How Do I Tell If There’s A Problem?
The most obvious way to tell if there’s an issue is to check if your campaign is providing leads at an affordable ROI. Outside of this, there are two easy methods to tell if you are accidentally wasting your money on purchasing irrelevant keyword phrases.
1. A Low Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
The click-through rate is a measure of how frequently an ad is clicked when it’s seen (clicks/impressions). In addition to reducing the cost-per-click over time, your click-through-rate is an important measurement for the relevance of targeting. If your ads are accidentally being served up for irrelevant phrases, they are less likely to be clicked, which would reduce the CTR. For reference, the industry average Google Search CTR is now in the 1-2% range, although we generally see campaigns in the 2-5% range.
2. Check The Search Terms Tab
Did you know that the Search Terms list is actually different than the keyword list? Depending on the match type that’s used, it’s possible for these lists to be completely different. For example, if I decide to purchase the keyword “storage”, I may accidentally purchase anything from “data storage”, “storage units” “bedroom storage”, and “cloud storage”.
