When you have a pay per click campaign up and running, there are lots of statistic you can use to determine the success rate of the campaign. For example, the most common way advertisers determine the success rate of their campaign is through looking at how many conversions they gain (with ‘conversion’ still being a very general word that can have multiple meanings for different campaigns). However, you will find some advertisers will determine the success rate with other statistics such as the impressions gained, number of clicks or CTR: click through rate. The click through rate is, no doubt, an important aspect to a PPC campaign. Some campaigns will have high CTRs, others will have low CTRs. This is not always a bad thing though. A low CTR is PPC is not the end of the world….

The CTR of a PPC campaign is the percentage of clicks the advert gains from the number of ad impressions it has had. A low CTR is not a problem: for most campaigns, it is barely noticeable. However, there are a few drawbacks a low CTR will have to a campaign which can be mended.

Short vs Long Term Traffic

Should you implement a long term traffic strategy from PPC or simply get as much traffic as you can as quickly as possible? Well, if you have a low CTR, you will find it difficult adapting your campaign for short term goals. This can be a problem because you will find it much harder to react to real life events with a campaign that struggles to gain clicks. For example, we just had one of the biggest football matches of the year happen yesterday between Manchester United and Real Madrid. Reacting to real life events, an advertiser could somehow link this huge sporting event in with their campaign. However, a campaign with a low CTR will struggle to do this and will end up missing out on short term opportunities.

Stem of the Problem?

When looking to improve a campaign’s CTR, it can become quite tricky because there are many elements in a campaign which will affect the CTR. Below are the main elements which will affect the CTR and ways you can rectify the problem to increase your click through rate:

• Advert – If you have styled your text advert out wrong, you will not find many people will click on it. To improve your advert, look at How To Create The Perfect PPC Text Advert.
  
• CPC – Your advert might be fine. However, it is the location that is hurting your CTR. The reason for bad ad placement is mostly down to a low CPC. Therefore, have a go at increasing your CPC to see if this will help your adverts get placed in better ad locations which will increase their CTR.
• Keywords – The keywords is what makes PPC contextual. Therefore, don’t use rubbish keywords. It is important that every one of your keywords is completely related to your advert and campaign to make sure your adverts are displayed to only those that would be interested in your campaign.