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3 Easy steps you can do to maximize CTR in PPC ads

Sep 15, 2008 Google Adwords, PPC Basics

Many people often ask me, what is a good click through rate for a campaign, or how can I get more people to click my ad on lower positions in Google Adwords?  The answer isn’t always obvious because the effect of greater CTR can hamper business objectives and budgets.  However, if you’re confident in your site’s ability to convert visitors, you want more eyeballs to really ramp up sales or lead generation.  If that’s the case, this post is for you.

Easy Step 1

Test multiple ad text versions for your sponsored search campaigns.  If you’re using Google Adwords, be sure to switch your ad distribution to “rotate” rather than “optimize” so that the engine doesn’t bias one ad over another.  If you’re only getting a minimal amount of clicks to a campaign, you may want to test multiple ad texts on alternating weeks so that your click through rates are significant.

If you’re only getting 20-50 clicks per week to a campaign and are testing 4 ads, each ad only gets around 10 clicks, so a comparative click through rate of 5% versus 8% may only depend on one or two clicks in either direction.  Hardly significant findings!

Easy Step 2

Keep a close eye on your competitors.  Any increase in click through you’re getting will likely result in a butterfly effect that can awaken a sleeping giant.  You’re happy averaging position 3-4 so that your ad is top right, but with a little quality score increase you could be ranking 2nd or maybe even 1st at the top of the list.  That’ll cause a bit of a stir with your competition, so don’t expect them to standby idling.

On the other hand, you can learn a lot from your competition.  Chances are if a competitor has occupied the number 1 spot for weeks or months, they have this quality score thing figured out (or they’re really dumb and bid really high, in which case you may not be able to do much).  However, it’s likely there are a few other competitors in the SERPs that can help you write better text.

Maybe you can beat them with:

• a lower price point, if prices are displayed in the ad text itself
• better keyword relevancy in the ad text
• locality, especially if your competitors are outsiders on your turf
• brand recognition, try experimenting with placing your business’ name into your ad text
• a better call to action

A watchful eye on the competition can be your best ally in winning the quality score game and achieving higher CTR.  Remain vigilant and get creative.

Easy Step 3

Watch your bounce rate.  As CTR increases, so too is the likelihood that your bounce rate will follow suit.  More clicks sometimes means less qualified traffic, because advertisers often have to relax their ad text to accomodate a myriad of different prospects types and decision-makers.  That translates to digging deeper into the analytics data and often means landing page optimization (which may not be easy).

Quality score, therefore position and potential future click through rate, is somewhat dependent on time spent on page.  If you can’t get people to stick around on your page for more than 2 seconds before clicking back to the SERPs and onto a competitor’s ad, your quality score may decrease.  Make sure your landing page is appealing to a variety of visitors, and watch your bounce rates carefully.

To get an idea of what bounce rates are good and bad, experiment with the “benchmarking” option within Google Analytics.  You can compare a variety of metrics across entire industries and competing websites of similar size.  It can be a good indicator of what you’re doing right and where your site needs improvement.

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