How To Improve CTR in a Google AdWords Account

If you’re wondering how you can improve your Google AdWord CTR, you’ve come to the right place.

For starters, the fundamental basic level of what you can improve is the keyword.

It has four different match type options: exact match, modified broad match, phrase match and broad match.

Exact match is likely to yield the highest CTR, while broad will yield the lowest as Google will broadly match you to different search queries. In this case, you’ll want to use negative keywords. For example, f our keyword is “organic dog food,” you might get matched to “recipes for organic dog food,” which you may not want if you’re a dog food retailer. You can adjust this in the search query port by adding “recipe” or “recipes” in the negative keywords section; this will help your CTR with broad keywords and may help also with phrase and modified broad.

The second level is about relevancy within an AdGroup. You’ll want your keyword within an adgroup to be relevant and close together to ensure that when you write an ad for the adgroup, it’s relevant. Examples are: “buy organic dog food” “organic dog food online” “organic dog food” – all of these are based on intent and the best query. For example, if you sell organic dog food, then “buy organic dog food” has the best intent, while “organic dog food online” or “organic dog food” may be a little broad. This indicates that as your intent gets a broader, your CTR will decrease. Make sure you have all the high intent keywords highly targeted to what you’re offering and very relevant with an ad group.

With this relevant ad group, you’re going to write ad copy that’s relevant to those keywords. Make sure keywords are in the headline. For example, include “buy organic dog food” in the ad headline, as it will catch consumers attention. Make sure it has clarity and that what you offer is clearly stated, for example: “100% organic dog food ingredients.”

Another tip is to make it attractive, perhaps adding “free shipping.” Having a more attractive ad compared to your competitor is important in standing out and gaining those clicks.. Keywords in a headline may be standard, but line two or three display URL should be more unique.

Next part is ad extensions, which can be set up on campaign level. Tip: make sure you capitalize on nearby location, site links, etc.

As keywords optimize to the ad group and ad groups aggregate up to the campaign level, as you approach the campaign level, there are two factors that affect it: First is the search network; when you go on google.com, people are searching for you, therefore the CTR is going to be higher. The second factor is the display network, referring to different blogs and sites, which casts many impressions, making CTR lower. So if CTR is your intention, focus on search network.

Optimize keywords followed by ad copy aggregating up to the campaign, then, the campaigns aggregate up the account level, which will be what you’re optimizing. While you’re optimizing the account level, look at your average account CTR and observe which campaigns fall under average. Then in the campaign, see which ad group has the highest number of impressions and falls under average CTR for that campaign so that you can optimize it accordingly. The ad group that has many impressions has the most opportunity to improve the overall account CTR. Either you add negatives and reduce the number of impressions, or you adjust the ad copy for that ad group, allowing those impressions to convert to more clicks, which will yield a higher CTR for the account. We suggest following the 80-20 rule to base where impressions are optimized, but these are the basic guidelines of how to improve your account CTR.