• First, after a few weeks look at your ads’ click-through rates. This information can be found within the dashboard of your AdWords account. See how close the rates are to your 2% goal.

• If they are below your goal, consider the text of your ads. Is it enticing? Is it clear? Does it contain enough of your keywords? If you don’t make your product or service appealing or easy to understand, customers won’t click on your ads. Also, consider whether your keywords are the best ones for your offering. Maybe customers aren’t clicking on your ad because your offering isn’t quite what they want.

•  If your click-through rates are above your goal, look at your ad spend and conversion income. It’s obviously easier to determine income resulting from sales conversions than income resulting from lead conversions. If your income is significantly higher than your ad spend, you are doing something right. Your higher-than-intended click-through rates are actually a good thing.

• But if your ad spend is higher than your conversion income, your higher click-through rates are probably a bad thing. This likely means you are getting a lot of unqualified traffic, and it is costing you. Modify your ad text so it weeds out shoppers who won’t convert. For example, specify that your gold rings start at $200, and those with limited funds won’t click on your ad in the first place.

• Monitor your click-through rates and conversions following any changes to your ads. If your income is greater than your click spend, consider shooting for a higher click-through rate. You can do this by improving your ad text, choosing better keywords, and incorporating negative keywords into your AdWords campaigns. These actions should increase your number of qualified ad impressions, click-through rates and conversions.

• Over time, your goal will change from a 2% click-through rate to the click-through rate that provides you with the best return on investment. If you determine, for example, that you achieve a record 30% profit margin from a 7% click-through rate, try to maintain that 7% rate. The rarer your product or service, the more relevant and inexpensive your keywords, and the more gripping your ad text, the higher your ideal CTR will likely be. And the higher your click-through rate, the higher your Google ranking will be.

• Typically click-through rates for search ads are higher than click-through rates for ads on the content network. That’s because ads on the content network have fewer qualified impressions, and are often more about generating brand awareness than immediate conversions.

• Bing search ads have a higher click-through rate than Google and Yahoo search ads, according to a recent WebVisible report.

• Ads tied to “softer” conversions, like downloads, newsletter sign-ups, and forum user name registrations, tend to generate higher click-through rates.

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