You can win a higher ad position in the auction with a lower CPC bid by:
Creating high quality ads and landing pages
Creating ads that include terms or phrases people are searching for
All of the listed answers
Creating ads that link to a generic landing page
Explanation: Ad position is also influenced by the expected impact from ad extensions and other ad formats, such as sitelinks. This means that if two competing ads have the same bid and quality, the ad with the better expected impact from extensions will generally appear in a higher position than the other.
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