Use Analytics to Discover Most Profitable AdWords Positions
The Keyword Positions Report has been available for a long time in Google Analytics, but it is not widely used, according to tests that I have conducted.
It has long been a favorite discussion amongst AdWords professionals to try and figure where is the best position for a Google ad. Although logic and bid prices dictate that the top position is the best, the actual evidence has shown otherwise.
Perry Marshall and Don Crowther have done a study on this back in the early days of AdWords, and in their Black Belt AdWords course demonstrate how the actual ROI based on position was higher in the 4-7 spot than in the 1-3 spot.
This can now easily be seen using Analytics. Here is a screenshot of the Keywords Positions Report, which is available in the Anlaytics interface at Traffic Sources » Adwords » Keyword Positions:
Leave the dropdown box on the left side set to Visits, and switch the right side dropdown to any measure you prefer. I suggest using either Ecommerce Conversion Rate, or Revenue, assuming you have set up Analytics to track Ecommerce.
As you can see, the report shows that the most profitable positions for this keyword was 10 (100% conversion rate) and 5-7, while top 1 had a lousy 1.61% rate.
This is true in most all keywords that I have researched.
Tip: You can use this report even when you don’t track ecommerce conversions. Say, for example you want to track downloads of a whitepaper or email signups for a newsletter. You can set that up as a goal conversion in Analytics, and then measure the % of Goal Conversions based on positions.
Success Tip # 37: Run a Keywords Position Report on your campaigns, and then use Position Preference in your AdWords account to limit the ad to the positions with the highest ROI.