When starting Google AdWords (now referred to as Google Ads) campaigns, you may think it’s just about finding some keywords and creating your ads, and Google does the rest for you. Unfortunately, it takes a lot more to run a successful Google Ads campaign and to improve your Google Ads click-through rate (CTR).
But why is the CTR so important?
CTR is a performance metric that expresses the number of times an ad gets clicks versus the number of times it’s viewed. It’s currently used to indicate the ad copy performance. Improving your CTR is one of the fastest ways to increase conversions and, then subsequently, generate more sales.
In this article, we will look at 7 ways on how you can boost your Google Ads traffic by improving your CTR.
Table of Content:
1. Improve Your Quality Score
Quality Score is a measure that shows how relevant your ads, keywords and landing page are to a person who sees your ad. It’s a Google Ads metric that gives each keyword a quality score from 0 to 10.
Ads with a higher quality score receive a higher score and link to lower costs for the advertiser. Google predicts the likelihood of someone clicking on your ad and evaluates the user experience after clicking on the link and landing on your webpage.
These are the three factors that affect your score:
- Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR): How likely is it that someone will click on your ad based on your past performance?
- Ad Relevance: Does the ad respond to users’ search intent?
- Landing page experience: After clicking the ad, does the user find the correct information on the landing page according to what the ad copy states?
For quality score improvement, several factors should be taken into consideration. A great beginning is starting to look at the three factors mentioned above, both in an individual and global view, to optimize your ad copy using targeted keywords in the headline and description (the more specific, the better).
2. Use ad extensions
Along with copies of your ad, Google offers you the opportunity to expand your ad with additional information, making it more visible and giving people more reasons to click on it. It’s important to use all the relevant extensions to your business goals.
Here are some of the most commonly used ad extensions :
- Sitelink Ad Extensions: This enables you to link directly to specific pages on your website, such as the about us page or the shop page.
- Callout extensions: Allow you to add additional text to your ad, such as “30-day money-back guarantee” or “2-year warranty”.
- Price extension: By Labeling your price products, users can see your offers directly from your ad.
- Lead extension: Use this extension so people can subscribe to your newsletter from your ad.
There are a variety of other ad extensions offered by Google Ads. You can decide if you want to use them, to help you achieve your business goals.
3. Create different Ad groups
By the time you have finalized your keyword research, you may have noticed keywords that reflect different search intentions and needs of users and their current stage of the sales funnel. Here is where the use of various ad groups becomes key.
Adding multiple keywords into one ad group impacts the relationship between ad copy and keyword. If the ad groups have up to 20 keywords, your ad copy will not be able to respond one-on-one to the user’s search request. The result is that your quality score and CTR will be negatively affected since your ads wouldn’t meet the requirement of being relevant.
Instead, be aware of grouping just those keywords which are close variants of each other to create ad copies, including the targeted keyword at least twice.
4. Write appealing ad copies
When writing your ad copy, you should think about your visitor’s experience from the query to the ad copy to the landing page. If your prospects feel they may be going down the wrong path, they will hit the back button and do another search. So make sure your landing page is responsive to what you promise in your ad copy.
Also, be as specific as possible and, depending on your product or service, use the copy approach that best suits your business. Here’s a quick summary of the main types of ad copy approaches:
- Features: highlight the physical aspects of the products or services.
- Benefits: draw attention to the positive results the visitor will get from your product/service.
- Problem: focus on the issue in place, to relate to the problem the visitor is trying to solve.
- Solution: focus on solving the predominant problem the user is facing.
- Testimonials: use existing feedback to demonstrate social proof.
Top of the class: call out any awards, rankings, etc. to show you are the best.
Also, add a call to action in all your ad copy. We’re running ads because we want the visitor to take a specific action, correct? Once they understand what you want them to do (fill out a form, make a purchase, etc.), they’ll have less doubt about whether your website answers their search query.
Here are some great examples that use the ad copy approaches mentioned above:
5. Test different ad copies
Since you may not know which type of ad works best for your business from the start, testing different ad copies give you the opportunity to improve your ads continuously. Try to create 2-3 ad copies for each ad group by implementing slight changes each time and replacing those with a lower performance with new ad copies.
Another way to test different copy variations is using Google’s responsive text ads. You can use more than just 3 headlines and 2 descriptions and let Google test for you which combination might lead to higher conversion.
6. Choose the right bidding strategies
Choosing the correct Google Ads bid and implementing a solid strategy for adjusting bids is key to making your ad more visible and more likely to be clicked. If you’re not ahead of your keyword bidding, you could possibly end up wasting your entire budget on just a few clicks.
There are various bidding strategies to cater for different types of businesses and their individual goals. If you are focused on gaining clicks to generate traffic to your website, you might consider the following two strategies:
- Maximize Clicks: An automated bidding strategy with an average daily budget, automatically managing your bids to bring you as many clicks as possible.
- Manual CPC Bidding: As the name implies, this bidding strategy allows you to manage your own bids. You can set different bids for different keywords. It’s easy to track campaign performance daily to improve your bidding for the highest-converting keywords.
Check out the Google Ads help page to learn about all bidding strategies.
7. Use remarketing audiences
With remarketing, you can run perfect ads tailored to specific users. For example, you can select a targeted ad for a visitor who previously viewed a particular product or service on your website.
You can target visitors already familiar with your brand or set up specific ads to sell more to existing customers. If they know you, they’re more likely to click on your ad.
There are different ways how to improve your Google Ads CTR. The correct approach and strategy will not only save you money by reducing your advertising costs but also increase your conversion by delivering your ads to the right person.
Do you need help? Schedule a meeting today to discuss the best Google Ads strategy for your business!
LAST UPDATE ON DECEMBER 2022
