I hope by the end of reading this article you will understand how advertisers line up in the PPC section of the results page. The red areas below. i will try to explain why “Web Design Belfast” appears at the top of the pile in the example above. Source of image is Michael Wall.

So what factors affect where you appear on the list? There are a number of agreed factors but an accurate weighting for each is in some dispute.

1. Bid
2. Ad Text
3. CTR
4. Landing Page
5. Account History
6. Keyword Relevancy

So firstly we have your bid. This has an obvious affect on where you will appear in the search results. Especially important if your keyword is quite generic for example ‘used car’.  It is likely that many different bidders will bid on such generic terms and all are likely to also be optimizing their quality score.

I just mentioned quality score. Quality score is the collection of factors two through six.  These are all factors that all advertisers should focus on from the beginning. Only when you have mastered these factors should you focus on your budget to spend.

Google doesn’t as I mentioned earlier have not announced which of the factors that make up quality score are more important than the other. If I was to seed them based on what knowledge I have, I would place them:

1. Keyword relevancy
2. Ad Text
3. landing page
4. CTR
5. Account History

Planning is very important for anyone planning to venture into PPC. You will notice that many of these factors are interlinked. keywords are picked and the relevant landing page to the keyword. The ad text is derived with the keyword in mind.

For further information, watch this video from Hal Varian Chief Economist from Google