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In a perfect world of proper PPC campaign management, each campaign would be fully optimized in everyway possible. If only it were that simple!

A great way to make you PPC budget spend efficiently in Adwords is activating Position Preference and setting your keyword position preferences to 2^nd position or less. After reading up on numerous blogs, forums, and testing out keyword positions, there is no doubt in my mind the 1^st position is a costly position to maintain – too costly! The cost per conversion is too high for my blood and I eat through my budget much faster. So, preventing myself from showing up in the 1^st position by setting the preference to 2^nd position or less, is music to my ears.

But, (there is always a but) this is only true for keywords that are competitive. Here’s a scenario: you find a great long tail keyword for exact match and it has very low competition. So low, in fact, that your ad is the only one showing. Guess what? If you have your position preference set to 2^nd position or less, how can you possibly show up for a search phrase that automatically puts you in the 1^st position by default, regardless of max bid set?

Use this feature carefully without shooting yourself in the foot. The good news is, in most scenarios for most people, this kind of problem won’t rear it’s ugly head too often. If the time is taken to set up position preferences properly, your budget can be stretched further and spent on ever improving ad groups as you continue your guest to live in a perfect world of proper PPC management.