A Click-Through-Rate (CTR) plays an important role in the running of a successful AdWords campaign.

Some people say that CTR varies from sector to sector and that is certainly true but there are always things that you can do to achieve better results.

I am going to share the top 4 ways of boosting your CTR performance.

Structure Your Account Correctly

I have seen numerous accounts with awful structuring. People create one campaign, then get around 20 - 100 keywords and stick them all in the same place and then wonder why the results that they have been receiving are no good.

Well the simplest of reasons is that having loads of logically unrelated keywords in the same place with a generic advert it is bound to cause problems for the simple reason that you cannot capture all of them in the space of 95 characters which is the allowed limit for a Google text ad.

What you need to do in order to increase your performance is separate keywords in logical groups of no more than 25 keywords; this will then allow you to create ads that are truly relevant to the keywords and key phrases selected.

Choose the correct keywords

Never use keywords that only have one word or a broad meaning - ever.

Let's illustrate this with a practical example:

If you sell designer coats you might think that having the keyword "coats" might be a good idea. Well it is not because a person typing this can have 1001 things on his mind.

For example 5,883 people searched for dog coat last month and your ad WILL show for this search unless you use the "exact" matching option. But even then they could have anything in mind and since you're paying for each click - you should make sure those clicks come from people who want exactly what you have to offer.

A better keyword would be: "designer coats"

An even better keyword would be: "Calvin Klein designer coats"

Or, to hit the nail on the head: "buy Calvin Klein designer coats"

I think the last keyword will perform best because a) It is a much more specific term and it will filter out users that are not interested in the products that you have to offer such as users who will be looking for ski coats, fur coats and even dog coats! b) Having the term buy in the keyword means that you will capture searchers who know what they want and are ready to commit by buying what you have to offer.

Use Your Keywords In Your Ad Title

This is certainly one of the most important techniques and it's no secret. Even Google encourages this.

It's important because Google rewards ads that are using keywords in the title by making them bold, which immediately makes your ads stand out from the crowd. The second important factor is that when a user sees exactly what he has just typed his brain automatically associates it with being the exact answer to their question, so they are much more likely to read and click on your ad

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords act as filters in AdWords - they help to filter out prospects that are interested in what you have to offer and others that are searching for something else entirely different.

Imagine you have the keyword "web design" and a user searches for the term "web design templates". If you don't have "templates" as a negative keyword, your ad could show but you don't provide this service. The negative keyword will prevent your adverts from showing for such searches.

This important technique will not only improve your CTR by not showing adverts to prospects who are not interested in you services but also it will save you a lot of money, because even if the ad appears on the incorrect search it is bound to get clicked on by some people.

There are many other tricks that can be employed in order to improve CTR but these are a few basics which can help boost your campaigns' performance.

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