This is – in part – a reflection that more advertisers have started to use AdWords, increasing the price of individual keywords.

So, what’s an advertiser to do?

Watch your quality score…

When using phrase or exact keyword targeting, pay close attention to your quality score. For each of your chosen keywords, Google looks at your ad content and landing page, and makes a decision on how relevant they look to the keyword you have chosen. They also consider any previous click-through rate for that term. (You can see your quality score by going to the keyword tab under a campaign, and hovering over the status column). The better your quality score, the higher your ads will be shown and less you will have to pay per click.

This is Google’s way of rewarding advertisers who they think are providing searchers with the information being searched for.

A good starting point then is to make your campaigns as focused as possible, grouping related keywords in separate ad groups; and over time taking your best performing keywords and putting them in an adgroup of their own (this means you can write an ad specific to that keyword).

Keep track of your click through and conversion rates…

Achieving a higher click-through rate is a fast way to improve your quality score. Start split-testing different ads against each other to see which perform best.

Use your analytics reports…

Integrating your AdWords and analytics accounts allows you to take advantage of a number of reports in analytics. Firstly, try segmenting your analytics data by AdWords visitors and keywords, to see how they compare to traffic from non-paid sources. Also, pay attention to your day parts report; if you get a lot of clicks in the small hours of the morning you may want to limit your ads to only appear at certain times of the day.