If you have been in the pay per click industry for even the shortest time, you know the frenzy about marketers’ attempts to grab the No. 1 position for top paying keywords. It’s true that for a cool new product that has come out, being at No. 1 position can give you a significant edge over your competitors. In fact, studies have shown that the No. 1 position gets as much clicks as the other 9 listings combined. The costs will be higher, but being at No. 1 means more clicks.

But achieving the No. 1 position on Google Adwords is not as important as many marketers make it to be. Sure. You get more clicks, but a lot of those clicks are unqualified clicks that will eat away your profits. Think about it. There is this new cool GPS in the market that everyone has read about on major media sources. How many of people who are actually searching for the product are going to buy it? There is a good chance that the first three listings will satisfy the curiousity of those visitors.  What that means is you are going to lose a lot of money to people who will not buy the product, leaving you with no sales. 

That’s why positions 4-6 are the best positions to target. You get less clicks but more qualified users. By the time visitors get to position 4, they have already evaluated 3 offers, and they don’t need to just click on your adds if they are not interested. Besides, No. 4 is much cheaper to achieve than No. 1. 

Now there are exceptions to this rule. If you are just starting out a new campaign on adwords and you want to get a higher quality score, you want to get more clicks and get a higher CTR. The best way to do that is to put a compelling ad in one of the first 3 positions and overpay a little at first. That is an investment that will pay you back as soon as Google gives you a decent quality score for your site’s relevance and high CTR. But don’t try this approach for all your campaigns. No. 1 position is overrated in most cases, and this is one of those cases that being No. 2 or No. 3 is actually better than being first.