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April 3, 2025
If you’re reading this, you probably work hard for your money and hate watching your Google Ads CPC rise faster than summer gas prices.
You’ve likely noticed your cost per click climbing while your results flatline, making you question if Google Ads is still profitable. You’re not alone—every marketer has felt this CPC squeeze at some point.
Fortunately, this article is packed with proven strategies to lower your CPC and put your ad budget back on track. One key strategy is aligning your ad and landing page messaging to improve ad relevance and Quality Score.
Boost Ad Relevance: Utilize ad extensions, long-tail keywords, keyword clusters, and single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) to improve ad quality and lower your CPC.
Strategic CPC Management: Effectively manage your ad campaigns by testing various bidding strategies, adding negative keywords regularly, and leveraging geo-targeting and ad scheduling to control spend and achieve lower CPC.
Continuous Optimization: Regularly A/B test ad elements, optimize landing pages, and implement accurate conversion tracking for sustained improvement in performance and profitability.
CPC stands for cost per click, the standard bidding method used by most pay-per-click (PPC) platforms. In Google Ads, you’ll see CPC referenced in multiple ways—from bidding strategies to reporting metrics.
In Google Ads, CPC, or cost per click, is the fee you pay each time someone clicks your ad. It’s crucial as it directly affects your advertising budget and ROI. A lower CPC means less cost per click, allowing for more clicks and conversions within the same budget, similar to getting more items at the grocery store for the same price.
Understanding and optimizing CPC is key to running a cost-effective Google Ads campaign. By focusing on lowering CPC, you ensure your advertising dollars are efficiently spent, driving more traffic and conversions without overspending.
Your Google Ads CPC doesn’t just randomly spike—it’s shaped by several key factors. Think of Google’s auction like an intense bidding war, where keyword competition and ad relevance determine your costs. High-demand keywords mean higher CPCs, so getting creative with specific long-tail keywords helps avoid overpriced clicks.
Optimizing Google Search Ads and Google Shopping Ads can help manage CPC effectively by focusing on strategies to lower costs and improve conversion rates.
Quality Score is your best friend here—it’s Google’s grade on your ad relevance and landing page experience. Boosting this score is like getting a discount coupon from Google; it helps secure prime ad placements at better prices, giving you more bang for your buck.
Google’s CPC calculation might seem complex, but here’s the simple version: Google takes your competitor’s Ad Rank (their bid multiplied by their Quality Score), divides it by your own Quality Score, then adds just one cent—that’s right, just a penny! This ensures you pay only slightly more than the next competitor, keeping your costs fair and manageable.
Super simple right ?
Google’s built-in discount mechanism means you rarely pay your max CPC bid, just enough to secure your ad position. Ultimately, boosting your Quality Score by improving ad relevance and landing page experience acts like a hidden discount, securing prime placements at lower CPCs and maximizing every dollar you spend.
Reducing CPC is like finding money in your jeans pocket—it lets you do more with your existing budget. Lower CPC means each dollar goes further, allowing your ads to reach more potential customers without extra spending.
To consistently achieve lower CPCs, smart budgeting and constant A/B testing of ads are essential. This ensures you attract genuine clicks from your ideal audience, maximizing both cost-effectiveness and overall campaign success.
If you’ve been following this article then you understand what CPC is, how it’s determined, and why ad rank is important. These points should have cleared up any misconceptions you might have about getting a lower CPC in Google Ads.
Both Google Display Ads and paid search ads play a crucial role in managing CPC and improving ad performance. Understanding the unique behaviors of Google Display Ads, such as frequency capping and retargeting, alongside optimizing ad content for paid search ads, can significantly enhance your advertising outcomes.
Now you’re ready to uncover some full proof strategies that will improve your cost per click and get better results.
Quality Score isn’t just another metric—it’s Google’s way of rating your ads based on click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Think of it as Google’s Yelp review of your ads. A high score earns you lower CPC, better ad placement, and more bang for your buck.
Check the status and Quality Score of your keywords
Boost your score by creating relevant ads, using targeted keywords, and ensuring your landing pages are clear, fast-loading, and user-friendly. Remember, Google’s rewarding relevance, so aim to impress.
Expected clickthrough rate – Google’s way of measuring how likely it is that your ads will get clicked on. This is based on the historical performance of that keyword. Not just on your account but across all other advertisers who’ve used the same keyword.
Ad relevance – A measure of your ads relevance in relation to the keywords they represent. This is why you should use your keyword in ad headlines whenever possible.
Landing page experience – This is a measure of how effective your landing page is based on visitor behavior. Bounce rate and the amount of time users spend on your site are determining factors.
Negative keywords are a powerful tool in your Google Ads arsenal, essential for preventing wasted ad spend and ultimately lowering your overall CPC. These keywords help filter out irrelevant traffic, ensuring your ads only appear for searches that truly matter to your business.
Here’s how to use negative keywords effectively:
Identify Unwanted Clicks: Start by reviewing your search term report to pinpoint irrelevant or low-performing search terms. These are the terms that drive clicks without conversions, inflating your ad spend without delivering results.
Build a Negative Keyword List: Add these irrelevant terms to your negative keyword list. By doing so, you prevent your ads from appearing for these searches in the future, focusing your budget on more profitable clicks.
Regularly Update Your List: Continuously monitor your search terms and refine your negative keyword list. This ongoing process helps maintain ad relevance and reduces unnecessary spending.
Improve Ad Relevance: By excluding irrelevant searches, you enhance your ad relevance, which can boost your Quality Score and further reduce CPC.
By strategically using negative keywords, you can significantly decrease wasted ad spend, improve your ad relevance, and achieve a lower CPC, ultimately maximizing the efficiency of your Google Ads campaigns.
To effectively lower your Google Ads CPC, establishing a well-organized account structure is essential. By utilizing keyword clusters, you can enhance ad relevance and improve campaign performance. However, for high-performing keywords, implementing Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) can still offer significant benefits.
Here’s how to optimize your account structure for better results:
Organize with Keyword Clusters: Group related keywords into clusters based on themes or product categories. This approach allows you to create more targeted ad copy and landing pages, boosting your ad relevance and Quality Score.
Focus on High-Intent Keywords: Prioritize keywords that demonstrate strong purchase intent. These often include long-tail keywords that align closely with your specific offerings, ensuring your ads reach users ready to convert.
Evaluate Performance Data: Regularly analyze your Google Ads account to identify top-performing keywords with high conversion rates and strong Quality Scores. These insights will guide your decision-making process for SKAG implementation.
Implement SKAGs Selectively: Create SKAGs for your highest-performing keywords to maximize ad relevance and control over your bidding strategy. This targeted approach ensures you get the most value from your ad spend without complicating your account structure.
By strategically organizing your account with keyword clusters while selectively using SKAGs for top performers, you can enhance ad relevancy and efficiency. This balanced approach optimizes your Google Ads campaigns, reducing CPC and driving better overall results.
Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) are now the standard ad type in Google Ads, taking over from the traditional expanded text ads. To effectively lower your CPC, optimizing your RSAs is crucial. By regularly testing different combinations of headlines and descriptions, you can enhance your ad relevance and click-through rate (CTR), which in turn improves your Quality Score.
Here’s how to optimize your RSAs for better performance:
Diverse Headlines and Descriptions: Create a variety of headlines and descriptions to allow Google to test and find the best-performing combinations. Aim for a mix that targets different aspects of your product or service, addressing various user intents.
Use Relevant Keywords: Incorporate important keywords into your headlines and descriptions to boost ad relevance. This helps Google match your ads with the right search queries, enhancing your Quality Score.
Monitor Performance: Regularly review the performance of your RSAs. Pay attention to which combinations are driving the most clicks and conversions, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Leverage Ad Variations: Test different ad variations to find the most effective messaging. This continuous testing and optimization process ensures your ads remain competitive and relevant.
By strategically optimizing your Responsive Search Ads, you can achieve a higher Quality Score, leading to reduced CPC and more efficient ad spend. This approach not only lowers costs but also maximizes the impact of your Google Ads campaigns.
Enhancing your landing page experience is vital for improving your Quality Score in Google Ads, which directly impacts your CPC. A well-optimized landing page not only boosts your Quality Score but also enhances conversion rates, making it a critical component of your Google Ads strategy.
Recently, we revamped the approach for an international health and fitness company by redirecting their paid search traffic from the homepage to dedicated landing pages.
Here’s what things looked like when we took over.
Before we designed a post-click landing page.
Here are the results about three weeks later.
After we started sending traffic to the landing page.
Wondering how that happened? If you guessed custom landing pages, you’re spot on. The results were impressive, showcasing the power of customized landing pages.
To improve your landing page experience, consider the following steps:
Develop dedicated landing pages instead of using your homepage.
Ensure your landing page and ad messaging are consistent.
Focus headlines on benefits rather than features.
Optimize your landing page for mobile users.
Enhance page load times (test your page speed here).
While a great landing page might not halve your CPC, it can significantly reduce your CPA, making your advertising efforts more cost-effective.
Audience targeting through Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) and Similar Audiences is a powerful strategy for optimizing your Google Ads campaigns. By focusing on users who have previously interacted with your brand or share characteristics with your existing customers, you can bid more strategically and lower your CPC.
Here’s how to leverage audience targeting effectively:
Implement RLSA: Use RLSA to adjust bids for users who have visited your website before. These users are more familiar with your brand and more likely to convert, allowing you to bid higher for their clicks while reducing overall CPC.
Utilize Similar Audiences: Target users who resemble your existing customers by using Similar Audiences. These users share similar behaviors and interests, making them more likely to engage with your ads and convert.
Refine Your Audience Segments: Continuously analyze and refine your audience segments to ensure you’re targeting the most relevant users. This precision helps maximize your ad spend efficiency and lower CPC.
By focusing on audience targeting, you can improve your campaign ROI, ensuring your ads reach users with the highest likelihood of conversion, thereby reducing CPC and enhancing overall campaign performance.
Understanding how your ads perform across different devices can significantly impact your Google Ads CPC. Device-specific bid adjustments allow you to allocate your budget more effectively, ensuring you’re spending where your conversions are most frequent and cost-effective.
Here’s how you can implement device-specific bid adjustments:
Analyze Device Performance: Dive into your Google Ads account and examine performance metrics segmented by device type—mobile, desktop, and tablet. Identify which devices yield the highest conversion rates and lowest CPC.
Adjust Bids Accordingly: Increase bids for devices with high conversion rates and lower CPC, ensuring your ads appear more frequently to users on these platforms. Conversely, decrease bids for devices with lower performance to prevent unnecessary ad spend.
Continuously Monitor and Adjust: Device performance can shift over time, so regularly review and adjust your bid strategies to maintain optimal performance.
By tailoring your bids based on device performance, you can reduce CPC and enhance your campaign’s efficiency, directing your ad spend to the most profitable channels.
Finding the right Google Ads bidding strategy is like picking the perfect Spotify playlist—your choice significantly impacts your experience (and CPC!). Manual bidding gives you precise, hands-on control over bids but requires consistent attention. Automated strategies leverage Google’s advanced AI, adjusting your bids in real-time based on vast amounts of data, helping reduce CPC by optimizing placements and avoiding overspending.
Here are four automated strategies worth testing:
Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): Google sets bids to maximize conversions at your desired CPA, keeping CPC efficient by avoiding unnecessary high-cost clicks.
Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend): Automatically adjusts bids to achieve your desired return, prioritizing cost-effective clicks that deliver higher revenue.
Maximize Conversions: Allocates your budget to drive as many conversions as possible, lowering CPC by smartly distributing spend to clicks most likely to convert.
Maximize Conversion Value: Targets high-value conversions within your budget, ensuring your CPC is justified by the quality and revenue potential of each click.
Regularly test these strategies and carefully monitor their performance, tweaking as needed to ensure your campaigns deliver maximum profitability at minimum CPC.
Using long-tail keywords often leads to lower CPC because they are more specific and less competitive. Plus, they ensure your ads connect with an audience who’s ready to buy—not just browse.
In these scenarios, you might have to get creative. Try to dig up some long-tail keywords that have lower CPCs and higher intent levels.
A few tools we’ve found useful for this:
Spyfu PPC Research Tool
Google Ads Keyword Planner
Google Suggest
Finally, you can use broad match keywords to mine for cheap, but highly effective keywords. This is as easy as setting up a new campaign with a few broad match keywords. Then start panning through your search terms report on a regular basis. Many times you’ll find high intent long-tail keywords that can decrease your cost per click and help you make more money.
Google’s Enhanced Conversions and value-based bidding strategies utilize first-party data to refine conversion tracking and optimize bids. This approach helps lower CPC by focusing on high-value clicks.
Enhanced Conversions improve accuracy by using hashed first-party data, like emails, to match conversions to Google accounts. This leads to better attribution and more precise bidding.
Value-based bidding prioritizes conversions based on their revenue potential. By targeting high-value clicks, this strategy efficiently allocates your budget, reducing unnecessary spend and lowering CPC.
Integrate Enhanced Conversions: Set up your account to use first-party data for conversion tracking, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.
Assign Conversion Values: Define values for different conversions to guide Google in optimizing bids for high-revenue potential clicks.
Monitor and Adjust: Regularly assess performance to refine your bidding strategy, ensuring your ads target the most profitable clicks.
By implementing these strategies, you enhance conversion tracking and bidding efficiency, reducing CPC and maximizing your advertising budget.
Ad scheduling optimizes ad delivery by targeting peak engagement times, reducing CPC. Adjust your Google Ads schedule to align with when your audience is most active, enhancing performance and minimizing costs.
Find days and times with zero conversions
This filter will show you days and times with conversions that exceed your CPA.
Find days and times with conversions that cost more than your target CPA
Running ads 24/7 can quickly drain your budget. Instead, focus spending during high-traffic periods, similar to how stores adjust hours based on customer flow.
Use scheduled bid adjustments to lower bids or pause ads during less profitable times, like late nights or weekends. Analyze Google Ads data to pinpoint underperforming periods, basing adjustments on at least 90 days of data. This ensures efficient budget use, improving ad performance and profitability.
Some regions yield better returns than others. By analyzing your geographic performance data, you can apply bid adjustments to prioritize high-value locations, enhancing conversions and reducing CPC.
To implement geographic bid adjustments effectively, dive into your Google Ads account to examine location-based performance data. Identify regions that offer the best ROI and adjust your bids accordingly to maximize efficiency.
Prevent people not in your targeted locations from seeing and clicking on your ads.
Utilize historical data to uncover seasonal trends and regional preferences. Align your bid adjustments with these insights to optimize ad spend and achieve cost-effective campaign performance.
The goal is not just to lower CPC but to enhance overall campaign efficiency by focusing on regions with the best conversion potential. Regularly review and adjust your geographic bid strategies to align with your business goals and market dynamics.
If you’re using a page builder like Unbounce then its easy to add dynamic keyword insertion to your landing pages.
Dynamic keyword insertion allows you to replace words and phrases on your landing page with data from URL parameters. Amongst other things this allows you to insert users search term right into the headline of your landing page. This will improve your quality score when Google sees the visitor’s keyword is included on the page. As a result, you’ll have a better ad rank and pay less per click.
If you’re not currently using a tracking template then you can start by using this one:
{lpurl}?utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content={creative}&utm_term={keyword}&adgroupid={adgroupid}
Login to your Google Ads account and navigate to the account settings tab. Then copy and paste it into the Tracking template section.
Now you’re ready to set up dynamic keyword insertion on your landing pages. For a complete guide check out the Unbounce official documentation on working with dynamic text replacement
The search partner networks includes websites Google partners with like Amazon, AOL, AskJeeves, the New York Times, and many others. The search partners feature allows Google to show your ads on its partner sites.
Often times these sites will have lower CPCs. That’s because you’ll have less competition on these sites compared to Google. This will almost always lead to an overall decrease in your CPC. However, its still important to make sure your CPA doesn’t go up as a direct result. Which can happen if the traffic from partner sites isn’t converting. So make sure you keep an eye on your CPA when making the switch.
Try not to test more than one or two variable at the same time. Testing too many things makes it difficult to determine what change was responsible for the performance increase.
In order to determine which ad is the winner, you’ll need to do some math. It’s pretty straightforward you’ll just need to have the right columns visible. Then you’ll want to use a calculator to determine if the results are scientifically significant. It sounds fancy, but it really just means that you have enough data to determine which ad the winner. If you don’t have enough data and you make changes too quickly then you may pick the losing ad. That’s like shooting yourself in the foot so don’t do that.
Just take the number of clicks and conversions on each ad and plug them into this calculator. It will spit out two results. The first result labeled “P-Value” is a fancy metric that indicates the likelihood your hypothesis is significant. Thankfully this calculator also gives us a second result that’s titled “Significance”. This is the only result you need to pay attention to. If it says “Yes!” then your good to go. Now you can pause the losing ad and begin a new test knowing you made the right decision.
Ad extensions are like the cherry on top of your sundae—they make great ads even better. In Google Ads, these features enhance your ad’s visibility, relevance, and click-through rates (CTRs) by providing extra information to users.
Here’s how ad extensions can elevate your ads:
Boost Visibility: They make your ads more prominent on the search results page, increasing the likelihood of user engagement.
Offer More Info: Extensions like site links and location details provide users with additional information, such as specific website pages or your business address.
Drive Actions: Features like call extensions enable users to contact you directly, while location extensions guide them to your store.
Enhance Relevance: By adding relevant details, extensions can improve your Quality Score, leading to lower CPC and better placements.
Increase ROI: More engaging ads result in higher conversions and a better return on investment.
Popular ad extensions include:
Site Links: Direct users to specific website pages.
Callouts: Highlight unique selling points like “Free Shipping.”
Call Extensions: Allow direct calls from the ad.
Location Extensions: Show your business address and map.
Incorporating ad extensions can make your ads more engaging and effective, boosting performance and ROI in your Google Ads campaigns.
At Linear, we apply the Pareto principle, or 80/20 rule, to our work, emphasizing that 80% of success comes from 20% of efforts. Identifying this crucial 20% can boost performance efficiently.
In Google Ads, the goal extends beyond lowering CPC; it’s about enhancing conversions, lead quality, and maximizing your budget. While reducing CPC helps, it’s not the sole focus. Prioritize metrics that drive significant results.
For example, a dollar reduction in CPC is great, but the real win is nearly doubling conversion rates and reducing cost per conversion by 53%. This shows that while lower CPC aids success, it’s not the main driver.
Focus on impactful metrics to lower CPC and improve outcomes:
Use dedicated landing pages to enhance conversion rates.
Implement multi-step forms to boost conversion quality.
Improve traffic quality and click-through rates.
Lowering your Google Ads CPC is more than just a cost-cutting exercise—it’s about maximizing the return on every dollar spent in your advertising budget. The strategies outlined in this article are designed to enhance ad relevance, optimize spend, and boost overall campaign performance. However, remember that there isn’t a universal solution. It’s crucial to test these strategies, analyze the outcomes, and continuously refine your approach to adapt to fluctuating CPCs and evolving market dynamics.
Start by focusing on high-impact strategies such as enhancing your Quality Score, strategically utilizing negative keywords, and optimizing your account structure. Once these foundational elements are in place, incorporate advanced techniques like responsive search ads optimization, precise bidding adjustments, and sophisticated audience targeting. Over time, you’ll see a reduction in CPC, an increase in conversions, and improved profitability of your ads.
Have more questions about lowering your CPC? Feel free to leave a comment below—I’m here to assist. If you’re interested in how we can help you reduce your CPC, don’t hesitate to fill out a proposal request. Let’s work together to make your Google Ads campaigns more efficient and successful.
Using data collected from our in-depth audit, we’ll deliver a detailed plan to grow your business month after month. Your proposal includes:
WRITTEN BY
Luke Heinecke
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