What Is a Good Click Through Rate?

The average click through rates according to the common information you see online is apparently between 1% and 1/2%. That means that one out of every 100 to 200 times your ad is shown someone will click on it to go to your landing page.

Can this be profitable for you? I do not know. But you can know. And know for certain.

Google allows you to track many things that happen both in your AdWords campaign and on you site.

In the AdWords campaign settings, you can use the "conversion results" tools to put code on a specific page (or pages) that indicate the result you wanted from each visitor. This lets you track the percentage of your visitors that take the action you desire.

You can set these conversion tracking tools up for each AdWords search term or phrase. This means you can even determine exactly which search terms are the most profitable for you. Believe me, that is incredibly valuable information!

Don't get too carried away with dropping the less profitable terms. Things that make money today may not make money next year.

These tools will let you determine if the click through rate you are getting is good by your own definition.

Personally, I think you should be able to generate a click through rate of 2% to 20%. The magic is in persistently changing little things, one at a time, and then keeping a written record of the results.

I keep a spreadsheet for activity events for every single day. I update it daily. Next to the columns with numbers I enter notes about the changes I have made, the changes competitors have made, anything that I believe might have had an effect on my numbers that day.

Why do I keep my own spreadsheet when Google will let me run reports for any time period? Because for me, the notes I make in the margin are as valuable as the numbers. Without the notes I have no context. Also, the very act of typing the numbers in to the spreadsheet force me to be actively involved with them. Just looking at a report can be too passive an interaction for me to get the maximum benefit from my compulsive tinkering.

This may seem like a lot of work. Once you set it up it is really only minutes per day. The value beyond the obvious is it keeps you thinking about things and aware of your competition. Imagine how frustrating it is to compete against someone who is this attentive and meticulous. The picture you just imagined should be exactly how you make your competition feel.

As Red Auerbach said "Be the agitator not the re-actor".