3 Tips to Improve Google Adwords Click-Through-Rates (CTR)

Google Adwords is an impressive ad tool.  With a plethora of add-ons, tools and metrics, you can get awesome statistics and research insight into your ads, your target market and your website. Click-Through-Rates or CTR is one of your most important metrics.  This is percentage of your clicks divided by your impressions (how many times your ad displayed).

Google rewards you with by charging you less per click if you have a higher CTR.  They reward you because they deem your ads relevant and useful.

How does this affect me?

Well, most advertisers tend to bid on a large number of various keywords – in most cases, well over 100.  This common practice is killing CTR’s.  Here are three tips, to improve your CTR, which will drastically reduce your CPC (cost-per-click).

1)     Reduce & Group Similar Keywords

Target your ads to specific keywords, and group them accordingly.  Say for example you’re writing ads for Karate Lessons.  Rather than targeting keywords like “karate”, “martial arts”, “self-defence” all for one ad.  You should make separate ad groups for each of these and make specific ad copy for each of them.  By being more relevant, and sub-grouping your keywords, your CTR on each will improve.

2)     Take Advantage of [Exact Match] and “Phrase Match”

Exact Match and Phrase Match keywords are often overlooked aspects in Google Adwords campaigns.  However, these two tools can have a dramatic impact on your CTR.  Here’s how they work:

Placing [keyword] around your keyword is called an exact match.  This means that your ad will only display if someone types in exactly your keywords.  For example, if you write, [karate lessons], your ads will only display for this exact keyword, and not for “karate lesson”, “karate lessons in Edmonton” or “kids karate lessons”.

Placing “keyword” around a keyword is called a phrase match.  Going back to our example, if you write, “karate lessons” as a keyword, your ad will display for “karate lessons in Edmonton”, “kids karate lessons” but not, “karate kids lessons”.

Using these tools to narrow down your keywords is a great way to improve your CTR.

3)     Use Negative Keywords

Another overlooked tool is the ability to write negative keywords, which everyone should take advantage of.  You can use Google Adwords Keyword Generator Tool to discover popular variations on your keywords.  Using our above sample “karate lesson pictures” comes up.  We likely wouldn’t want our add to show up for this search as it would be very unlikely to generate a good lead.  So we would add, -picture, -pictures, -images, -image to our list of negative keywords.

Narrowing your keywords, will improve your CTR and reduce your CPC – take advantage of these tips to maximize the effectiveness of your online advertising campaigns.