"An advertiser with a low click-through rate will be punished with higher costs per click, and lower ad positions, than a competitor with a high click-through rate," says Frank Rumbauskas (http://www.adwordsopus.com), who holds Google's professional certifications in both AdWords and Analytics. "Unlike other pay-per-click engines where bid price is the sole factor in determining ad position, AdWords includes many factors that really give a small business a chance against bigger players."
But, how to get that elusive high click-through rate? Rumbauskas provides these tips on how a new advertiser can quickly gain an advantage over competitors:
1. Use Keyword Macros. This feature in AdWords allows you to craft your ads so that the end user's actual search phrase appears as your ad headline. The format is as follows: {KeyWord:Backup Headline Here}, where the backup headline is entered in the event that the end user's search phrase exceeds AdWords's 25-character headline limit.
The use of keyword macros makes your ads appear much more relevant to an end user, resulting in a dramatically higher click-through rate. Rumbauskas warns that this frequently results in a lower sales conversion rate because of the false appearance of high relevancy: "If you use this tactic and find that you have a low conversion rate, use it only temporarily to build a high click-through rate, because that click-through rate history will stay with your account for the long-term."
2. Use Small Ad Groups. Using small ad groups with keywords that are highly relevant to each other - and to ad copy - results in higher click-through rates. "You want your keyword lists to have tightly common themes, and you also want to include the main keywords of that theme into your ad body, and also the headline, or backup headline in the case of keyword macros, if possible," explains Rumbauskas.
3. Immediately disable poorly performing ads. "You ideally want to test many ad variations, but if you activate one and see that it's not delivering a high-click through rate, pause it immediately before it throws your entire campaign off."
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Frank Rumbauskas is president of ROI Advisors, Inc., a Certified Google Partner Company. You can download a free 36-page PDF guide to using AdWords at http://www.adwordsopus.com
