Sometimes, the CPC is a mystery in the eyes of a publisher of Adsense. One day, the average CPC might be dollars while on other days, it is pathetic cents. Of course, publishers of PPC will want the highest CPC possible so they make the most amount of money possible. The question is how do publishers do this? What makes a publisher’s account’s CPC high and low?

The cost per click of adverts is deemed by:

• The competition – How many PPC advertisers are there bidding for that ad space?
• Ad location.
• The website itself – If the website has valuable high quality content on it, then advertisers will be more likely to spend more on getting that ad space because there will be more chance of a conversion.

From identifying the above factors, we can look at ways to increase the CPC.

Increase Competition For Ad Units

This is basically supply and demand. You will want to make sure your supply is as little as possible and demand is as great as possible. You can do this through:

• Decreasing the number of adverts on your site from the maximum of three.
• Making sure you have enabled both text and image adverts to appear.
• Allowed as many ad categories as possible.

There is an argument that if you remove the ad categories that are not getting clicked on will increase your overall CTR. But, in doing this, you will be decreasing the level of competition on your ad units. Therefore, although your CTR may have increased, your CPC will decrease which has the potential of meaning that blocking ad categories that are not making you money can result you not making as much money as before.

Keep Adverts Above The Fold

Adverts above the fold (appearing as soon as the webpage has loaded) are the preferred option for advertisers because they will be some of the first <scripts>s that are loaded (resulting in appearing for the longest amount of time and having the best chance of getting clicked on). Therefore, if you have any adverts below the fold of your advert, you are putting them at a CPC disadvantage straight away. Whenever using adverts, always give the adverts prime location because after all  publishers can only make money when they are clicked – you will want to give your adverts the best possible chance of getting clicked.

Create Quality Targeted Content

Pay per click advertising is famous for bringing targeted traffic to a landing page. You are more likely to have a high CPC if your content is quality and specific to the topic you are talking about. For example, if you have an article talking about a range of electronic equipment, it is hard for advertisers to pinpoint exactly what type of traffic is reading the article. Therefore, they will not want to bid on it because it is too vague. On the other hand, if the article was about just Apple’s iPad, the article is much more focused. Therefore, advertisers will want to bid for it because they know the traffic has a direct interest to the Apple iPad.