To answer that question, you must first understand that the AdWords Click Through Rate or AdWords CTR presented in your account is made up of a number of different Click Through Rate statistics. Some of those click through rates can be significantly lower or higher than others, so it’s important to understand that and to segment them so we can understand the data and focus on which elements are important.
Takeaways from the Video on AdWords Click Through Rate
1:01 – The Click Through Rate in your AdWords account or AdWords campaign is made up of:
Google Search: The Google you’re familiar with. You go to Google, type in a search query and results come back which match your search. Some of those results are ads.
Google Search Partners: Third party sites which have a search bar and present results from their own site, but also serve ads by Google for that same search query. A good example is Amazon.
Google search results on Amazon
Ads are shown in a different format on Search Partner sites than they are on Google Search which means that the Click Through Rate can often be significantly lower.
Google Shopping: Google Product Ads with product images and prices usually submitted via a Google Shopping Feed file from the advertiser’s website.
Google Display Ads: Text, or more often image ads shown alongside blog posts, forums, news sites and millions of pages like them across the web. Ads are targeted either by the content on the page (using keywords), by the page or domain or targeting groups of users according to interest categories, demographics or being a member of a remarketing audience.
Different Devices Achieve a Different AdWords Click Through Rate
3:52 – Segmenting your AdWords campaign data will often show a significant difference in Click Through Rate between mobile devices, tablet devices and of course, desktop devices. The way in which Google presents Search Ads on each device differs depending on screen size, which has an impact on CTR.
If your ads are typically in lower positions, 4-10, for example, that typically produces a much lower Click Through Rate on mobile devices.
What’s a Google AdWords Click Through Rate?
4:51 On Google Search, you should really be aiming for between 5-10%. Google typically recommends anything above 1%, but in our experience, the higher you can get it, the more traffic you’ll attract and the lower your average Cost Per Click (CPC) will be.
Don’t worry too much about CTR on Search Partners. There’s nothing more that you can do to optimise performance here that you should already be doing to optimise for Google Search.
The Click Through Rate on Google Shopping Ads varies significantly from query to query and from campaign to campaign. You should be aiming between 2-5% or higher if you can.
Google Display campaigns are more beneficial for branding activity rather than direct action, so impressions are sometimes more important than clicks and therefore, the Click Through Rate. Anything upwards of 0.5% is pretty good performance and anything higher than 5% could be suspicious – I’d certainly be investigating any pages and sites referring at that percentage.
Factors Which Influence AdWords Click Through Rate
7:59 – Primarily looking at Google Search, what are the main factors for an AdWords click through rate?
Keyword Relevance
The more relevant a term is to your business or product, the higher the AdWords Click Through Rate is likely to be, provided that you’ve crafted ads which are relevant to that search term, of course.
Keyword Intent
Keywords (or Search Queries) which demonstrate a user with high intent will also generate a higher CTR – “pink dress” is pretty good, but “pink dress size 10” represents someone closer to a buying decision. That’s likely to have a higher Click Through Rate and a higher conversion rate too, provided you have the product at the right price and something your customer wants, of course!
Keyword Match Type
Similar to keyword relevance and intent, bidding on broad or phrase match keywords may match queries which aren’t relevant or which represent low user intent. Bidding on “pink dress” also matches, “buy pink dress”, “pink dress that she wore in that film” and “how to make a pink dress”. See AdWords keyword match types.
Ad Positions
Your Ad’s position on Google AdWords will have a significant impact on Click Through Rate. In positions one and two, that difference may be fairly small for most keywords whereas the difference in Click Through Rate between positions one and six will be huge. What might be considered a reasonable CTR in position one is an amazing CTR in position six – users are less likely to scroll or look that far.
This is even more acute on mobile devices where there are fewer ads “above the fold” for the user to click on.
Ad Copy
It’s important to use the keyword in your PPC ad copy to demonstrate relevance to both Google and the Searcher. Beyond that, there’s an opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competitors and to test what motivates users – “free next day delivery” might produce a better CTR than “1000’s of items to choose from”, for example. The ad testing and constant improvement shouldn’t ever stop in your campaigns.
Ad Extensions
In the higher ad positions, there are several AdWords ad extensions which you can use to add more information to your ad, deeper site links, or qualify your location, for example. Those extensions often help make your ad look larger and make it a bigger target for clicks, thus often increasing the average Click Through Rate.
Brand Equity
As consumers, we’re more likely to engage with and buy from those brands that we trust. In the same way, if the user searches Google for a product or service they need, they’re more likely to click on an ad from that brand. This factor may not be as significant as others noted here but does have a positive impact on CTR and a greater one on conversion rates.
What’s a Good AdWords Click Through Rate?
As the Click Through Rate plays such a big part in the AdWords Quality Score algorithm, which in turn plays a big party in the auction for every query, coupled with your bid, of course, a good AdWords click through rate is anything that’s better than your competitors’. More importantly, you should continuously optimise your AdWords campaigns, keywords and ad copy to continue to increase your own Click Through Rate to attract more traffic, lower average CPCs and increase sales.
Most experts would say that a conversion rate around 2% is considered good. But the reality is that 2% is really just an average conversion rate, and the top performers are achieving much higher than two percent.