UNUSUAL Ways to Boost Your Google Ads CTR – Transcript
Guys in this video, what I want to cover is click-through rates. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard loads about click-through rates and Google ads in terms of how it can affect your quality score and the importance of this metric because ultimately, click through rate is a massive determining factor for Google because the higher your click-through rates, the more appealing your ad is to people searching. That plays into how relevant it is and how much information you’re showing and Google rewards a good click-through rate, with a better quality score leading to cheaper clicks.
You all know this by now. However, one thing we haven’t looked at yet is how to fix your low click-through rate if you’re suffering with this issue with your ads. What we’re going to do, we’re going to take a bit of a different look at the click-through rate metric, instead of the usual things, in terms of using all of your ad extensions and things like that.
We’re going to take a bit of a different look as to how you can increase your click-through rate with some unconventional methods. The first thing I often advise people in terms of increasing your click-through rate is something that seems really obvious, but a lot of advertisers, and I bet some of you watching this video don’t actually do.
That is to look at the search results page of your target keywords, understand what ads are running against yours because that is going to be the starting point of improving your click-through rate because click-through rates don’t operate in isolation, they work against other advertisers. Of course, you’re bidding for position on the search results, not just in the paid side of things, but also on the organic side you’re competing against as well and that is really important, understanding what your competitors are putting out there.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to walk through a search results page and talk through exactly what I would look for when comparing potential click-through rates and which ads are most appealing and what you can do to improve your ads. Guys I’ve performed a search for something that you would think would be a industry that people would be very conscious of their ads within. I think this is a good search results page because it highlights the interesting ways a lot of people create their ads. It shows you the thing I’m talking about in terms of testing your click-through rates. Look at this search for SEO agency. This search was performed in the UK, so you’re seeing a UK search results page here.
Let’s take a look a little bit further into some of the areas I’ve tested before and seen different results then and some things you should be testing in your campaigns as well. First of all, when you look at this search results page, you will see only one of these ads is using all parts of the URL in terms of the display URL. Google ads, you can choose after the forward-slash of your main domain, you can customize these two areas of your domain in terms of their display. This first ad is using a customized display URL and the others aren’t using it.
Now you might think on the surface of this, this looks like the better ad because it’s making use of things like 70% discount sign up now. Now, as I said to you at the beginning of this video, we’re looking at unconventional ways of understanding how click-through rate works. This ad, I reckon, because based on some of the things I’ve tested in the past, this ad may not perform as well as the others, because I’ve seen in certain industries and certain professions that having a display URL, that’s overtly promotional with underscore discount sign-up now can be seen as spammy because when people go through the search results page, they’re not used to seeing URLs that look like this.
If you go to the organic results, none of these URLs will have this structure with the underscores and the discount percentages, and the sign up. You’ll have a forward slash and then the service, which is basically SEO, or you’ll have the top-level domain. This is really important because people might think again that this is the right best practice to do, which is to use this format. Doesn’t always work so it’s important to try and test getting rid of your display URL and trying something a bit different and reducing it and seeing if that has a positive impact on your click-through rate. Perfect.
Next, the other thing I want to show you guys is looking at the ad in first position versus the ad in second position. This second position ad takes up more real estate. Now there’s a couple of reasons for that. They’re using site links on their website, on their links as well. You see the site links down here. They’ve maximized all of the sitelink options available, the maximum that show on ads generally speaking, they’ve done all of that in their ad. Now that takes up more real estate, invites more clicks, which is a good thing. However, sometimes these can distract the user because if I’m looking for an SEO service, I don’t care necessarily about web design.
I don’t care about meeting the team. These are the things that aren’t necessarily in my interest. PPC potentially could be. It could be a side service. This is something to think about as well. Be very careful with selecting your URLs for your site links because they can also distract the user. In terms of campaigns I’ve run, generally speaking, I do use sitelinks, but in some occasions, in some campaigns, I’ve run sitelinks are a distraction and I have actually removed them, which is something Google don’t actually advocate for because they want you to maximize your ad. Generally speaking, I do.
On some occasions, I have removed them and have seen a better click-through rate as a result because the ad is more focused on the specific subject matter that the person is searching for. This works well in really niche campaigns because you don’t want to spread yourself too thinly away from that niche that the person is searching for. This is another idea you can trial as well. Another thing to think about as well when looking at these ads is look at the highlighted terms in the ad. You’ll see SEO agency is what I typed in, you will see SEO agency will highlight in all of the ads and also adjacent keywords.
SEO service highlights in the ad. The word SEO will also highlight as well. Now, this makes the ad more visible to people who’ve searched because it shows the search term that a person’s looked for, however, one thing to think about is this. This ad has the SEO agency keyword in the content, and it’s highlighted. You may think this is a good thing, but in order to be different on the page and get more into the ad itself, it might make sense to split the keyword so you get more highlights in the ad like the second ad is doing. Instead of having just the main keyword in the ad, so you’ve included it for ad relevance, this ad, doesn’t even contain the keyword in its canonical format in terms of SEO agency.
What this ad has done, is it’s separated it out and it’s used an alternative term as well, SEO service, SEO is there, SEO is there again, Now, again, this relates back to relevance. The ad relevance may not be as strong with this particular ad. However, the click-through rate may be better because it’s got more highlights in there, and because they’ve used different words, as opposed to just having SEO agency, SEO agency, SEO agency, they’ve just got the word SEO, SEO service and the word SEO again, in terms of technical SEO audits and measurable SEO results.
That actually is probably a better format because it looks less spammy. When we start adding up the factors between the first ad and the second ad, the second ad is outperforming I would imagine, the first ad. Now the first ad’s URL, again, looks a bit spammy as well. On top of that, the keyword highlighting shows the exact match again. There are a few things here that potentially could affect the performance of the first ad. Now, again, these are methods to test. This is something to look at when you’ve exhausted all the obvious options that you’ve heard all over the internet in terms of improving your click-through rates on Google ads.
This is outside-the-box thinking and some of the things I want to share with you that I’ve seen work in the past. Another thing to remember is when you call out pricing, you need to look at the search results page and understand whether or not you are in the right place. Let’s look at the top two results, again, $299 professional SEO services. Have they mentioned the price? Second ad, guess what? They mention the price as well in one of their extensions. They’ve got £795 affordable SEO. If you click on more, they’ve got professional and enterprise SEO as well in terms of their services.
When you look at these links and you see the pricing of these links, you might think, “Oh my God, my competitor has done an ad for $299 professional SEO service.
They are going to be the best one to use, and they’re going to be the one that people are going to click.” Actually, when people understand SEO a little bit and understand the cost involved in marketing, and they’ve been in business long enough, they will know that $299 for professional SEO service means it’s probably not a professional service, It’s going to be outsourced SEO done very badly, probably with some black hat techniques, content farms, plug, and play systems.
Things that will be less labor-intensive because that cost cannot cover good SEO. It’s impossible. Even the beginning entry-level price of £795 a month for this particular company may not cover intensive SEO let alone the $299, so this becomes a problem as well. When you look at these two pages, again, this one looks like on the face of it it’s doing everything you should be doing, but again, it all goes back to appearing spammy. When you look at the second part of the headline ranked number one SEO company, that again shows the spamminess, ranking as the best SEO company. You’ve just decided that for yourself.
Again, it’s over promotion and it seems again, a lot of spam. Again, this page is really interesting because the third ad in this result is actually disqualifying people from clicking because a lot of businesses typing in “SEO Agency” aren’t necessarily turning over £500,000. There are a lot of micro-businesses and small businesses who would need SEO, who are turning over significantly less. It could be £250,000, it could even be £200,000 if you’re a small business that only turns over that much.
In reality, the third one here is actually disqualifying people by asking if the business is turning over at least £500,000. Now, you might think that they’re disqualifying people by asking that question but in actual fact, it’s asking the person searching a question, and if the business is the right fit, then it means that the agency has made themselves look more professional by qualifying the people who are looking for their service.
We only work with people who turn over £500,000 because we know that that is going to be the kind of client that we want because they’ll be able to, I guess, invest in effective SEO as opposed to these guys at the top who are charging $299. This is again another way and another tactic to get the best out of the click-through rates of customers by qualifying them, by getting into their minds, and understanding their mindset, asking them questions.
Again, this is the only ad asking a question on the search results page, this again catches the eye. Again, this is something to look for. There you have it guys. It’s really important that you test things in terms of click-through rate because of course, people have different minds, there’s different psychology at play when it comes to ads. It’s important sometimes to step away from the obvious Google ad side of things in terms of make sure you’re using only all of your ad extensions, maximize on all of them in terms of making sure you’ve got those call-outs, making sure you’re using all of your site links.
All of these things are things you’ve heard time and time again, and maybe even though you’re doing this, your click-through rate isn’t improving. With these tips, understanding the psychology behind how people search and how people are driven, this will get you to a better position with your click-through rates. Sometimes it’s a balance, it’s a really careful balance between the relevance that Google is looking for in terms of getting your keyword in your services within your keywords into the ad versus catching people’s eye and getting a better click-through rate.
You might win on the click-through rate side but Google may deem your ad less relevant. Ultimately, if more people are clicking your ad over your competitors, you’re going to win in the long run. Click-through rates is one of the most important factors in quality score so it can really, really improve your campaign if you get this bit right. Let me know in the comments, are you looking to improve your click-through rate?
Let me know if this video was helpful to you. Let me know some of the things you’re doing to improve your click-through rates. As I always say, I reply to pretty much every single comment I get on new videos so hit me up below. Like this video if you like it. Don’t forget to subscribe. Check out the other content across my channel, and I’ll see you guys on my next video.
