6 Ways to Improve Clickthrough Rate on Google

If you are running Google ads, the number of clicks you get would be determined by the performance of your ads. 

You need to manage your Google Ads and optimize the click-through rate (also known as CTR), or else your competitors can take advantage and win the battle for top spot.

In this article, we’re going to help you find out the 6 most effective ways to improve your click through rate on Google Ads.

1. Use Compelling Copywriting

Your ad copy is a critical factor to consider when running ads. 

You might have the best product on the market, or a winning offer. But if your ad copy doesn’t grab people’s attention

Terrible ad copywriting fails to address problems of your customers effectively and provide solutions in a clear concise manner.

The goal of your ad copy is to drive the click, so have that in mind when creating your ad copy.

Bear in mind that your copy is just for your audience, you should use a language they can easily understand and recognize.

Your ad copy should be written with respect to your market’s awareness and sophistication levels.

Always take a look at what your competitors are doing and find ways to outcompete them. 

Here is a great Google Ad headline example from Upwork. They use the words “hire the best” because that’s what employers want, to hire the best.

When it comes to copywriting it’s important to use power words like “best” or “expert” as these power words can have a strong influence on us. Hiring a freelance copywriter is the most effective way to create high converting ad copy.

So remember, it’s necessary to have a detailed knowledge of your audience and find out what would trigger them to click on your ad.

2. Run a Split Test

You can leverage Google tools to run an experiment on different variations of your ad. 

This is popularly known as an A/B test or bucket testing.

So you might want to run an A/B test on your Google Ad.

You can run this experiment to figure out which one of your different variations converts more click-throughs.

Although this takes time and money, it’s one of the most effective ways to find a control that works for you.

And it always ends up paying for itself.

You can test up different headlines, maybe try using a two headline versus a three.

As we can see here, the winning ad from a test done by the PPC machine, where 3 headlines won over the 2 because there was more clarity. 

This type of test can instantly boost your clickthrough rate as this case study indicates that they did theirs by 82%. 

This in turn doubles or even triples your conversion rate. 

You can also play around with the ad descriptions.

Believe it or not, there are profits to be made if you had multiple ads running in every group.

3. Use Negative Keywords 

According to Google, this is a type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase.

This increases the relevance of your ad groups.

As you want people to click on your Google Ads, you still don’t want your ads to be shown for the wrong searches.

Use negative keywords to disqualify those that are not for your audience. This saves you loads of money spent on irrelevant keywords.

When you set this up, you are only going to show your Google Ads to the correct audience and avoid those impressions that are not interested in your offer. 

You can add negative keywords at the campaign level to prevent showing your ads for a particular keyword at a campaign level.

Or you can add a negative keyword in the group level to only restrict that group ad from showing up for that keyword in searches.

4. Keep A Check on Ad Extensions

Google Ads sitelink extensions add more detail to your ad and allow you to add more keywords, information or a call to action.

With all this extra information, it makes it more likely that a customer will click on your ad. In fact, Google Ads extensions improve CTR by up to 

Sitelink extensions make your ads much larger, this gives you more area on the Google search page, and makes your ad more visible to customers.

It’s important to note that extensions don’t increase the cost of your ads or ad spend in any way.

Clicks on your ads are charged as normal. There are no extra amounts.

You can use ad extensions to add the location or address of your business, which can increase trust in your Google Ads.

This is only because customers know you have a physical location and your ad seems more attractive.

You can also use extensions on your Google ads to create call-outs.

Callouts can be a free offer on your page or a discount.

The call-outs are popular extensions for Google Ads because it gives marketers extra area to showcase available sales.

Some extensions can add a call button to your ad. However, this might not increase your click-through rate as customers might just call you without clicking the ad.

5. Bid Higher

This is a great but costly way to improve your Google Ads clickthrough rate.

If you are not getting enough clicks, it might make sense to increase your ad spent or budget.

In fact, this would enable you to reach more search pages.

And you can only get clicks if people see you, and more people would see you if you can appear in the top 3 search results.

This means that your ads are positioned properly and you would automatically get more clicks.

If you increase the clicks on your Google Ads, your conversions would increase as well.

This would instantly pay for the extra money being spent on higher bids.

6. Check Out Your Competitors 

Another valuable way to increase your clickthrough rate is by modeling after your competitors.

It’s almost as if the right answer is always in front but we can’t see it.

If you know of a competitor whoseGoogle Ads are probably doing well, it’s time you take a look at their strategy.

Find out exactly how they structure the Google Ads, how many words are in their title, and other things of similar nature. 

When you do this, it becomes easy to reverse engineer everything into your own Google Ad.

Note that you should not blatantly copy your competitors as you might be putting your ads in direct competition with theirs. 

The Bottom Line

Employing a few of these listed Google Adword tips could help to lift your clickthrough rate.

But this won’t happen overnight as you might need to test out a lot of things.

And you should keep the golden rule in mind which is to “test everything.”

About Gesten van der Post

Expert content writer and SEO manager.

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