Improve Adwords Click Through Rate

Depending on your advertising goal, there are various ways to optimise your Google AdWords campaign. You can optimise for impressions or conversions but when your goal is to drive traffic to your site then you’ll want to focus on improving your click through rate (CTR). Pushing up your click through rate will also indicate to Google that your ads are more relevant – your keywords will get higher quality scores and in turn, your ads will be shown more often. For any goal, optimising a campaign takes trial and error but here are 5 tips you can use to get on the right track and start boosting your click through rate results.

How to Improve Click Through Rates

1.       Use Ad Groups
Whereas your overall campaign goal might be to drive traffic to your site, ad groups are important for categorising the different goals of the ads within your campaign. For example, the aim of a coffee shop’s advertising campaign might be to increase traffic to their site. Yet, within this campaign, they’ll set up different ad groups for each of their different products. One ad group will focus on their American Lattes, one on their cappuccinos, another on their biscuits and so on. Setting up ad groups will ensure that your ads only show for their relevant keywords in that group, for more powerful ad impressions and improved CTRs.
2.       Optimise your Ad Copy
The two rules of thumb for strong ad copy are to include a benefit and a call to action. Essentially, tell your audience how your product, service or offer can help them, then encourage them to convert. Another nifty tactic is to merge a CTA and a benefit into one with phrases such as ‘Get clearer skin in a week’ or ‘Start getting healthy today.’ Also, try to avoid featuring prices in your copy as these will remind your audience that you’re trying to sell them something – include discounts, offers or freebies instead, to gauge more interest and clicks.
3.       Use Keywords in your Ads
A factor often ignored and yet of primary importance is using keywords in ad copy. If you include your keywords in both your ad groups and your ad copy, you will drive up the relevance of your ads. If you can include your keywords more than once in your ad copy, even better. More relevant ads appear more often and your keywords will be bolded in the ad copy, to make your ad stand out and appear more relevant to searchers. Get keyword savvy and your ad audience will be more likely to click.
4.       Add Ad Extensions
Besides your ad copy and landing page link, you can add further extensions to your ad. Make sure you use as many of these extensions as are relevant, to give your audience more opportunities to click. You can add a telephone number, sitelinks and social links, as well as app, location and product review extensions. The more detailed your ad then the more it will stand out and these extensions are free until clicked, just like the rest of your ad. When ads with ad extensions show above search results, they take up a lot of real estate – you’re essentially getting more space for your money so make the most of ad extensions.
5.       Increase your Ad’s Position
Ads that show at the top or in the first few slots beside search results experience a higher CTR. They are more visible and their prominence on the page also suggests to searchers that they are more relevant. To increase your ad’s position, take note of the ‘estimated first page bid’ column on AdWords, to tailor your bid amounts per keyword and ensure that your ads will show on the first page. Monitor how your positions increase over time and adjust your bids accordingly.
Campaigns don’t become optimised overnight. To create powerful and results-driven advertising, you need to spend the time and the effort discovering what works best. Yet, if you focus on your goal, whether it’s to get more brand awareness, more site traffic or more conversions, you can tailor the steps you take and your ads will improve. Have anymore tips for improving click through rates? Drop us a comment below…