How to use AdWords automation for page 1 visibility

We love using Adwords' automated email alerts and bid rules.  They make our lives easier and improve our ability to more effectively manage our clients' campaigns.  It's important NOT to totally rely on automation to manage your campaigns, but instead to enhance your ongoing management strategies.  

We like to think of this as the "belt and suspenders" approach!

One of the first rules that we apply to a new client account is the "Increase keyword bids to first page CPC". Since most traffic is derived from Page 1 search results, it's important to be aware of keywords that are struggling for visibility.  The rule is easy to create, like this:

• If you apply this rule, be sure to select "all but removed keywords" to ensure that any new keywords added to inventory are included in this rule.  
• We like to run rules like this at midnight based on data from the "previous day"
• We also insist on placing a "max bid" to the most our client would be willing to pay for any keyword in their account (of course this rule could be set at individual campaigns, if desired)
• We only receive the results of the rule by email if there was some system error in running the rule. However, you may want to choose to have results emailed to you to understand which keywords are being held back with the "max bid" setting.  

Of course, this rule just gets your keywords onto Page 1 (assuming your max bid is set high enough).  In order to improve your keyword visibility even more, you'll need to set additional campaign rules based on the campaign's value in the conversion path.

Caution:  Google offers many "flexible bid strategies".  We have tested these and found that they do not perform as well as us simply creating our own bid rules to raise and lower keywords between our desired position range.

We recommend that you use extreme caution with any type of automation and monitor your rules closely to understand how they work and to ensure they are achieving the desired result!