Who’s Really Clicking on your Adwords?

I’m never surprised when I hear corporate leaders discuss their underhanded tactics for driving out the competition.  Recently at a dinner meeting discussing the benefits of organic search engine marketing  and pay-per-click, the president of a fairly large corporation told me one of their strategies for eliminating the competition, but we’ll get to more of that in a moment.

First I want to discuss  Adwords.  Google’s Adwords let anyone with a website write short little classified style  ads which are then bid on a per-click basis.  Every time someone clicks on an Adwords Ad, the advertiser pays Google some agreed to amount per click.  The advertiser also sets a daily budget, so after their ad clicks have exhausted their daily budget, they are no longer shown until the next day.

Google Adwords has been a fantastic revenue generator for Google, generating 15.7 billion (BILLION) last year alone.  Adwords has historically been an asset to small businesses looking to play next to the larger businesses with extremely deep pockets. 

How Google Ranks Adwords

After all, Google doesn’t rank Adwords simply by how much you bid, but  also by the quality of the Ad.  So Advertiser A might be willing to pay $1.00 per click for their ad, and Advertiser B may be willing to pay only .50 cents per click, but Advertiser B’s ad generates more clicks.  In this situation, Google will give the ad that generates more clicks a higher position in the Adwords column.
A savvy small business could write killer copy, under bid their competition and ideally have their ad more prominently placed then the larger company.  Sounds like a great idea for the small businesses, but  who’s really clicking on your ads?

Deep-Pocket Competition

Now let’s get back to the president of a large company and one of their strategies for driving their competition out of business.  Remember, Adwords is budget driven and once your ad reaches it’s daily limit, your ad is suspended until the next day. 
So who’s clicking on your ads?  This president confidently shared with me that his employees are tasked with clicking on their competitors ads simply to exhaust their daily budgets, removing their ads from Google’s search results.  Yes, their employees are tasked with doing this.   So companies with larger budgets can not only fund a deeper daily click budget, but can also be exhausting your daily budget by having their staff and associates help deplete your budget.

What about Organic Search Marketing?

With organic search marketing from FirstPlaceListings.com, our clients pay a fixed monthly fee to have their websites show up on the first page of the search engines, but in the organic search results, not in the Adwords areas. 

This allows our clients to receive an unlimited number of clicks without exhausting any budget, so your competitors can click away on our links, and never effect your ability to advertise and attract new customers.

Don’t let your competition get your business, visit http://www.firstplacelistings.com/request-free-seo-report and request your free SEO Report and find out how you can put your site in front of an eager audience for a fixed-monthly fee.