How to increase PPC Click Through Rate (CTR)

Optimisation is something of a buzz word in paid search, and involves making changes to your account to improve its performance. At first glance this seems simple enough. Improving performance simply means lowering your cost per conversion doesn’t it?

Definition – Click through rate is the ratio of clicks to impressions. Worked out using this simple formula:

Number of Impressions divided by Number of Clicks = Click Through Rate Percentage

e.g 1000 impression delivering 100 clicks means a 10% click through rate

Click through rate is a factor in Google’s Quality Scoring and a high click through rate is a good indicator that your keywords and adverts are relevant to one another, which can help lower your advertising costs; With the increasing emphasis on quality scoring (particularly in Adwords) it is important to ensure you achieve good click through rates throughout your account and here are some tips to help you increase them:

• Increase max Cost Per Click (CPC) bids – Often, ads appearing in higher positions will receive a higher Click through rate so appearing higher up could help boost your account.

• Remove low performers – Obviously removing keywords/ads, which have low click through rate will help your account without too much effort.

The two tips mentioned above will help boost your click through rate but aren’t really long term strategies. Removing keywords/ads simply because they don’t deliver good click through rate can mean you miss out on good traffic which will drive sales. The following steps are longer-term strategies that can help you improve your click through rate over a much more sustained period.

1. Split your keywords – Group your keywords as closely as possible in ad groups, even if this means having 100 ad groups containing just one or two keywords, (even consider splitting plurals into their own adgroup with targeted adcopy with the plural keyword in there, as there extra percentage click through will help the quality score and overall campaign and thus account health) Doing this will allow you to write ads targeted to specific keywords (keywords in headline etc) which is a proven way of driving up click through rates.

2. Use Phrase/Exact Match – Broad match can attract huge search volume, but this can be from the wrong audience who are unlikely to click your ads. Targeting phrase and exact match gives you more control over who sees your advert.

3. Test your ad copy – Identify which of your adverts delivers the best click through rate and run tests by creating one or two variations of it. Making small changes on a regular basis is a fantastic way of finding out what works best for your business.
i. Focus on the benefits of your business rather than simply features. Why should the customer choose you?
ii. Utilise dynamic keyword insertion but be careful when using phrase/broad match as you could receive clicks from irrelevant keywords.
iii. Emphasise unique selling points, if you’re cheapest (and can prove it) then say so, if you offer free delivery yet other sellers don’t then shout about it, if you have same day despatch then test that in the ads, if you have any awards or have been featured in press or on TV etc. then these are all things that can be tested to try to increase the click through rate. Always try to write compelling adcopy, remember to “sell the sizzle not the steak”.

4. Use negative keywords – Ensuring you don’t appear for the wrong keywords is just as important as ensuring you do appear for the right ones. Only relevant if you use phrase and broad match negative keywords can help you focus your campaign that little bit further.
i. If you don’t offer free delivery include this as a negative
ii. If you don’t stock certain colours of products include these as negatives
iii. If you don’t have product reviews include this as a negative

5. Tighten up your geo-targeting – If you only do business in certain areas then ensure your ads are only targeted to those areas to ensure you only target the most relevant audience possible.

6. Utilise day parting (ad scheduling) – You may find that certain days/times drive better click through rates than others when you look at your Analytcs stats. Showing your ads just at these times is a sure way to increase your account click through rate

The points above coves how to raise the click through rate, but you may be thinking why is that so important, surely it’s actually the cost per click that matters to your bottom line costs and not the click through rate!? this is true but on Google AdWords the click through rate directly affects the cost per click and we can take advantage of this to lower the cost per click by using the above suggestions, doing it this way means you’ll have earned the right to a lower cost per click, rather than just changed a bid and ridden the cost reduction until Google reacts and lowers the ad position.

It’s also important to note that getting a higher click through ratio could lead to a higher advert position or lower costs, or even both as the quality score will be directly affected by a higher CTR and this will yield cost per click savings and positional benefits as you’ll get those higher CTR keywords at a cheaper cost click or be able to move to higher positions for a reduced cost per click.

Speaking of positional benefits; on Google AdWords the 1-3 ads that feature at the very top of the page get more clicks than those showing down the side of the page. Having an advert showing here would usually result in a CTR boost as those 1-3 ads get clicked far more than the ads down the right side of the page, although number 1 position isn’t often the best converting place for most advertisers, position 2 or 3 can yield some great volume and good conversion rates so it’s worth the time and effort to get the click through rate increased.

You can see the positive results of a higher quality score on Google AdWords in terms of reduction in cost per click below :

The quality score is directly related to the click through ratio, so by increasing the click through rate the knock on effect is a quality score boost, which has the further knock on effect of a discounting in the cost per click as shown roughly in this chart.

So for example a keyword with a quality score of 1 paying £6.00 per click would pay more like £1.30 if the quality score was raised to a 3, £1 if it were raised to a 7 and the keyword would actually get a discounted to 70p per click if a quality score of 10 were attained.

This is one very good reason to work on increasing the click through rate alone, never mind the additional benefits that you’ll see in terms of conversion and cost per sale!

I hope this post helps point you in the right direction for increasing your click through rate across your paid search accounts. However if you need more in depth suggestions, specific to your accounts then consider taking advantage of our free PPC account review.