How can you use bid adjustments to improve your ad rank?

1 Step 1: Identify your goals and KPIs

Before you apply any bid adjustments, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your PPC campaigns. Do you want to increase your conversions, traffic, brand awareness, or ROI? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure your success? For example, if your goal is to increase conversions, you might use cost per conversion, conversion rate, and return on ad spend as your KPIs. Having specific and measurable goals and KPIs will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your bid adjustments and make data-driven decisions.

2 Step 2: Analyze your performance data

The next step is to analyze your performance data and identify the factors that affect your ad rank. You can use Google Ads reports and tools, such as the bid simulator, the auction insights, and the performance planner, to get insights into your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads. You can also segment your data by different dimensions, such as audience, location, device, time, and keyword match type, to see how they impact your ad rank. For example, you might find that your ads perform better on mobile devices, in certain regions, or during specific hours of the day. You can use this information to decide where and when to apply bid adjustments.

3 Step 3: Apply bid adjustments strategically

The third step is to apply bid adjustments strategically to increase or decrease your bids for the factors that affect your ad rank. You can use percentage modifiers to adjust your bids up or down by a certain amount. For example, if you want to bid more for mobile users, you can use a +20% bid adjustment for the device segment. This means that your bid will be increased by 20% for mobile users, which can improve your ad rank and visibility for that segment. You can also use bid adjustments for audiences, locations, ad schedules, and keywords. However, you should be careful not to overcomplicate your bidding strategy or apply conflicting bid adjustments that cancel each other out.

4 Step 4: Monitor and optimize your bid adjustments

The final step is to monitor and optimize your bid adjustments regularly. You should track your performance data and KPIs and compare them before and after applying bid adjustments. You should also test different bid adjustment scenarios and see how they affect your ad rank and outcomes. You can use tools like the performance planner and the bid simulator to forecast and experiment with different bid adjustments. You should also review your quality score and the expected impact of your ad extensions and formats, as they also influence your ad rank. By monitoring and optimizing your bid adjustments, you can fine-tune your bidding strategy and improve your ad rank over time.