CTR please help

[ColoradoHomeHelper]

Can someone please explain to me the basic IDEA of CTR and ways to improve it. I have been spending allot of time on my SEO and have seen some great results. I have been spending around 100 bucks a month on my PPC and never really looking at it. I just looked and my CTR its at .07% this seems pretty crappy to me. Figured I would look a little deeper into the PPC side of things.

Anyone?

[Wheatworks]

The CTR (click through rate) of 0.07% does seem low. Most of mine fall between 1.0 and 2.5%

Click Through Rate is calculated by dividing the number of times an ad is clicked by the number of times it is seen.

Generally speaking, making an ad more enticing will improve the CTR.

[ColoradoHomeHelper]

The CTR (click through rate) of 0.07% does seem low. Most of mine fall between 1.0 and 2.5%

Click Through Rate is calculated by dividing the number of times an ad is clicked by the number of times it is seen.

Generally speaking, making an ad more enticing will improve the CTR.

So click through rate mainly has to do with the how enticing an add is? Does click through rate have anything to do with your keywords?

[RonnieG]

Put yourself in the consumer's shoes and eyes. Improving CTR is basically a matter of how appropriate the ad is to the consumer's search terms, and how appealing the "call to action" or offer in your ad is to the consumer. The next step, conversion/registration, is a matter of how appropriate and appealing the landing page and the rest of the site is to the consumer.

The ad text needs to contain as many of the same words of the consumer's search phrase as possible. Therefore, if the keyword phrase is "mycommunity mystate real estate", then those same four words should be in the ad, and "mycommunity mystate homes for sale" should trigger a totally different ad, with the five words of that particular phrase. For each community, I usually have a least three ad combinations: "real estate", "homes" and "houses", and then for a few communities where appropriate and cost effective, "condos". In some communities, I don't care to deal with the low-end condo market.

The ad should also offer a compelling reason for the consumer to select it, instead of any of the other 10-12 sponsored ads and 10 organic results on the page. How well the ad text matches their search terms is the first step. Since I have found that 95% or more of internet RE searches are looking for listings, my "call to action" addresses that desire. I put the words of the keyword phrase on lines 1-2 of the ad, and the "call to action" phrase on the last line.

[ColoradoHomeHelper]

Put yourself in the consumer's shoes and eyes. Improving CTR is basically a matter of how appropriate the ad is to the consumer's search terms, and how appealing the "call to action" or offer in your ad is to the consumer. The next step, conversion/registration, is a matter of how appropriate and appealing the landing page and the rest of the site is to the consumer.

The ad text needs to contain as many of the same words of the consumer's search phrase as possible. Therefore, if the keyword phrase is "mycommunity mystate real estate", then those same four words should be in the ad, and "mycommunity mystate homes for sale" should trigger a totally different ad, with the five words of that particular phrase. For each community, I usually have a least three ad combinations: "real estate", "homes" and "houses", and then for a few communities where appropriate and cost effective, "condos". In some communities, I don't care to deal with the low-end condo market.

The ad should also offer a compelling reason for the consumer to select it, instead of any of the other 10-12 sponsored ads and 10 organic results on the page. How well the ad text matches their search terms is the first step. Since I have found that 95% or more of internet RE searches are looking for listings, my "call to action" addresses that desire. I put the words of the keyword phrase on lines 1-2 of the ad, and the "call to action" phrase on the last line.

Thanks Ronnie...thats the answer I was looking for

[RonnieG]

Glad to help!

One important thing I forgot to mention, but has already been discussed in the PPC forum threads here a couple of times:

A key factor to the CTR numbers is the number of spurious impressions your keywords may be generating. By that, I mean a user may enter something like: "mycommunity mystate pizza, delivery to homes", which might trigger your ad if one of your keyword phrases is: "mycommunity mystate homes" (without the quotes). For a couple of my communities, and for the specific search phrase quoted above, five out of ten of the page one sponsored links are for real estate sites, not pizza delivery stores. Therefore, a large list of negative keywords, mainly at the campaign level, but possibly more at the ad group level as well, is required to keep consumer searches that are NOT really real estate related, from triggering your ads.

You may occasionally see some of these as click-thrus, and if so, your web site stats logs may reveal additional negative keywords that you need to add. But most of the spurious impressions will be for consumer search phrases that you will never see, because AdWords does not track or log every phrase that triggers your ads, and the consumer never clicks your ad, because it is obvious to them that it is not what they are looking for. However, the worst impact of this is that if your ad is not explicit enough, or even if it is, some consumers may still click on your ad, costing you money. They really have no interest in real estate, and may just be curious about why a real estate web site would be listed in Google results for pizza delivery. Maybe they are so bad at selling real estate, they need the extra income!

Be constantly thinking about possible negative key words for all of your search terms, especially as you create new keyword phrases, and you should be able to cut spurious impressions to a minimum, instantly improving your CTR with no significant changes to your ads. My negative keywords list is currently over 1200 words, and growing weekly.

[Sam Dodd]

LOL Ronnie you are so Negative!!! That is great advice and I am currently doing the same thing for my PPC.

[RonnieG]

ROFL! I never thought of it that way, but in this case, being extremely Negative has resulted in some very Positive CTR stats. Last month, my lowest CTR ad was 3.5%, highest almost 18%, and the average of 25 ad groups was right at 10%.

[ColoradoHomeHelper]

Glad to help!

One important thing I forgot to mention, but has already been discussed in the PPC forum threads here a couple of times:

A key factor to the CTR numbers is the number of spurious impressions your keywords may be generating. By that, I mean a user may enter something like: "mycommunity mystate pizza, delivery to homes", which might trigger your ad if one of your keyword phrases is: "mycommunity mystate homes" (without the quotes). For a couple of my communities, and for the specific search phrase quoted above, five out of ten of the page one sponsored links are for real estate sites, not pizza delivery stores. Therefore, a large list of negative keywords, mainly at the campaign level, but possibly more at the ad group level as well, is required to keep consumer searches that are NOT really real estate related, from triggering your ads.

You may occasionally see some of these as click-thrus, and if so, your web site stats logs may reveal additional negative keywords that you need to add. But most of the spurious impressions will be for consumer search phrases that you will never see, because AdWords does not track or log every phrase that triggers your ads, and the consumer never clicks your ad, because it is obvious to them that it is not what they are looking for. However, the worst impact of this is that if your ad is not explicit enough, or even if it is, some consumers may still click on your ad, costing you money. They really have no interest in real estate, and may just be curious about why a real estate web site would be listed in Google results for pizza delivery. Maybe they are so bad at selling real estate, they need the extra income!

Be constantly thinking about possible negative key words for all of your search terms, especially as you create new keyword phrases, and you should be able to cut spurious impressions to a minimum, instantly improving your CTR with no significant changes to your ads. My negative keywords list is currently over 1200 words, and growing weekly.

So how many keywords do you typically have per ad group?

[u2man]

Ronnie,
That's really outstanding ctr. I'm averaging about 8% across the board with 15% being the high. I don't use negative keyword but do use exact phrase. Do you run on content search also? Maybe I'll try the negative keywords to boost the ctr.