Skip to main content

Google AdWords Average CTR and Best Practices

Image
By

A previous post here covered average click-through rates for email newsletter advertising, email campaigns and website banner ads. As noted, DoubleClick provides fairly reliable data across those media.

It's surprisingly difficult, however, to get meaningful data on the average click-through rate (CTR) for Google AdWords ads. This discussion on Webmaster World reports various experiences: 0.6%-1.2%, 1%-2% and 3%-5%. PayPerPost puts the figure at 0.5-1.5%; and Hochman Consultants pegs the average at 0.7-1.5%. Across all of the sources I was able to find, the average fell into the range of 1.1-2.2%. That range includes both B2B and B2C ads (the latter tend to generate higher CTRs). On the B2B side, I'd place the average Google AdWords CTR in the range of 0.9-1.4%.

So—how can you optimize your Google AdWords CTR to beat those averages? Recently added to WebMarketCentral is a list of 14 Best Practices in Search Engine Marketing. These best practices include:
  • Use free online tools such as Google Suggest and Overture's Keyword Selector Tool to help select the most popular search terms relevant to your campaign.

  • Write compelling, carefully targeted ad copy.

  • Track, analyze, optimize and test everything: ad copy, landing pages, keyword bids and response incentives.

  • Design and implement effective lead follow-up programs; without proper follow up, you're wasting money.

  • Circle back and use search marketing data to improve your natural SEO by optimizing for the most valuable terms (combination of impressions and conversions). Natural search results are 3-4 times more likely to get clicked than paid ads, so it's critical for your website to show up well in both organic and paid search for key search terms.

See the entire list of SEM best practices here.

*****


Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
Labels:

Comments

Asbar said…
You Have An great Blog Its help ME Alot For Inhancing mine Knowledge For adsense and adwords ..Share The Google AdSense program still offers one of the most effective, easiest & lucrative ways to make loads of money online. However whilst this may be true it only rewards those internet marketers who are savvy enough to know how to use the AdSense program to their advantage
12:07 PM
Technogeekboy said…
It's nice to see some benchmark data on CTR. We do well once we get clicks but our CTR is apparently awful at .24. We've done extensive keyword research and a fair amount of copy-testing but I'm not sure what to try next to boost CTR.
10:49 AM
marketing podcasts | The CAS Podcast said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
6:57 AM
Post a Comment

All Time Greats

Top Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Google AdWords and PPC

By Anonymous
MARKETING: 101 Looking for some online marketing strategy or social media tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper digital marketing advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective digital marketing can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top-notch digital marketing tip! The Pure Unfettered Power of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and PPC Campaigns Just like optimizing your site to rank for keywords, you can use our online marketing tips to pay to run advertisements on Google so that your business is shown on the first page of search engine results. Ranking this way is instantaneous whereas SEO (Search Engine Optimizati...
101 comments
Read more

How to Use SEO: Leverage SEO To Be Found Online and Boost Your Online Marketing

By
All businesses that want to attract customers online, no matter the business size or age, have few options other than Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO In The Box™ by Results Driven Marketing®, LLC There are roughly 1.8 billion websites online, and basic SEO allows Google to find and index or catalog your webpages.  After that, Google serves you up to searchers in the organic section.  The question remains: where they list your site, on page one or page 22 or further back? SEO controls your positioning. Do you want to be found online or not? If your business is online or you want your product or service to be found online, then Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must, and knowing how to use SEO to leverage the power of the internet is vital. Arguably, an effective SEO strategy gets you on the organic results section of the search engine results pages (SERP). Organic traffic is highly valuable and requires high-quality SEO. But even busines...
102 comments
Read more

Top-Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Advertisements That Make Sense

By Anonymous
MARKETING: 101 Looking for some online marketing tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource ! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper DM advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective Digital Marketing can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top notch-digital marketing tip! Advertisement Congruence If your business is running ads this is one of our most important online marketing tips! Ad congruence is when your ads and landing pages look alike or have the same message. Have you ever clicked on an ad and been taken to a page that looked nothing like the ad? When your ads look like the web pages they lead to, customers will feel like they are in ...
75 comments
Read more

Web 2.0 Social Tagging Sites, Part 6: Tier 2 Sites

By
Here in the second of three posts on the effectiveness of specific Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites at driving B2B website traffic, based on my two-month test, are the mid-tier sites. These sites drove a meaningful though not large volume of traffic across the half-dozen B2B websites and blogs in the test. In ascending order, the mid-tier sites are: 7) Newsvine Though much more heavily-used than WireFan, results were similar. Categorization of news items is helpful but overly broad. 6) Simpy Works better with IE than Firefox. 5) MarkaBoo Clean design, easy to use, respectable results. 4) NowPublic News-oriented, a great place to expose user-targeted, thought-leadership PR. 3) del.icio.us Given it's incredible popularity, B2B traffic results were surprisingly second-tier (though near the top of this group). 2) RawSugar Primarily for blog promotion, but works for B2B thought leadership content as well. 1) Reddit The best of the second tier, though the delay it im...
2 comments
Read more

Top Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Optimize Your Site

By Anonymous
Looking for some online marketing tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper digital marketing advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective digital marketing and an seo strategy can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top-notch digital marketing tip! Optimize Your Site to Improve Search Engine Rankings Most small business owners know that their websites need to be optimized in order for search engines, like Google and Bing, to find them and rank them on the search engine results page. If you don’t know, that’s okay. You can learn all about Search Engine Optimization and SEO best practices here to help impr...
81 comments
Read more