Jul 18th, 2008
Improve Your Google AdSense CTR
Our good and sometimes evil friend over at Google are always squeezing the algorithms in how they rank your paid listings against your competitors that are buying the same keywords in an effort to show and reward relevance. This can be a frustrating game for mom and pop shops and agencies to manage as keywords very important to your business can be turned off in a flash without any warning.
Here are some best practices that I teach and use to stay in good graces with the ‘mean’ algorithm:
1. Keyword Insertion. This is a super-duper important one to use whenever possible. Here is the tag and a good secret that not everyone is aware of: {KeyWord: YourName.com}. What basically happens when you use this tag is that the keyword or phrase search will get inserted as the link title and will be capitalized only if you capitalize both the “K” and the “W” (That’s the secret). By including your domain name or trade name then that’ll appear if the keyword phrase is too long as they won’t truncate it for you. I could almost stop right there as this step is so overlooked by most SEM shops. The other great benefit is that your keywords will be “Bolded” when displayed which usually results in higher CTR and lower bid pricing.
2. Use the Keyword or Keyword phrase in the description text field. I didn’t realize until recently how important this was in making sure that your are buying relevant keywords. If you have to break out and build new smaller ad group buckets then take the time to do it on important keyword(s). Google takes this into the consideration factor when weighing out your quality score.
3. Your Display URL. I as a measure of best practice always Capitalize my URL’s and don’t put the www. in front of them. Example: Meeta.com instead of www.meeta.com. It just jumps out at you more and is easier to read and remember.
4. CAPITALIZATION. While we are on the topic this might be the second most important best practice to follow to a “T”. You will end up fighting your brand managers and anal copywriters but don’t sleep on this one at all. Hold the line. Capitalize The First Letter On The Ad Description Text So That It Jumps Off The Page.
Example of all 4 Best Practices in play:
Your ad should look like:
{KeyWord: Meeta.com}
100% Free Dating Service!
Meet Local Singles Today.
Meeta.com
Another quick tip is that you can use superlatives in your ad description. I usually try to get a good short call to action and one exclamation point in the ad.
I’ll do another article on landing page optimization soon and how to use the Google conversion counter free tool.
