How can I increase my CTR without increasing the bid amount

Ok, just to follow up my post.

Tried all kinds of keywords/ads variations - nothing really helped.

Finally, I decided to do something I've never done before. As of now I have 6 campaigns with 4 ads each and.... are you ready? With about 2000 keywords each! (the allowed number).

I split the campaigns on different keyword groups: "jobs in usa", "jobs in australia", "jobs in", etc. etc. and of course there are probably millions of keywords related to job search so it is hard to run out of them.

Anyway, I am able to get my ads out at 0.02-0.03 a click and those are the people that are looking for jobs (I will keep monitoring this though).

Ok, AdWords pros before you jump in and say I am doing something ridiculous, give me some time to prove it myself. But who knows, maybe this is how it will work for my site.

 

> AdWords pros before you jump in and say I am doing something ridiculous, give me some time to prove it myself.

You're doing something ridiculous. Oops, sorry. I should have waited before saying that.

All kidding aside, here's free $100 advice.

First, I don't think people search for "job in usa" or any specific country. There are some, those outside US, but most are looking for a specific job, pharmacist for example, or visual basic programmer or massage therapist. It's not clear from your post if you do that, I guess not since you mention only "jobs in" types of keywords.

Therefore, if I was you, I'd create a campaign targeting each of the countries you mention and only that country. Then create groups for each job type such as those mentioned above. Yes, you'll have hundreds of such groups times each campaign targeting a country. I would start with the most popular first. You own the job site, which types of jobs are listed most?

Each group would contain only relevant keywords. The VB Jobs group would have a few keywords such as "visual basic jobs" and "vb programming jobs". If you have such job listings in Chicago, use "vb jobs in chicago" as a keyword or maybe use only the ten largest cities, although I would prefer splitting those into their own groups, maybe one called VB Jobs by City. This is the only way you'll be able to see not only how many searches are made but which groups are most profitable instead of checking your 2000 keywords in one group.

Don't forget about negatives such as salary, description, courses, books, etc. You can do this campaign wide, you don't have to repeat them in each group.

Test no more than two ads at a time.

Each ad of course is specific to the job type, I think you know that already. If you have 100 VB jobs, say something like "100s of VB jobs waiting for you". If less, "dozens of VB jobs".

Important: if I'm looking for a VB programming job, I want to land on that page with only VB jobs, not cab driver jobs. They'll love you for it and your conversions will be much better. Don't make them search again from your home page. I don't see how "jobs in usa" will convert much for you. I now realize too this is an affiliate program. Send the click directly to appropriate affiliate page.

You don't say your average position for paying 3 cents. I would bid higher, try to at least get on the first page. Then again, you might get only five cents for each lead you send the affiliate. But I can guarantee you'll earn more by doing it my way.

I know that is a lot of work. Given the changing nature of such a site, we're talking a full time job to maintain. But, how many other affiliates will be willing to do the same? Do it right and you'll corner that niche.

 

Lucid, I understand what you are saying. The thing is, and I should've said it in the beginning, I can't generate listings to drive a particular group of people to. I just have javascript codes of the well known search engine for different countries, so, the best thing that can be done is to direct the visitors to the main page by more generic ads such as:

Jobs - Worldwide
Find new jobs in US, UK,
Canada, Australia & more!

The ad itself is sort of preparing people what to expect. And of course I hope that they will take time to browse their own country. When they search, they can generate whatever listings they want.

I will keep playing with different keyword groups making them more particular (like you suggested).

 

> I can't generate listings to drive a particular group of people to.

Not sure I understand this correctly. I'm looking at your site. You have a menu for Dental Hygientist (!? should be Hygienist) with a page listing all your (CJ's) dental hygienist jobs. That's the particular group of people. You can't do this for other groups?

> of course I hope that they will take time to browse their own country

How's that working out? What percentage of clicks actually do this?

 

Thank you for pointing the mistake out. It was a typo.

I was talking about the search boxes. I can't generate listings there. But you are right, I probably could create more pages with various jobs listed and drive people to them. I need to think about it.

 

Could you not use the search box and dynamically insert the search term coming from Google. Here's what I'm thinking:

Your Adwords destination URL would be www.foreverhired.com&kw={keyword}

The {keyword} part an Adwords directive that inserts the keyword that triggered your ad. With a script, you could plug that in your search box when the user comes to your site and execute it. You therefore already have a list of jobs they searched for in the first place, without having them to redo the search in your engine.

 

This one has baffled me for a long time but now it makes sense.

 

The percentage is high, but... the program, on average, pays about 1-2 cents a click (It's a PPC program, similar to AdSense, but still different from it). Now, if I had a million visitors a day, I'd be wealthy in no time, but I do not have that many visitors.

 

Not sure. I am going to email the guys at the search engine about it to see what they have to say.

 

A couple more suggestions:

1) Pause keywords that aren't performing
2) RE: Ad copy, why don't you do some competitve analysis? It's not that hard. Go down the page of some of your search terms. Put yourself in your ideal customers shoes, and ask yourself, which ads stand out to me, why? Compile a list of those different phrases that stood out for you, and then mix them to beat all of your competitors! I used this on a campaign in a very competitive market. CTR's are between 5% - 14%, many keywords have a quality score of 10
3) In addition to the search query report that you should use to find new keyword ideas, and create negative keyword lists, also use the geographic report to find areas where your campaign is working well. You can then break out seperate campaigns for each of those areas.

Hope this helps.

 

i belive ctr depends on the ads you design .

 

Change the ads... try to put yourself in visitors shoes & see if you would click on the ad for your search query... The only way to improve on CTR is to be higher position or make the ad copy interesting

 

I get really high CTR's. You need to use one keyword/keyword phrase per adgroup.

Use only [exact match] and "phrase match" and bid high enough to get into top 3.

Make sure your ad has keyword/keyword phrase as title.

That's about it.

 

After a few days of trying different things my CTR did go up to about 0.15%-0.25% which is rather good for me.

The thing that's helped me to get it up has been turning off the content network and reworking my keyword lists. They are still large, but instead of using one or two word keywords, I use three-four word keywords (they are more like phrases).

 

Thanks for the tip. I am doing this too. I had to increase my bid though after playing with different keywords to get my CTR higher. I think in some cases to increase the CTR all you can do is increase the bid. At least, this seems to be the case with me.