It's surprisingly difficult, however, to get meaningful data on the average click-through rate (CTR) for Google AdWords ads. On the B2B side, I'd place the average Google AdWords CTR in the range of 0.9-1.4%. So—how can you optimize your Google AdWords CTR to beat those averages? A previous post here covered average click-through rates for email newsletter advertising, email campaigns and website banner ads. As noted, DoubleClick provides fairly reliable data across those media.

For example, if you have a large marketing team, create processes so that you standardize your email and landing page templates. Optimize your landing pages by removing any unnecessary fields. For example, if the conversion rate of a Google AdWords campaign is failing as the effort to turn these "inquiries" into MQLs (marketing qualified leads) is too expensive and takes too long, remove it. When I say that you should become an eco-marketer, I don't mean that you should add some corny green recycle image to your website (who would do that?) or support a "Save

What common mistakes made by AdWords marketers should you avoid in order to optimize your results? What are some AdWords myths you shouldn't believe? How is the AdWords quality score calculated, and what can you do to improve scores in your campaigns? Which element of campaigns is often overlooked, but should Discover this information and more, here in the first set of the best posts about Google AdWords from 2009 (so far). Top 11 Money-Wasting AdWords Mistakes by Alibaba.com The ubiquitous Jon Rognerud lists 11 common mistakes made by small companies and those

Where can you find the best resources to help pass the AdWords certification exam? What factors should be taken into account when developing a new AdWords campaign? How can the Google AdWords search-based keyword tool be used for competitive research? Discover those answers and more here in the final installment When is it time to drop or rewrite an underperforming ad? Top 10 Resources to Pass the Google AdWords Exam in a Week by SEOptimise Richard Fergie provides a helpful list of resources to help with the Google AdWords certification exam from the AdWords blog, O'Reilly

Jep: How do you track opportunities or revenue associated with specific AdWords Campaigns? Do your clients use Salesforce for Google AdWords, Marketing Automation systems or other tools? Terry: Terry: For the most part, clients use Salesforce-for-AdWords, which is a very elegant way to link leads with valuable AdWords data like keyword, search term, campaign, etc. Interview with Terry Whalen from CPC Search To generate demand for your products, it’s not enough to nurture the existing leads in your database.

Optimization—the greatest results for the lowest cost—is the goal of every AdWords campaign manager. What are two of the simplest ways to optimize AdWords campaigns? Google is constantly changing and upgrading its AdWords tools; which recent enhancements are most important to understand and take advantage of? Click-through rate (CTR) is the single most important factor in determining Quality Score, which is as important as bid level in determining how highly an ad will appear in search results. But it isn’t the only factor; what other items are considered, and how can

Keyword / Key Phrase Development: look at multiple sources—your existing site content, competitors’ websites, industry trade publications, relevant blogs, and the keyword suggestion tool in Google AdWords—to develop your long list of key word and phrases to use in your SEM campaign. Both Google and Yahoo provide campaign settings pages where you specify these various parameters for your campaign. Search engine marketing (SEM) can be a powerful lead generation source, or a complete waste of money. B2B marketers often get less from their SEM programs than possible by overlooking

At the ad group level, use negative terms that are specific to that particular product group, industry, or landing page, but that might not apply across the entire campaign. (For Tags: B2B Marketing Google AdWords SEM search marketing paid search PP Success in paid search (PPC) is often defined as generating quality clicks and conversions at the lowest possible cost. But just as often, a successful search campaign depends as much on avoiding bad clicks as it does on generating good ones.

Not getting a great conversion rate from your landing pages? Here's a good article from e-consultancy called " A 10-point checklist for landing page design ". This article also describes how to improve your Google Adword " quality score ". Essentially, the more relevant your Adword keywords and text Nothing too new in the article but it's well written and an easy read. Bottom line: Keep your landing page brief and to the point.

Once you've optimized the list of keywords in your search engine marketing campaign, tweaked the bids and crafted stellar ad text to bring visitors to your site, landing page design is critical to converting those visitors into sales or leads. Here are a few of the best posts about SEM landing page design from last year. Good and bad landing page examples by CDF Networks Chad Frederiksen gets right to the point with this brief but helpful post on what separates bad landing page design (e.g., clutter) from good (a clear call to action