Seven Simple Secrets That Should Improve Your Ad's CTR (Click Through Rate)!!

Firstly, try putting numbers in the title of your ad, best prefixed with a $ sign or the pound sign. This really draws the eye in to the ad! If you are really clever with words try using assonance (rhyming) in your ads or alliteration, where words following each other start with the same letter. Start all words in the ad with a capital letter to promote emphasis!

Secondly, make sure that your ad title contains the common keyword/s used in your ad group. (The common keyword technique is where all of your keywords share a common word of phrase in them - this improves quality score and leads to improved CTR's too!) The second line is best if it describes a benefit of the product. The third line should contain a feature of the product. The display URL is more valuable if you list a keyword in the subdirectory e.g. www.GreatProducts.com/money where "money" is the common keyword from your ad group.

Thirdly, work the word "scam" into your adcopy and keywords if possible as this word is like a red flag to consumers, and have a call to action in the ad. Tell your potential customer what it is that you want them to do! Don't exaggerate or B.S. in your ads as a large part of the buying public are very wised up to this and will avoid your ads like the plague!

Fourthly, remember to use misspellings in your keywords as your ads are likely to have less competition for that particular search term. Also, the use of apostrophes and dashes between keywords (make-big-money) will sometimes lead to improved CTR's as, once again, the competition for these searches will be a lot less!

Fifthly, use negative keywords to dispense with the free information seekers. Like -free or -no cost.

An ad example then:

$29 Money Magnet Manual
Slam The Scams To Earn Big Jam!
Buy Money Making Tips And Secrets
www.BestProducts.com/Money

(The URL used in the ad is a made up one so please don't click on it as it has no destination - don't believe me, try it and see for yourself! You'll probably get a 404 Not Found error.)

I know that the above ad may sound a bit cheesy, it is just an example and at the very least it is a little more interesting than some of the really 'dry' ads out there!

On the topic of misspellings, one keyword you might use is making monye and "making monye" and [making monye]. Chuck in -free to get rid of the curious crowd!

Sixthly, split test your ads by running two at a time for the same ad group; take an adequate length of time to test (at least a week) then dispense with the lower performing clicked on ad (pause it rather than delete so you can refer to it later if needed) and write another ad to test against the best one. Keep continuing this process! Your CTR will get better and better!

If your competitors are using wordy ads then consider writing a short ad to stand out more! When writing ads, try to mirror the thought processes of the buying public in your adcopy. If the searcher connects on this level with your ad (if it directly relates to their thought content) then Wham! you'll likely get another click!

A short Ad example:

$30 Scam Free
Earn Large!
Money Tips
www.BestProducts.com

This ad has plenty of white spaces around the words and will be more noticeable!

Finally, a word about CTR's and when they can be TOO high! If your ad is so compelling and attention grabbing, you may get a lot of curiosity motivated clicks but very few converted sales! Don't ever sacrifice your ad conversion rates in order to get a better CTR as you will regret it in the long run!

The irony is that Google Adwords rewards ads with a high CTR and gives them a higher quality score but if you are losing money hand over fist then what good will it do you to have a higher ad position and slightly lower CPC!?

The higher up the page your ad goes, the more your clever adcopy will attract attention and the more wasted clicks you'll get! Keep a balance in your adcopy between being too interesting and too dull. You will make more money in the long run if your ad is at the 'sweet spot' of ad positioning, that is between 3-7 on the first page.

One other point, if you test your ad and you are getting good results then consider turning on the content network, if you didn't already, so that your ad will get displayed in the Adsense format! This will very likely boost your CTR!

Also, try using dynamic keyword insertion in the ad's title, e.g. {Key Word: Default Text} Be sure to capitalize both the 'K' in 'Key' and the 'W' in 'Word' as this will ensure that the search term used (that matches one of your keywords) will be capitalized.

If you have, as an example {Key Word: Money Making} and the search term that brings up your ad is too long to fit in the ad title, then the default wording of "Money Making" will automatically be used! With dynamic keyword insertion the search term will appear in your ad title and this will likely attract the interest of the searcher as they will get a direct match with their queried term in your ad! A real attention grabber! Great for CTR's!

Unfortunately, the use of dynamic keyword insertion can affect your quality score and henceforth ad positioning too so use it with some discernment!

Best of Luck with your Adword's campaigns! Dave.

P.S. I keep reading conflicting information about the use of affiliate links; direct linking to the merchant's page. If anyone at D.P. could inform me of the duplicate site rule and how Google doesn't allow this, I'd be most grateful! What I read today was that (apparently) Google Adwords doesn't allow two people to advertise by direct linking for the same website when I thought that they simply didn't allow the same keyword or search term to be used for the one destination URL. Am confused about this. Please inform.

 

Really timely tips for me as am just began to run my first AdWords campaign. My current CTR is pretty low (0.23% - 4 clicks in 1702 impressions). Will hope to improve it after some testing. Thanks a lot.

 

Thanks for your comment! I'm very happy that I've helped you out and also, Welcome to Digital Point forums!

One point that I forgot to mention is that you can also include the Euro sign in the ad title if that reflects the currency you are using, or for that matter, use the symbol that lines up with your part of the world and the demographic that you are targeting.

Regards,
Dave.

 

Good post Fatherspirit.. This will save lot of $ in bill.

 

Thanks, glad you liked it! I hope that some of my tips will save advertisers money so that they will have more money to spend on my site! (BIG WINK!)

 

A nice insight into the google adword campaign and packed with useful information.

 

thanks very useful tips

 

Also, don't forget to capitalize every word of your ad. It looks nicer and people are able to read it a bit better! Type a keyword in and look to see if there is someone who typed normally and someone who typed with the first letter of each word in caps. See which one looks better to you. If you don't find one that looks like that, refresh the page and it will bring up new ads to look at.

 

good tips, thnx

 

Already practice this in other arenas and I believe it does indeed make a difference.

Great tips on CTR and conversion.
I am looking to take a leap into the world of PPC.
I'm hungrily sucking up all the helpful info I can find.

Thanks for taking the time.

.

 

Thanks for the wonderful info. Some of the info was very new and some was a nice refresher. I very much enjoyed your post. One QUESTION....when running 2 ads simultaneously ; should the ad serving setting be on optimized or rotate (show ads evenly)? Or does it even matter?

 

This Is Really a Good Post And Really Help Full For US

 

I would be showing the ads evenly to get an accurate gage of which one is performing better. This is hard to when they aren't showing evenly.

Thanks for all your positive comments! (One 'No' vote, sorry that the info wasn't useful to you - whoever it was - I do try!)

Regards,
D.

 

The 1-st rule works maybe with the content ads. But in search results is the most important thing, the keyword must to be in headline. I don`t think, there is anybody who is searching a product and using a $ sign or searching by price. The other rules look effective.

 

Please don't encourage more people to use the word "scam" in their ads.

There's enough of that garbage already out there.

Otherwise good solid tips.

 

Perhaps, but there's no denying that it draws attention! Maybe "fake", "spam" or something equivalent would do the same trick but with a little more freshness!?

My Number One Tip would be to do endless split-testing of ads. Keep comparing and ditching the under-performer. Make another ad and repeat. Improve, improve, improve and your profits should sore. Remember, even though you are concentrating on the ad's CTR (Click Through Rate) you should take note of the Conversion Rate First! (If you are making sales).

Thanks for all your comments and please feel free to ad extra AdWords tips to the initial list above if you can think of any more.

Regards,
Dave.

 

These couple of ads are amongst the most creative I have EVER seen!
Just amazing!! Wonder what their click through rates are like!???
http://tinyurl.com/59so3t

 

Hats Off to this Info Provider.

Nothing Better Than This