software to help you reduce the time spent managing your PPC campaigns and to increase the effectiveness of those campaigns.

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