Traffic generation for a website is easier when you’re targeting the right keywords. Finding the right keywords is always a balancing act of cost versus effectiveness. Clients always want to know how to select the right keywords to maximize traffic while limiting their cost. Optimizing for click-through rate (CTR) varies depending on whether you’re focusing on paid Adwords traffic or organic SEO.
High CTR keywords for Google Adwords
Companies should concentrate on writing compelling ads to get the most out of their paid ad spend. I routinely see ads that have poorly written headlines.
These ads suffer from a poor click through rate that skyrockets the cost per click. Focus on writing good ads because the better the ads are, the cheaper the cost per click will be in return.
A better click-through rate will also increase the position of ads as Google will drop an ad’s position if it’s not getting a good CTR. The closer to the top of the search results page my ads are, the more traffic I’ll be receiving from them.
There are a few principles to abide by when setting up Adwords campaigns. For example, I find it useful to watch the competition who are also bidding on the same keywords. I used to do this manually, but there are tools like Spyfu and SEMRush that will conveniently aggregate this information.
Before subscribing to any of these tools, check with your agency to see if they already offer competitor intelligence as part of your package. Spying on competitors helps me get some excellent ideas for ad copy.
Don’t copy and paste them directly. Compile them into an Excel spreadsheet or a notepad document. Look them over and focus on the benefits, features and other points of emphasis among all these different ads.
Find the different angles that competitors are currently using. Compile the best of the ads into a database to come back to when you need fresh ad ideas.
Using AIDA in your ad copy.
I also like to apply the AIDA principle in my ad copy. If you’re not familiar with AIDA, it stands for:
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
These four aspects of building an effective ad break down as follows.
The first “A” stands for attention. Go for an attention grabbing headline when writing Adwords ads and titles for landing pages. You only have a brief amount of time to grab someone’s attention, so make the most of the few words you have at your disposal.
The “I” stands for interest. Make sure to generate some interest with ads. It helps to have an in-depth knowledge of your target demographic to laser-target their likes and dislikes.
The “D” in AIDA represents desire. If you’ve done a good job with creating interest, then the audience will hopefully have a desire to learn more about what you’re offering.
The last “A” stands for action, which is what I want the audience to take after reading the ad.
By focusing on those four things in ad copy, you’ll be applying time-tested copywriting practices. They are the foundational building blocks of writing good sales copy.
Figure out your U. S. P.
A U.S.P. stands for a company’s unique selling proposition. It’s the answer to the question “what makes my product offering different from everyone else’s product?” Think of the main thing that can be listed in the ad that will make it stick out.
To make the target audience to react in a positive way after seeing the ad. Make them think “this is exactly what I’m looking for” and have them click on the link.
Integrating a U.S.P will make a huge difference on whether an ad gets clicked. Although I mentioned the benefits of competitive research earlier, it’s a problem when people start copying from each other.
There’s nothing unique about that approach, which is why I try to add something unique that only I’m offering. Once I know what my competitors are offering, I look for a unique benefit or feature of my product or service that I can showcase. Including your U.S.P. within the ad goes a long way towards generating a good click-through rate.
Optimizing for high CTR in organic search
Adwords is an expensive proposition for many companies. Adwords will cost around a few dollars per click. Depending on your company’s conversion numbers, you’ll possibly need hundreds of clicks to generate a qualified lead. These numbers are highly variable and will depend upon if you’re running an e-commerce website versus a service provider that’s looking to signup clients.
An organic search campaign is an ideal alternative to paid placement. Most of all, I start my campaigns off by selecting the right keywords. The best keywords for organic search have search volume and a high CTR. That means I need to differentiate between the keywords that I think people are clicking on versus the keywords that people are actually clicking on.
I like to use Ahrefs for finding keywords that people are clicking on. Ahrefs gathers data from Clickstream that shows the search volume for a keyword as well as how many people are actually clicking through the results.
A keyword like “today’s date” will generate a Knowledge Card at the top of the results. This means there will be little click-through for this keyword. There are other keywords like “Mississippi” where people are only searching to check the spelling for the keyword.
If you’re interested in learning more about this phenomena, you can visit the Ahrefs blog. There is also a site that has grouped together the keyword stems that have the best and worst organic CTRs.
How could a business use this information? Let’s take the example of a car dealership that sells Fords. Let’s say that the owner wants to be able to rank for “red Ford Mustang.”
The people doing searches for that keyword will find his dealership’s link and click on it. So he sits back thinking that he can sell a bunch of red Ford Mustangs just by ranking for the term. However, something much different appears when he looks at his analytics.
The search term “red Ford Mustang” has an abysmal CTR. If he had the right data, he’d know that most of the people are only searching for pictures of red Ford Mustangs. Those are lookers, not buyers. It’s tough to be profitable when you optimize for the wrong keywords.
Getting a good click through rate for your paid listings will drop your cost per click. This will increase your traffic and benefit your ROI.
Therefore for organic listings, focusing on keywords with good CTR will generate a greater return for the same amount of effort. If you’re looking for help with your campaigns, give the Phoenix SEO services from Internet Marketing Team a try.