Why you should care about your adverts’ CTR on Google ads

There are dozens of tools available nowadays to improve your SEO and digital marketing strategies so it can become a bit of an overload of digital marketing information – all the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ to follow can be overwhelming when putting together your SEO and online strategy.

Thankfully Google has come up with a relatively easy way to get going with your campaigns, which is Google AdWords and is defined as a pay-per-click form of online marketing.  Pay-per-click, known as PPC, is an effective, quick and easy way to get your site showing up in Google’s search engine results page, which is what digital marketing is all about.  With PPC you can strategically place your ads and pay a fee only once the ad is clicked on by a visitor.  This form of digital marketing speeds up the traffic generated to your site as opposed to a long-term plan of attracting visitors organically.

Pay-per-click (PPC) goes hand in hand with click-through-rate (CTR) and a closely monitored CTR of your pay-per-click digital marketing strategy is essential to ensure that your paid marketing is a success.

What is CTR?

PPC, number of clicks and CTR can all quickly become very confusing when embarking on a digital marketing campaign. The tricky thing is that they are all as important as each other.  This is just one of the reasons why it’s crucial to your digital marketing efforts to complete a digital marketing course so you are able to learn and ultimately improve your overall SEO and other aspects of online marketing.

So, now that we know most of the acronyms in the paid advertising world, let’s take a closer look at CTR in particular.

The click-through-rate (CTR) is one of the most important factors in any digital marketing campaign. There’s no use having a super impressive website that is visually appealing and crammed with great content if no one is clicking through to your site.

How CTR works

When creating an online ad on Google AdWords your advertisement is given a quality score – yes, Google is very clever like that.  Your quality score is based on aspects that Google uses to decide whether to display your ad or not. This is all based on a particular price ratio.  This is where your CTR (click-through-rate) comes into play.  Basically, the lower your CTR the more your ad will cost.  Remember this is also where your keyword choice becomes very important.

Your CTR is one way to measure how successful your ad has been in generating interest online and, of course, getting visitors to your site.  Your CTR also helps you gauge the effectiveness of your ad, for example, the content, titles and metadata descriptions.

Improving your CTR

So, you have spent hours of work on building you AdWords campaign and it’s ready to go – but hold on: it’s not as straightforward as that.  Even though you are positive your content is great, you’ve researched and chosen your keywords carefully and added stunning visual content, now is the time to put all your attention into structuring your AdWords account well to ensure you are able to monitor and effectively manage your paid marketing campaign.

Here are a few tips on getting the most out of your ad:

• Concentrate on keywords – It’s a well-known fact that keywords are ‘key’, but it cannot be stressed enough when it comes to choices the right keywords as it has a direct effect on your CTRs. Make sure your ad contains the keywords you are bidding on.
• Compelling content – Just writing your ad and choosing a few catchy lines is not enough to ensure your paid marketing strategy pays off. To ensure a high CTR your content has to be engaging and include a strong call to action.  It’s always a good idea to take a look at your competitors’ ads to see how you should be structuring yours.
• Capitalisation – Who would have thought we’d ever be told to you use capitalisation online? It’s always been a big no-no, but when it comes to improving your CTR – CAPITALS work.
• Don’t forget the URL – This may seem obvious but, oftentimes, the advert URL is not used effectively. There are 30 characters allowed in the display URL, so create a site address that may not actually exist on your site, but it will appear relevant in the search.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

PPC campaigns form a significant part of your digital marketing success. The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Marketing Course will show you what it takes to get on top of this critical part of business. For more information about this and our other online digital marketing courses, follow this link.