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Google AdWords: How to Automate the Maintenance of High Ranking in the Search Results for
Specific Keywords

Hi, everyone.
Today, I will introduce the automated rules function for AdWords, which automatically adjusts the
changes you want to make just right.

What You Can Do with Automated Rules

By scheduling some rules, the automated rules will automatically change settings according to the
rules.
The criteria you can change are as follows:
Daily budget for your campaign
Temporary suspension/activation of campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or ads.
Bidding prices for ad groups and keywords

I will show you how to automate your bidding to maintain a high rank in search results for a specific
keyword, using a case in practice.

Adjust Your Bids by Keyword

Although your client may not wish to continuously maintain a high list ranking for a specific keyword,
when the client's merchandise is on a TV commercial, advertising tie-ups, or events, your client may
request your help to keep the highest possible list ranking during the period.

Of course, you can do the bidding manually. If you do so, you may be able to maintain high rankings
temporarily, but the ranking may decline by the minute because of worsening rendering quality or
higher bidding by competitors, so you want to check and adjust your bidding from time to time if you
want to continuously maintain a high rank.

However, checking the bidding by the keyword on a daily basis is time-consuming.

In such a case, you can use the automated rules to adjust bidding by keyword.

You can choose from the three ways to change the bidding price.
1. Set the bidding price yourself.
2. Raise the bidding price to the estimated bidding price for your ad to be placed in the upper
part of a page.

3. Lower the bidding price to the first page cost-per- click (CPC).
For the method in number 1, you can adjust the bidding price, aiming for your ad to be rendered at the
desired rank if you set the rule by the ranking, i.e. when the list ranking fell short of 3.0. For those in
number 2 or 3, you can adjust it to aim for listing in the upper part of a page or on the first page itself.

The setting screen is as shown below, and there are three settings as above to adjust bidding.

Settings

The format slightly varies by the method, but the screen for raising the bid price to the estimated bid

price for listing an ad in the upper part of a page is shown below.

You can select a specific keyword from the pull-down menu, although the "all keywords" setting is
selected in the image above.

As for conditions, you can set detailed conditions here, but you want to raise the bid price when the ad
is not displayed in the upper part of the page, so you do not need to set any conditions in particular
here.

However, if you wish to set a special condition, you can do so.

For instance, you want to raise the bidding price when your ad is not displayed in the upper part for
the keyword that brings in conversions (CVs).

Other settings are frequency and period.

The period refers to the time when the rules are applied before the search engine render the search
results.

For frequency, once, daily, weekly, and monthly are the only choices, so no matter what your
preference is, you can apply the rules once a day at the very most.

As for period, you can set the time from right after you have changed the rules up to the end of the
period at most. However, while your ranking is still unstable, namely, at the start of rendering, the
ranking changes from one minute to the next, so you must use caution when triggering the application
of rules. You may be better off not to depend on the automated rules until the rankings are stabilized
in the first place.

How to Increase your Bid Price According to Your Competitors' Rankings

This is not applying automated rules by keyword, but if your ranking suffers because of your
competitors' increased bidding price, you can also use the target outranking share function in the
automated rules for portfolio bid strategy if you can identify your competitors.

* Because this is a bidding strategy, the automated rules are set not by keyword but by campaign.

To use this function, you designate the bid competitors' website domains and automate the process to
outrank them by setting up the share you wish to secure against them. The setting screen is shown
below.

You might be concerned that if the competitions intensify, the price gets higher and higher, but if you
sometimes go your being outranked unnoticed, or when it is difficult to adjust, such as on the
weekends, the bidding price will be adjusted as necessary; therefore, this function will help you.

Summary

I showed you the automated rules by focusing on the list ranking this time, but there are many other
criteria to set the rules. If you have quantitative targets for maintenance or improvement in advertising,
you can consider automating the changes of rules by the quantitative targets.

This has been Imai writing.