Pay per click is one of the fastest ways to see results from your online marketing efforts. As the name implies, the goal of PPC is to entice browsers to click their way back to your site to make a purchase, request a service, or make a donation. The metric you want to pay attention to is your click through rate, which measures how many clicks advertisers receive on their ads per number of impressions — or views by browsers who actually see the displayed ad online.

Obtaining High Click Through Rates

In addition to boosting your return on investment, a high click through rate also affects your quality score and how much you’ll need to pay when you do get clicks. I’ll help you achieve a higher CTR by targeting an audience likely to be responsive to what you have to offer. Part of this process includes looking at your current CTR efforts to make sure you’re targeting the right demographics; and if you’re not, this usually means a high bounce rate. Steps I can take to increase your CTR include:

• Analyzing your demographics
• Clearly defining your target audience
• Using long-tail keywords to attract qualified visitors

Click Through Rates and Quality Scores

Platforms like Google AdWords offer the best rates to pay per click ads with a good “quality score,” essentially meaning how relevant your content is to the browser. You’re likely to get pricing discounts if you maintain a high QS; and you can usually keep getting reasonable rates as long as you keep getting high click-through rates. It’s something of a never-ending circle, but reaching that point is going to involve:

• Periodically adjusting ad content
• Carefully choosing where to place ads
• Making adjustments quickly if CTRs drop

Finding the Right CTR-Keyword Rate Balance

Nearly 2 percent is the average CTR in AdWords, although you want a rate that works best for your marketing goals — and more importantly, your budget. There may be times when you a high CTR isn’t a good thing, especially if you’re paying a higher rate for popular keywords just to get those results. I’ll help you shift to relevant keywords that still resonate with your audience without becoming profit-prohibitive. I’ll also make sure you’re not wasting money on irrelevant keywords or failing to balance keywords based on relevance and price.

Tracking Click Through Rate Results

There’s no denying that pay per click can be highly beneficial and cost-effective when the right steps are taken because it’s easy to track how everything is performing in real-time. AdWords allows you to set up conversion tracking so you can see where your conversions are coming from and which ads are more effective for you and which ones need a little fine-tuning. Keep in mind that nothing is static in PPC, so it’s important to track all ads on a regular basis, even those that are performing well, to spot any shifts in trends as soon as possible.

Effective Keyword Grouping

Referring to the use of a small, targeted list of related keywords, keyword grouping is an essential part of an effective PPC campaign. Selecting the right cluster or related keywords increases the odds of attracting the attention of browsers searching on those terms, which means better odds of achieving a higher CTR. I’ll also maximize your results by:

• Using appropriate tools and techniques
• Incorporating geo-specific keywords when appropriate
• Finding relevant keywords to bid on
• Integrating keywords with ad text