CTR - what should one being satisifed with?

I get a CTR of about..... 3%.

I was wondering, what would you consider a worthwhile CTR % in AdWords?

 

3% its is a nice CTR.

But keep you eyes on Position. It gives you important information about how you can improve your CTR.

For example a position of 2.0 means that if you move it to 1.0 your CTR will improve by 40% (for example your 3% would wen t up to 4,2%)

In your example of 3%, do not think in a goal like 5% - think in a goal based in position but also looking in the CTR too.

 

I just looged in, and as its a new day, I have 27 impressions, and 7 clicks for 25% CTR lol.

 

if you ask for CTR for a keyword - 3% is rather low in my opinion. most of my keywords that gain clicks have CTR over 25% if i look into: "this month" time frame.

 

See, this is what I wish to know. Whether or not Im wasting my money with a 3% CTR.

 

is a nice begin but wait a longer period to take conclusions about your ads relevancy.

I alredy has 1 impression 1 click and 100% CRT - but this do not means that I'll live a happy forever.

 

as I said: depends what you ask for. if you have 3% for entire campaign, it is not bad.
if you have 3% for a keyword - work on the ad, bid more and fight for improvements.
remember: CTR for a campaign is not important. you bid on keywords and your ad is always ranked for keyword.
it is your ad and not campaign that is ranked.

 

I average close to 8% for the whole campaign....

 

The whole ctr is still unlcear to me, and i wonder if one of you guys can help me out here.

if a ctr for a specific keyword, lets say "women" gets higher, will this result in lower costs for the keyword (i have to pay les to be viewed).

And do my inactive keywords also influence the overall ctr or can i just let ignore them.

 

My best Adwords ads get a CTR between 35 and 40%. The secret is actually the fact that I customised our campaigns based on Google's recommendations. There was a conference in Auckland last year for advertisers which I attended, and the sales rep (Jayne) was really helpful and gave lots of tips to customise the campaigns due to which our CTR shot right up.

I can't go through everything as it was a day-long seminar, but the main tip that worked for me and caused the biggest increase was as follows. Let's say you have a website selling cars with an ad like this:

Cheap cars
Buy online from us and
get cheap cars!
www.cheapcars.com

The keywords that you target are:
cheap cars
Ford cars
Honda cars etc.

Instead of having one ad group and one ad as shown above, create multiple ad groups for different sets of keywords. So, your first Ad group will only target the keyword: "Cheap Cars" and will have the ad shown above. The second ad group will be called "Ford Cars" and will only target the keywords "Ford" and "Ford Cars". The ad will be changed to look like this:

Cheap Ford Cars
visit our website to buy cheap
Ford Cars
www.cheapcars.com

In this case, since the ad's heading matches what the person searched for, it will stand out. Plus, the "Ford cars" in the heading and the description will appear in bold as well. These ads will be clicked on more than generic ads.

Depending on the number of keywords that you target, you can then have one ad group per keyword or one ad group for a similar set of keywords.

One other thing that worked for me (not mentioned in the seminar) was the use of questions. If you can, use a question in the title. It has been studied that customers notice questions more than statements as they automatically stop, pause and answer the question before moving on. So, the above ad would be:

Looking for cheap Ford cars?
visit our website to buy cheap
Ford Cars
www.cheapcars.com

 

Hi there,
Yes, it is a little tricky. But, here it is:

The more your maximum CPC, the higher your ad is placed.
Also, the higher your CTR, the higher your ad is placed.

So, even if your max. CPC is lower than a rival's ad BUT your CTR is really high, you can actually appear higher than the rival's ad despite the fact that the rival's bid for a higher max. CPC. Does this make sense?

I am not 100% sure, but I think it's just calculated by multiplying the 2 values:
Ex:

You: CPC=$0.10 & CTR=5%. So, position value=0.5
Rival: CPC=$0.40 & CTR=1%. So, position value=0.4

So, your "position value" or whatever it's called is higher despite the lower max. CPC and so your ad will appear higher. Hope this helps!

 

I have been using Adwords for a while now but some things still confuse me.
I do what dfswed said in his first post, make many ads up depending on the keywords. In fact most of my adgroups only have 1 term in them.

Now for the questions. I am only doing search not content.
What does impression actually mean.
1) Is it the number of times people have viewed the page your ad is placed on.
2) or the number of times people have searched for that term regardless of whether they land on the page your ad is on, say your on page 5 but they only visit page 1.

Click through rate %. Is that the number of times the ad is clicked on in relation to the number of visitors to that page. If that is the case the CTR % is always going to be low as not every one clicks on the paid ads.
Or the % of visitors who only click on the paid entries.

I have noticed my click through rate is better on pages that are further away from the front which leads me to believe that click through rate is based on the page only that the ad is shown on.

I usually start off with a small bid that puts the ad back a few pages and consequently build up a high CTR which helps carry it forward keeping my costs down. It seems to work or am I just fooling myself.

From time to time I have a CTR of 200%, ie my ad has been clicked on more times than there are impressions, very odd. It usually happens at the start of the day.

My own stats program shows the number of unique clicks on my ads and the total number of clicks which is always higher, ie some people are clicking on my ad more than once. Do Adwords charge for every click or just uniques.

Thanks in advance, I have more questions but they can wait until later .

 

Our bids range from $4-$5, thus we are 2nd in the category. Our ctr is around 10%. (US Traffic)

 

CTR is relative. Keep your eye on conversions, that's what counts.

 

I think I must be misunderstanding something here dfsweb.

I'm thinking of a typical Google search results page with 10 organic search results and 8 ads on the right hand side of the page.

The organic search results sitting above the fold are in the prime location to attract clicks. The ads are in a secondary location and hence will tend to attract fewer clicks.

Are you truly saying that your ad on a page like this gets over one third of the page's visitors to click on it?

Or do you get your ads placed with the blue background above the organic search results?

 

CTR's of 35 - 40% are not uncommon - right side or above the organic results. All depends on your ad and the level of competition.

 

Yes to both your questions!
They get 35-40% CTR and yes, once your CTR goes fairly high ..... apparently your ads gets promoted to the spot with the blue background above organise search results. And my ads usually appear there.

 

Thanks for those answers GuyGromChicago and dfsweb. This is a bit of an eye opener to me. I have on occasion managed to get a campaign average CTR of around 4 percent. It looks like l need to try harder (or smarter).

I've never looked into getting one of the prime "blue" ad positions before. I had thought you could only get into that position by bidding a very large - EXTRA special - amount. If I understand you right though dfsweb, it seems like you can get there without high bids - you can do it mainly on CTR.

 

Here's the page that talks about that.

Top placement is based on your max bid x your quality score...which is in part arrived at by your CTR.

 

Thanks for that reference GuyFromChicago.