7 Ways to Improve CTR for Your PPC Campaign

• Tweet

Improving the click-through rate is important for any successful paid search campaign. A stronger CTR increases relevance which helps improve Quality Score and lower your CPC. It also allows for increased traffic to your website since each impression your ads receive are more likely to be clicked. With that in mind, here are seven ways to improve the CTR for your paid search campaign.

1)    Negative Keywords

Performing a search terms audit is a quick and effective way of identifying irrelevant keywords which can be added as negative keywords. By sorting your search terms report by impressions, high impression keywords with low click volumes and CTR can easily be found and added as negative keywords. This will help to increase relevance and not only boost your CTR but also help in wasting money on irrelevant clicks.

2)    Bid Adjustments

Having your ad appear in the top of the search results helps increase visibility which leads to more clicks and a higher CTR. For keywords with an Average Position over 3.0, the triggered ad generally appears in the sidebar and less likely to be seen and clicked on. By increasing bids on keywords with a poor Average Position, your ads will appear in a better position in the search results. This can also cause your CPC to increase so bid increases should be made on keywords returning positive results despite their lower Average Position.

3)    Test Ad Copy

Multiple ad variations should be created for each ad group in your campaign. By rotating them evenly insights can be gained over time into which ads are performing better. Pause the lower performing ads and create variations of the top performing ads.

4)    Sitelinks

Sitelinks appear below your standard text ads and take up valuable screen real estate in the search engine results and have been proven to boost CTR. Since the introduction of Enhanced campaigns in June 2013, description lines can also be added to your sitelinks and allows you to include two extra lines of text below each sitelink which takes up even more space and pushes competitors lower in the search results. Sitelinks can also be customized at the ad group level. You can create up to 20 sitelinks in your campaign and select the most relevant ones to use for each ad group.

5)    Ad Extensions

While sitelinks are also a type of ad extensions, there are other extensions available which can be added to take up more real estate and provide additional information. Location and call extensions are two types of extensions which can make it easier for potential customers to find and contact you.

6)    Create Tightly Themed Ad Groups

With too many keywords in your ad groups, creating relevant ad copy for all of those keywords becomes very difficult. If a certain keyword as synonyms or acronyms, consider separating these keywords into their own ad groups. This will allow you to create more relevant ads for these keywords and help improve your CTR.

7)    Display URLs

Display URLs can include any text as long as your root domain matches your destination URL. With space for 35 characters, there is opportunity to include additional text. Keywords in the Display URL will appear in bold and can help your ad stand out and boost your CTR.

By continuously optimizing your campaign you can create CTR efficiencies which will ultimately lead to stronger results.

Cheers

Denis

• Tweet