Is there a minimum CTR and Bounce Rate one should shoot for in order to maintain a QS of "great"? I know that roughly if CTR falls below . 05 google will make the kw inactive, but as for the bounce rate I have no idea. If a key word starts out with "great" and is steady at around say, 2% CTR, and the site bounce rate is steady at 91%, and average time on site is 50 seconds, is this adequate for maintaining a qs of "great" over the long term? Thanks.
If there is it's not published. That said I would say there's not a hard min you should aim to stay above. It's a fluid market with near constant change.
it actually varies based on each keyword and also based on ad position so keyword 1 might need to be a 1% CTR in position 3 while keyword 2 might need to be a 5% CTR in position 5 However if you look at the numbers holistically a 1% CTR is considered average and 2% is considered better than average.
It used to be that way, However, that no longer applies, Google will simply keep on raising you Cost per Click and if you continue to pay it, they'll keep on showing your ads
I don't know that anyone outside of Google could provide any sort of "average". That aside, I would consider 1 - 2% well below average ( in accounts I've seen) unless your talking about the content network.
Im talking about in general across every account I have ever managed, if you took the average 1% is what it would come out to. Also consider the fact, that many of my clients have extremely large budgets who can afford to pay for very general keywords. If you were just bidding on highly targeted keywords, like its commonly practiced for limited budgets and affiliate marketers, then CTR would be much higher.
In my opinion "large budgets" should not equate to "general keywords" and low CTR. Overall budget should not be an issue in relation to targeting. When working with large budgets rather than using a few "general" terms I prefer to work with thousands of highly targeted terms, ads and landing pages. Better targeting provides a higher ROI every time, regardless of budget. ericward, don't waste time worrying about minimum CTR and related metrics. Focus on building campaigns that meet your objectives - whatever they may be. A high CTR gets you, well, a high CTR. I'll take a low CTR with high conversions over a high CTR with low conversions any day of the week. I think you'll find the following to be pretty informative - ad quality and performance.
Actually we do incorporate both general terms and a very large extensive portfolio of highly tageted keywords. It's the combination of both that makes a great payoff. My average client has over 150k keywords and one client actually has a portfolio of over 1 million keywords. These companies are highly aggressive, and spend millions a year on advertising, and want the conversions of both broad and niche terms of which not only to they want the conversions but they also want highly definable conversions and campaigns with such clarity you can tell them just about anything about each visitor and each click. Its the difference from 1 - 10 sales a day and 100 - 1000 sales a day.