9 replies to this topic

[Andy1342]

I've started a PPC campaign while I wait for my site to get noticed by Google. I'm selling a service to a local catchment area. My PPC ads look OK to me.

The click-through rates for search page impressions (that's excluding content page impressions) are like .31% and .82% Are those good? bad? wonderful? Is there a ball-park figure to aim at?

I realise every case must be unique and maybe there just is no answer to my question, but there I am, up to my eyeballs is clickthrough statistics and I'm sitting and nodding wisely to myself and thinking hmmm, hmmm, very interesting, hmmm, hmmm, very impressive and all of a sudden I realise that I have NO idea what anything MEANS.

With many thanks

Andy

[MaKa]

Your question is a little similar to the question: How long is a piece of string?

A big factor to CTR is the position your ads are on. Generally speaking I wouldn't be happy with the CTRs you mention for positions 1 - 3. For position in the 1 - 3 region I would expect at least a CTR of around 3%. This would be for quite generic key phrases, for very focused key phrases I'm running campaigns with a CTR of around 16%.

The campaigns I do run with CTRs you mention are mainly campaigns targeting lower positions (avg. positions in the region of 6 - 9 and lower) and tend to focus on "edge" key phrases. With edge key phrases I mean key phrases that are less relevant. E.g. they may only be relevant for a small part of searches for a specific key phrase.

I would recommend taking a look at the positions and at the relevance of your key phrases. You may also want to have a look at the relevance of the advertorials to the key phrases you are targeting. (Are you using dynamic keyword inclusion in ad titles?)

Just my €0.02

[Alan Perkins]

I'm selling a service to a local catchment area.

Does that mean you have local targeting, too? If your target audience is very much smaller than the audience the ad is hitting, and you ad is written to appeal only to your target audience, that would explain your low CTR. Try refining your targeting options in Campaign Settings.

You have to be careful because low CTRs (on Google Search) lead to low quality scores, which lead to an increase in minimum bids. If I was you I would pause your campaigns NOW, work out what's going wrong, and fix it.

[Andy1342]

Many thanks to you both, good information!

All best

Andy

[BlueSky]

Do you have the content network turned on?..

[Andy1342]

Do you have the content network turned on?..

Yes, I do. The click-through rate including the content network is tiny - 0.02% say - and I'm ignoring this as I understand that it is only the search page click-through rate which affects Google quality scores.

Andy

[Sledge]

Because CTR varies widely by industry, keywords, and audiences, the most important thing to remember is that a high CTR is only good for one thing: to drive desired action. Whether that's a conversion, a call for service, a form filled out, whatever, CTR is basically academic if it doesn't drive solid sales.

I tend to look at conversion rates more closely and use CTR as a sort of benchmark to determine the effect of ad changes. That said, one of the most important benchmarks is one's own business. So mess around with ad copy, targeting, keyword selection, etc., and closely examine CTR to find out what's resonating with your audience.

That's my ¥.02.

[Webmaster T]

Yeah, but if they don't click then how can you convert? With the CTR he's achieving it's driving costs higher! The CTR is so low that he either has terrible CTA's, the value isn't being communicated (worse if there is no value feature) or is so far down in the sponsored results better CTA's are taking most of the action so you either have to bid higher or put a better value proposition in the CTA. Good value propositions communicated properly can enable you to bid less. Running blended campaigns is not good because the CTR on Content network drags the rate down and running separate campaigns for content and Google Network provides more control over the bids, offers and campaign day parting.

.31 on the Google network is terrible if you are in spot 1-8. I would be disappointed if my ads didn't pull at a minimum 4% on the G Network. .31 is above average for the content network. .02 is a , turn it off, back to the drawing board rate if you ask me.

[Andy1342]

back to the drawing board rate if you ask me.

I think so! I will try a whole range of different wordings and see if I can hit on what works.
My ads don't look all that different from my competitors, but I do seem to be finding that the *exact* wording is critical. For example, here in the UK, "weight loss" works much better than "lose weight", hard to know why. So I guess I have ads which look OK but simply aren't.

With many thanks

Andy

[chris1]

Yeah, but if they don't click then how can you convert? With the CTR he's achieving it's driving costs higher! The CTR is so low that he either has terrible CTA's, the value isn't being communicated (worse if there is no value feature) or is so far down in the sponsored results better CTA's are taking most of the action so you either have to bid higher or put a better value proposition in the CTA. Good value propositions communicated properly can enable you to bid less. Running blended campaigns is not good because the CTR on Content network drags the rate down and running separate campaigns for content and Google Network provides more control over the bids, offers and campaign day parting.

.31 on the Google network is terrible if you are in spot 1-8. I would be disappointed if my ads didn't pull at a minimum 4% on the G Network. .31 is above average for the content network. .02 is a , turn it off, back to the drawing board rate if you ask me.

I think you are not taking into account what the terms are. I have managed terms where their CTR was 15% down to terms with a CTR of under .5%, it all just depends on the nature of the term, competition, your product, etc. I would agree that .81% and .31% do not sound very good at all, but I can tell you that for some terms you won't be anywhere near 4% in 8th position.