Google Adwords CTR

[axiom82]

My click through rate is TERRIBLE on Google Adwords.  So bad in fact, that when I did receive clicks, 50% of my clicks bounced off the front page.  I'm trying to gain traffic for my employee scheduling software.  I THOUGHT the software was AMAZING and the business world would take to it like candy...but then again I am the PHP developer. Basically, it's an employee scheduling and employee performance monitoring web service that is written entirely in PHP, MySQL, and AJAX!  Yes AJAX   Because it is written in AJAX the initial load time is about 12 seconds during logon but once that data is cached via Apache it's only 2 seconds for each re-entrance.  Not a bad toll considering that once the interface is loaded it is never refreshed and only pulls simple php files in the background for dynamic content.

 

Anyway...I'm interested in my Click through rate on Adwords.  It's at 0.07% which is awful!!!  Apparently a decent CTR is about 3-5%.  However, I have some keywords I want to keep because they are getting impressions and impressions potentially lead to clicks!

 

Here is my question...is it better to delete the keywords that are ruining my click through rate?  Does the click through rate change the ratings of my keywords or something...basically is there a penalty on Google Adwords for a low CTR?

 

Thanks.

[ardyandkari]

you should narrow down keywords to what makes sense...just because you are getting impressions, doesn't mean that you will get customers...

 

example:

    if you are selling hover cars you would obviously have hover cars as a key word(s), but if you put   

  1.  iphone

  2. webkinz

  3. tmz

  4. transformers

  5. youtube

  6. club penguin

  7. myspace

  8. heroes

  9. facebook

  10. anna nicole smith

(taken from google's zeitgeist 2007 as top 10 risers)

as keywords, you might get a bunch of impressions for searches under those keywords, but nothing much will come from them, because nobody cares about hover cars when they are looking for those items.

 

the point is, even though you get lots of impressions doesn't mean that you will get meaningful clicks...

[dmccabe]

As already mentionoed it is better to be highly specific with your keywords than general.

 

For example lets say you were selling a digital camera, would you go for keyword of "camera", "digital Camera" or "Nikon D40". The last is the best (obviously if your selling the Nikon D40) as you will get impressions when people are actually looking for that particular camera rather than hundreds of impressions from people just wanting a run of the mill camera.

 

Hope that makes sense

[RalphOrange]

I agree with the others, narrowing down the keywords will help.

 

In my opinion, selling one the net is not easy. PPC will get get you trafffic, but will it bring paying cutomers, or just people surfing looking for information. A certain percentage could also be your competition trying to reduce your budget.

 

It's never easy getting started thats for sure.

 

Have you tried a contest, newsletter, something to capture email addresses where you can push your webpage to them on a regual but not obtrusive manner?