Most clients would tell you that they want to run paid ads in an attempt to maximize website traffic, to which we ask why, exactly? If it’s because you want phone calls, online forms, or purchases to take place, say so, because “website traffic” in itself is pretty meaningless. In fact, many vendors would shovel low-quality placements into your buy that show a high CTR and low CPC, but are those people all reaching your site? Are they bouncing after 1 second? It often seems that we should all stop talking about “website traffic” and concern ourselves with quality as much as quantity, and be looking at GA4 data to ensure we’re driving valuable clicks that reach the site, don’t show a sky-high bounce rate, and actually engage with the website.

Confusion over metrics and dependancies also tends to confuse this discussion, where a client will look at a high CTR and think “maximum website traffic”. No, that’s not how any of this works; on any given budget, it’s a lower CPC that will garner more clicks and presumably, more website visits. With paid search specifically, we get peppered with questions as to why Impressions look low, derived from a complete misunderstanding as to how paid search works. Nobody targets or pays for Impressions with SEM ads. In fact, the better we do with improving CTR of your ads, the fewer Impressions you’ll garner with your budget (takes fewer Impressions to reach the click volume that exhausts your ad budget).

Max click and max website visits are auction and bidding strategies, not client goals. The end goal is what you want happening after the ad click, not the click itself. An experienced digital ops team can sort through this noise, as our team does, but it’s always interesting to hear how different clients express their goals.