How does this improvement work?
This improvement appears when a keyword has a ‘below first page bid’ status, meaning your ads aren’t appearing on the first page of search results (or at all). The keyword isn’t generating traffic because your bid is too low.
Opteo will scan your account for any keywords with a ‘below first page bid’ status, checking search impression share to confirm your ads aren’t appearing when they should. We’ll recommend increasing your bids by a calculated percentage to bring you back onto the first page.
Click Increase Keyword Bid to increase your bids by the suggested percentage, or Adjust if you’d like to set a different new bid.
Why do I need to be on the front page?
If your bids are considered ‘below first page’, it means you’re certainly not showing up on the first page of Google’s search results — in fact, you might not be showing up on any page.
Your search impression share will be low, perhaps even zero, meaning although searchers are looking for your keywords, your ads aren’t appearing frequently. When they are appearing, they’re landing on the second page or beyond.
When was the last time you went to the second page of a Google search? Thought so! With a ‘below first page bid’ status, your click-through rate will be reduced, which will in turn affect your Quality Scores.
How does Opteo determine the bid increase?
Opteo will examine Google’s estimated first page bid for your keyword. We often find that Google plays it a little fast and loose with these figures, so we won’t recommend you hike your bid right up to their suggestion.
If your current bid is within 30% of the recommended first page bid, we’ll propose an increase to first page bid plus 10%. So, if the first page bid was £6.00 and you were bidding £5.10, we’d recommend increasing the bid to £6.60.
If your current bid is less than 70% than the recommended first page bid, we’ll propose a 30% increase on the current bid. So, if the first page bid was £6.00 and you were bidding £3.00, we’d recommend increasing the bid to £3.90.
We’ll collect new data on the keyword for three days. If the keyword still isn’t gathering impressions, we’ll generate another improvement in line with the same rules.
Edging towards the first page bid in this way should counteract Google’s tendency to overestimate the first page minimum bid, and you should find you’re paying less than the estimate to get on the front page. Of course, it’s possible to change our proposed bid increase to any figure you like — just hit the Adjust button and enter your preferred new bid.
A note on Quality Scores.
Sometimes the reason your ads aren't showing on the first page isn't your bids, but your Quality Scores. Remember, Ad Rank determines your ad position — which is QS*Max CPC.
If your ads have low QS, even an extremely high bid won’t help you out much. If your QSs are consistently below a 4/10 (check Scorecard!), you should work on improving these before you start increasing bids. This improvement won’t appear for keywords with Scores below 4/10.
Technical Notes:
This improvement will only flag a keyword with less than 80% search impression share.
This improvement will only flag a keyword with a Quality Score of 4 or more.
After you complete this improvement, we’ll collect new data for 3 days before suggesting any further increases.
If a keyword’s search impression share is below 10%, Google displays this as ‘<10%’ instead of giving an actual figure. Opteo considers any search impression share indicated as ‘<10%’ to be 0, and therefore search lost to rank of ‘>90%’ as 100.
Grey areas on the graph indicate no opportunity to enter the auction, so no impression share won or lost.