How to Get More Traffic and Conversions with Google AdWords

managers our goal is to get a maximum number of conversions for the least possible cost. We look for magical formulas, secret techniques and even blogosphere rumors to improve AdWords performance. But the truth is that there is no easy one size fitting all strategies to make you achieve the perfectly impossible balance of CTR, Ad Rank & Costs. And if there was, you wouldn't find it by performing a search on Google … trust me, I have tried.

Quality Score Is Important But Shouldn’t Overshadow Other Metrics

Although Google is pretty good at rewarding what they believe would result in a good customer experience, Quality Score and your attempt to improve it, will only get you so far. Should you achieve a great score, who’s to say your competition isn’t receiving a 10/10 for the same keywords? So it is up to you to mix and match two of the three elusive players to achieve an acceptable balance.
But which metrics should you shoot for? Logic would tell us that being in the number 1 spot is a must. Since we are young we are taught that being in first places is the only place to be. Second place? Well, that's the first loser. This is not always the case in AdWords!
Click Through Rate is an important metric we need to take into account. It also plays a very important role in the other two account metrics. Everything else being equal, the higher your CTR is the higher relevancy and Ad Rank will also be. Once Google has determined that your ads, keywords and landing pages are relevant, largely through CTR performance, you will be rewarded with cheaper costs per click while still showing up in the same high positions.
But until then, you must juggle. Since Google is big on a positive user experience, they rely heavily on CTR to infer whether searchers are finding your ads and websites are relevant to their searches. If your Ad has been shown 1000 times and only been clicked twice, something is not right.
This will result in a .20% CTR which is a red flag pointing out that you need to do something rather quickly. Whether it is adding negative keywords, changing match types or increasing bids to appear higher in search results and improve CTR … do something and do it quickly.

Ad Rank Can’t Be Altered and is a Result of your Quality Score and Bid

Ad Rank is nothing more than the result of a calculation positioning your ad according to your quality score and maximum bid along with some unknown x- factors which Google keeps to itself. This is one of the metrics you can influence by modifying your bids. But it can get very expensive trying to reach and maintain a top position for new accounts.
Your daily budget will be gone before you finish your morning ‘Venti Vanilla Bean Frappuccino Blended Crème’. So unless you have a very hefty budget, you may have to sacrifice some positioning in order to make your budget last throughout the day.
Let's return to my previous example about the account with a .20% CTR. Having a very low Quality score, let’s say below 7, will very often result in a very low CTR. The reason is that every time your Ad is being shown you rack up impressions. But if you are in very low positioning, many searchers will not even see your ad, much less click on it. Remember that just because Google shows your ad doesn’t mean that potential clients will see it.
This is especially true if your ad falls “Below The Fold” - that part of the screen that you need to scroll down in order to view it. Many people will not scroll down so you will rack up impressions but no clicks which will result in a low CTR and an increase of your Costs Per Click down the road. That is why you must aim to appear in top page results.
Costs (Per Click) which is the last variable, is the factor we can most affect. By modifying our bids we can more or less, after some initial guess-timing, determine what position ads will appear in. Now, this is in no way an exact science but with Automated Rules & Scripts, you can assure that bids will be automatically modified when an average position reaches a certain position or falls below it. By adjusting these bids up or down, you can influence what position your ad is likely to appear in.
This is of course a very simplified explanation and oftentimes ad rank will change depending on competitor behavior or other factors beyond your control. But Max Bid is within your control and adjusting it accordingly can affect your ad rank. If Google ranks us very low, be it due to low quality score, high competition etc. you can still positively affect Ad Rank by increasing your Max Bid.
Remember that Ad Rank is a calculation that multiplies Quality Score by Max bid; so, by increasing Max Bid (or Quality Score) you will raise Ad Rank, which will increase your CTR as long as your ads are relevant to the users search queries.

Aligning Goals

When you first open an account for your company or for one of your clients, you will have some goals in mind:

• Achieve top position

• Decrease costs per conversion

• Increase traffic

• Beat competition

• Increase conversions

• Decrease costs per click.

Now, if you've been in the business long enough, you will realize that some of these goals are impossible to reach for a new account, especially when it's on a $30 Daily Budget. So you have to juggle.
I recommend you to initially focus on reaching a great CTR.  In this business a decreasing CTR is considered a 2.0% or higher. And we don't want it to decrease … we want it to rise! How do we achieve that? It’s quite simple you just have to use keywords that have high CTRs, keywords that are highly relevant to your product or service, website and ad copy. When you identify a keyword with a low CTR … pause it. If there is a keyword that you believe has great potential but is not performing initially… pause it!
When you realize that what you thought would be a good keyword isn't really that great … pause it! When you start pausing these underperforming keywords you will see your overall campaign CTR begin to increase. Once you've achieved a great CTR you may start tweaking the previously paused keywords by adding negative keywords, using more restrictive match types, increasing bids, etc.

BIMTWWIC (pronounced BIMTWIK)

Well, I would like to take the “Bring In More Traffic Which Will Increase Conversions” approach. What is this approach? Simple: you pay less per click which allows for more clicks within your daily budget. More clicks equals more traffic, more traffic means more conversions (in most cases), and that is our ultimate goal. Pay less, get more! To pay less and get more we only need to align two goals: CTR and Costs. By choosing keywords that are not too competitive or expensive, you can bring in a significant amount of traffic at a lesser price.
For example, and this is a very general example that simplifies… well everything; let's say you have a conversion rate of 8% for all website visitors. You have a daily budget of $50 and you are in the top position for an average CPC of $3. This means that for your $50 you have received 16 clicks ($50/$3= 16.67 clicks) and 1 conversion (16 clicks* 8%= 1.28).
Now with BIMTWWIC, you will decrease max bids so that your average position will also decrease and bring CPC down.
Let's say average CPC is now at $1.75 and is in the 4^th position, so you bring in 28 clicks and you now have a total of 2 conversions. That’s a 100% increase for doing nothing more than lowering bids to a slightly lower position. Nevertheless beware not to fall below 5 or 6, it would just be lowering max bid too much.
Let's face it, anyone can increase conversions if they are given an unlimited daily budget but if you can manage to have a great CTR and to increase conversions without increasing daily budget, you can begin to tweak other areas of your account for improvement.
You can print up one of AdWords many reports to show your boss how sales and leads have been improving and the positive impact you’ve had on the almighty ROI. With BIMTWWIC you have now managed to lower costs per click, to increase conversions and to make your daily budget last beyond the morning.