How much does Google Ads cost? Cost per click and starting budget
Google Ads does not have a fixed price list. You pay for clicks or impressions, and the price is set by an auction. In this article, we show what determines the cost of advertising on Google and how to set a budget that makes sense.
How the Google Ads auction works
When someone enters a query, Google selects ads based on Ad Rank. Your rank is influenced by your bid, Quality Score (ad relevance, expected CTR, and landing page experience), and search context. A high Quality Score allows you to pay less for the same position.
What determines the cost per click
Industry. Keywords in finance, law, or medical services can be more than ten times more expensive than product keywords in e-commerce.
Query intent. Purchasing keywords, for example with a product name and the word "price", are more expensive than general informational keywords.
Competition. The more companies bid on the same keyword, the higher the price.
Page quality. A slow or irrelevant landing page lowers your Quality Score and increases costs.
What starting budget to choose
For search campaigns, calculate it based on data. Check approximate bids for your keywords in Keyword Planner and multiply them by the number of clicks needed to collect data. If your website conversion rate is 2% and you want 30 orders per month, you need about 1,500 clicks.
For online stores, we usually start with Shopping campaigns and Performance Max, because they make good use of the feed and quickly collect sales data.
How to lower Google Ads costs
Regularly add negative keywords based on the search terms report.
Match ad headlines to search queries to increase CTR and Quality Score.
Improve the speed and content of your landing page.
Track conversions with values so that the bidding strategy optimizes for profit, not just the number of clicks.
Google Ads or SEO?
Google Ads brings traffic from day one, but it stops when you turn off the budget. SEO builds traffic where you don't pay per click, but it takes time. A combination of both channels works best. Read more in our guide to SEO for online stores.
Summary
The cost of Google advertising depends on the industry, keyword intent, and campaign quality. Instead of looking for the lowest bid, calculate how much you can pay for a customer and build campaigns around that goal. If you want, we can audit your account as part of our Google Ads management service.
