5 Ways To Increase Your AdWords Click Through Rate

Your AdWords click through rate (ctr) is an important statistic for any advertising campaign. A good ctr will reward you with a higher Quality Score. And the better your Quality Score, the less you’ll pay in bids, saving you money.

It may surprise you to know that improving ctr is easy. Yet incredibly, many advertisers don’t pay it much attention.

What Is Click Through Rate?

You’re probably wondering how Google calculate ctr values for your account? Well, there is no great mystery. Your AdWords Click Through Rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on a keyword or ad by the number of impressions.

For example, imagine your ad has shown 100 times and was clicked on 4 times. Your click through rate would be 4/100 or 4%.

Keep in mind that any ctr above 1% is acceptable, 5% is good and a 10% ctr or more is excellent.

If you’re like everyone else, you’ll easily be able to name two instances where Google measures ctr. But, what most people don’t realize is that AdWords measures ctr in five different ways. And each has an impact on your Quality Score.

Keywords

If you’re like me, you’ll know that all your keywords have their own ctr value. To improve this statistic, you need more people to click on the ad that your keyword triggers.

You can achieve higher keyword ctr by:

+ bidding more so your ad appears higher on the results page.

+ writing a new ad that is more appealing to your audience.

Ads

Every ad in your campaign also has its own ctr value.

+ Add more relevant keywords to the ad group so your ad gets seen more often.

+ Write an ad that is more appealing to your audience.

Many AdWords advertisers don’t realize it, but Google also measures the ctr of all your campaigns and your entire account.

The easiest way to improve your campaign’s ctr is to remove keywords that are not performing. Try removing all keywords that have less than 200 impressions a month and don’t convert.

Why is this important? Consider this example:

Picture a campaign that regularly gets 1000 impressions a week and 50 click through’s. Your campaign’s ctr is 5% (50/1000).

Now, let’s suppose that 20 of your keywords get 150 impressions and 5 click through’s a week between them. None of these keywords are converting, so removing them from your campaign is going to do no damage to your sales.

You now get 45 clicks per week and 850 impressions. The ctr for your campaign is 5.3% (45/850).

This represents an increase of 0.3%. A small rise, but every increase in efficiency can be significant. And if the keywords are not contributing to your sales, then they are not useful anyway.

Domain

Many advertisers, when they experience problems with their Quality Score, believe they can fix the problem by closing their account and opening a new one, They are shocked when this makes no difference.

The fact of the matter is that AdWords tracks your domain performance and will apply a low Quality Score to all the keywords in your new account if you haven’t fixed the underline problem.

The reality is that you should never try to trick AdWords into giving you a good Quality Score, it won’t work.

Earlier on, I told you that there were five instances where AdWords measured ctr values. The fifth instance is the historical performance of all your keywords.

Millions of people use AdWords, and trillions of keywords have been tried in advertising campaigns. There are few keywords that have not been tried previously by other advertisers.

The ctr that others have achieved with any keyword you select will have a big influence on your Quality Score.

I know what you’re now thinking, how do you know if the keyword you’re about to select has a poor historical ctr?

Start by typing the keyword into the “Traffic Estimator” tool. This will tell you how many clicks your keyword might expect per day. Multiply this value by 30 to determine how many clicks your keyword will get per month.

Now switch to the “Keyword Tool” and enter your keyword again. This tool will return the number of searches you’d expect per month.

Divide the number of clicks a month by searches and you’ll get Google’s ctr for that keyword.

If a keywords ctr is low then beware. Google is trying to tell you that your chances of success are small.

The important thing is that if your keyword has a low historical ctr, but you’re certain it’s right for your campaign, then you can still use the keyword. And if you start to achieve a good ctr, then your Quality Score will soon rise and your bid prices drop.

All five measurements of ctr are important to the success of your AdWords campaign. And each can be improved by the changes you make.

The 2 most important things to remember when using ctr to improve Quality Score are:

+ Ctr is only part of the Quality Score equation. To improve, you’ll need to work on every part of the equation.

+ Google reviews performance over time. If your AdWords click through rate for any keyword or ad has been poor to date, then it may take a week or two for any changes you make to fully take effect.

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Adrian Key is editor of the AdWords Adviser, a blog dedicated to making AdWords more profitable for you. Learn how to make your AdWords marketing a success with the resources, ideas and tips at:
==>> http://www.adwords-adviser.co.uk/

When a potential buyer is attempting to find out whether he or she will buy a certain business operation, there are quite a few factors to carefully consider. When a prospect arises, besides the essential questions of suitability, location and longevity, the point of real-world business valuation should be the primary focus. When it comes time to begin negotiations, the seller will provide you with detailed financial documentation – and it is, of course, very much in their best interests to “paint the picture” of their business for sale in a rather luminous light. In such situations, the issue of “add backs” is probably going to represent one of the more difficult problems to deal with.

In a majority of cases, add backs are included to try and present the operation from a real world perspective. As a set of rigid principles must be adhered to when compiling traditional accounting reports, there may well be additional footnotes to consider and these can be either negative or positive depending on your perspective. It is very important when you buy a business to scrutinize each add back as they can often make a considerable difference to your valuation.

When conducting a process of due diligence, it can be a fairly straightforward procedure to check recorded sales and purchases against ledgers and against reconciled bank accounts. Very often however the outgoing owner will be keen to draw your attention to items which may be “one-off” or to additional income which may not necessarily appear on the books at all. You should be open to all suggestions of course but maintain a degree of skepticism at all times until you are able to validate the claims, or otherwise.

Remember that for an item to be claimed as “one time” it must not have appeared during preceding years. Seller could argue that a particular expense is much larger than it should be due to a particular incident or requirement, but if you see a pattern of any kind then the add back must be discounted.

One of the most common add backs, especially when the business can be owner operated, is to suggest the value of a manager’s salary. You need to establish that the outgoing owner was not actively involved in the operation of the business in this case and this figure is only of interest to you if you intend to assume the role of the redundant manager.

Add backs may not be asserted whenever they represent intangibles, such as the prospect of additional revenues due to a new marketing initiative that the outgoing owner has just put in place, for example. Nor should you believe an owner claim that you can reduce a certain category of expenses through renegotiation or other initiatives. After all, if the outgoing owner has not being able to do so to this point it seems reasonable to assume that an incoming “newbie” is likely to have even less ability to affect short-term change in this regard.

Be particularly wary when you are told that a business retains a lot of cash sales. You must essentially discount this notion from a strict valuation perspective, even though such a claim made, after review, may be seen as reasonable. If the owner has not entered the cash sales on the books, he or she will not have accounted for taxes correctly and it’s not fair for them to expect to receive a double benefit in this way, a net tax saving and enhanced business value.

When you have reviewed the complete list of business financials, treat each claim for add back on an individual case basis and never roll them into an inflated value. At this stage you must be particularly diligent to enable you to arrive at a real world price for this prospect.

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Richard Parker is the author of the How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price series. As President and founder of Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center, his materials, seminars and consulting have helped thousands of business buyers realize their dream to buy a business. Want to find out more about business buying strategies that really work, then look no further than=> http://www.diomo.com/

If you have an online business, you already know you need good Internet marketing information in order to succeed. Unfortunately, if you are just getting started, it can be difficult to sort through all the online clutter to find information that is genuine, reliable and most importantly, profitable.

Finding solid Internet marketing information is important because it can greatly reduce your learning curve. It can help you become profitable a whole lot faster. For example, when launching your business, you need good advice on how to choose the right niche and the right product or service. You also need to know how to develop a great web site and how to rank well in the search engines. In reality, these points are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg in terms of what you will need to know in order to be successful long term. Finding good Internet marketing information early on can shave months, or even years, off this process.

Of course, the Internet is a constantly evolving medium. A product or strategy that was all the rage a few months ago may now be out of favor as new ideas appear on the scene. Amidst this backdrop, it is very difficult to distinguish between what is genuine and what is unreliable. Therefore, you need to evaluate any Internet marketing information you find very carefully before investing your hard-earned money or even more valuable time in pursuing it.

When evaluating the validity of any Internet marketing information you find, it is very important to first consider its source.

- Is the source reputable? A quick online search is a great way to find any obvious red flags.

- Is the author successfully using his advice in his own business? (Hint: the Internet is full of so-called gurus who have never made a dime by practicing what they preach).

- Can she provide proof in the form of testimonials or endorsements to support her claims?

- Is there an active community surrounding this individual? Does he have a forum? If so, are the conversations going on there focused on the ‘right’ way to do things (vs. sneaky tricks to game the system?) One of the best ways to determine the real deal is to hang back and study what is going on around their little corner of the Internet.

Once you find a reputable source, you then need to be sure the recommended strategies and tips will work in your case. Before accepting and making use of any Internet marketing information you find, make sure it is applicable to your particular business model. In other words, if someone is making a fortune selling information products to an international audience and you are running a dry cleaning service in Topeka, Kansas – you might want to look for advice more relevant to your own situation.

This is where good old-fashioned common sense comes into play.First, find someone who is already successful doing what you want to do. Then, do your research and make sure he or she is legit. Finally, start with the basics and build from there. You will find the tried-and-true fundamentals don’t change nearly as rapidly as the latest fads do. Before you know it, you’ll be on your way to building a profitable and sustainable long-term business online.

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Trish Lindemood is an entrepreneur, marketing consultant, and professional web writer who specializes in creating search engine optimized web copy and content. She also teaches other online entrepreneurs how to build and grow their business with effective content creation and promotion. To learn how grow your business with great content, visit http://www.WebCopyResults.com/blog