The location of paid search adverts is one of the reasons why there is so much competition in pay per 
click advertising. Everyone wants the top spot so that their advert is noticed first – this means even more now due to the fact that Google increased the number of adverts that can be viewed above organic search results from three to four. However, there comes a time where the competition to gain top spot becomes so intense that advertisers have to ask the question whether top spot of paid search results is worth the ridiculously high CPC they have to adopt to get it. With this in mind, here are some of the pros and cons to getting top spot of paid search results (yes, it is not just pros but cons too)…
- Pro – Advert is first on search results and gets the most exposure – The biggest reason as to why advertisers aim to get top spot of paid search results is simply because the first result of search results tends to get the best results. By ‘results’, this is clicks/CTR, exposure and conversions. The advert is the first to be looked at and clicked on which often means the competition below the top spot advert sometimes don’t even get the chance to lure web users into a click onto their advert.
- Con – Can be very expensive – Depending on what keywords you bid for will depend on how much it will cost to get the top spot of paid results for that keyword search phrase. The more vague a keyword search phrase you go for, the higher your CPC you will have to adopt to get top spot. This is continually why niche keywords are brilliant as they provide a low cost solution to getting top spot of paid search results for contextual traffic.
- Pro – ‘Steal’ traffic from competitors – As mentioned in the above pro point, top spot of paid search results tends to be effective because your advert is viewed first, read first and therefore the most likely to be clicked. If you wanted to take traffic away from one of your competitors by, let’s say, bidding on their own brand name, gaining top spot would do just this even if the competitor has a PPC campaign for their own brand name.
- Con – Top spot can get naturally blocked by web users – This is a problem, in general, for PPC advertising. There are some web users which will automatically scroll down to the top of organic search results blocking themselves from even interacting with any paid search results. This is a problem for PPC as a whole. But, it is going to affect the top spot of paid search results more because it is the first to be scrolled out of view. Statistics may state top spot gets more clicks, more exposure and more conversions. But, value for money? That is where it matters…
