Boost your Adwords click-through rates and help improve your Quality Score with these 5 tips.
Pay-Per-Click advertising with AdWords can be a great way to generate more traffic for your website and gain more exposure for your brand. Whether you are using AdWords currently, or are just getting started, here is your 5-step checklist to help produce better click-through rates and ensure better results.
1. Do you have a call-to-action?
Understandably, 70 characters for a description doesn’t leave you with a whole lot to work with, but don’t skimp on the CTA! Using a call-to-action makes it clear what you want your audience to do and can help to increase the number of click-throughs. The caveat is that your call-to-action cannot contain the word ‘click’ since it is against AdWords ad guidelines, but CTA’s like ‘contact us’ and ‘call today’ can be just as effective.
2. Is your ad copy compelling & easy to digest?
While it is not a simple task to be compelling with only 70 characters, it’s important to create ad copy that is clear, relevant and offers something of value. Do a little competitive research by searching for keywords that you want to go after and checking out your competition’s ad copy. What sort of wording are they using? Do they feature offers? Use their ads to come up with competitive ideas for your ad copy, whether it’s offering something of value like a free download, consultation or discount or just making your ad copy more interesting to read.
3. Are you using the Dynamic Keyword Insertion tool?
The Dynamic Keyword Insertion tool is too simple not to utilize and too beneficial to overlook. By adding a small tag in your text-based ad, you’ll be able to deliver more specific and relevant ads to searchers. How it works is when a user searches for any of the keywords you are bidding on, it will trigger the Keyword Insertion Tool to automatically insert that keyword into your ad or headline (Wherever you place the tag) as long as the keyword falls within the character limits. Whenever the triggered keyword is too long, the default keyword that you specify in the tag will be used instead. This tool is very effective because it shows the searcher the exact keyword they were looking for, plus, the keyword is also bolded; both of which help to increase click-through rates. If you do decide to use the Dynamic Keyword Insertion tool, just make sure that all of the keywords you bid on make sense if they are inserted into the ad.
Here’s an example of an ad utilizing the DKI tool, click here for additional details on how to set it up.
4. Are you leveraging ad extensions?
Ad extensions grant you the ability to provide more information in your ads, such as a phone number, a rating, an address, or social media engagements. Extensions help to enhance your ads to offer users a richer experience and more opportunities to connect with your company. Plus, ad extensions can be added at no additional cost and you are only charged based on ad and extension clicks, so to not use extensions could be a missed opportunity. The additional information and ad real estate you get from extensions can be a simple way to help elevate your click-through rate.
5. Do you have site links enabled?
While site links are technically a type of ad extension, they have some unique qualities that the other extensions don’t. For example, site links are the only extension that you can use simultaneously with other extensions. This allows you to use them with every ad without interfering with other features. The reason that site links are so beneficial is that they provide additional links to your web pages that users can click through to, and have been known to increase click-through rates by 30% on average. However, just because you have site links enabled doesn’t mean they will necessarily be shown in your ad every time. A combination of factors like Quality Score, ad position, and ad relevancy will ultimately determine if site links will be shown or not, but it’s always good practice to have them added regardless.
Higher click-through rates not only help draw more traffic to your website, but they also help to improve your overall Quality Score, which can help your ads achieve better placements at lower costs. This checklist is a great starting point to help you begin to improve your click-through rates and take advantage of the benefits. Using a Google certified PPC agency can help you reach your full potential on AdWords. For more information on how to improve your AdWords strategy or better leverage PPC, please contact us.
Submitted by Erica Machin, Titan Growth