Optimizing Your Ads for Better Conversions

January 20, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik

If you’re into paid search marketing, PPC, you must have read thousands of blog post and articles on pay-per-click that emphasize the importance of split a/b testing with your ads. The funny thing is that no matter how many times you read it, many people probably don’t do it. It’s not that it’s tideous, its just one of those things that either people are lazy to do or don’t realize they should be doing it on a constant basis. Some of us are too busy to do it but we should, it’s every bit as important as the campaign as a whole.

Google has ad optimizer which out of the ads you have the most clicks which will give you the better CTR of course, relative to the impressions of the ad, they will show that ad more often. SURE, that’s great that they do that automatically and of course we want the ad showing that’s getting the best CTR, but what about the better conversions? Google, I believe, is “optimizing” these ads to show more because of the CTR but conversions are just as important. CTRs are incredibly important because of quality score, we know that, but I’m sure you care more about conversions than your CTR.

I go back again to how important it is to split test your ads. Not because of the CTR only, but because of conversions of course. You can’t really split test your ads to the optimal level for conversions if you have one showing a lot more than the other, specially if the history of the ad is really good, then putting a new ad will always be a bit canceled out by the ad that has been doing great in Google (remember that Google does keep account history of ads and keywords.) It’s also important to note that I’m not just talking about Google Adwords here but all engines.

So, as I’m sure most do opt in to have Google optimize your ads to show the “best” ad more often, try to A/B split test by choosing the option in Google (as shown above in the image) that will show your ads evenly to see conversion rates.

**Conversion rates in the Google Adwords interface, in my opinion, are almost pretty much of in terms of being accurate but they do give you a fair idea of performing ads and keywords. You can also do this test on Google Analytics.