Everything You Need to Know About CTR (Click-Through Rate)
Your ranking in Google's search results isn't worth more than your CTR (click-through rate). After all, what good is a number-one ranking if no one bothers to click through to read your content?
Exactly. That's why there's plenty of potential to increase traffic and conversions simply by optimizing your click-through rate.
If you work in SEO and don’t already use CTR as one of the guiding principles for your organic content, I hope that will change by the time you finish reading this blog post.
You'll find answers to seven of the most frequently asked questions about CTR—and, at the end, a guide on how to get started with optimization.
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1) What is CTR?
CTR stands for Click-Through Rate and is a measure of how many people click on your content when they see it online.
In plain English, it’s also called the “click-through rate,” but the abbreviation CTR is the most commonly used term in digital marketing.
All organic landing pages collect data when they are displayed to a user—and track every time an impression results in a click.
This applies to:
- Organic search results → that's why it's a key metric when working with SEO.
- Ads → that's why it's also a key metric when working with PPC.
- Social media posts → that's why it's a key metric for both organic and paid posts.
2) How do you calculate your click-through rate?
It's easy to calculate your click-through rate—divide the number of impressions (people who have seen your post) by the number of clicks on the post itself, then multiply by 100.
CTR = (clicks : impressions) x 100
Therefore: If 100 people have seen your post and three have clicked on it, the math works out like this:
(3 : 100) x 100 = 3 → Your click-through rate is 3 percent.
3) How do you find out what a page's CTR is?
There's no need to get out your calculator—of course you can look up your CTR.
Google Search Console is the only place where you can view relevant CTR data. Here, you can see the total number of clicks and impressions over a given time period, and it's easy to view the calculated click-through rate for specific keywords, landing pages, users' devices, and much more.
There's plenty of data to dive into, so take the time to dig in and figure out why things are going well or poorly.
4) What is a good CTR?
What a professional or business considers a good CTR can vary greatly from person to person. Target audiences, keywords, history, budget, and industry can all influence impressions and difficulty.
There is also a significant difference in expectations (and hopes) when working with click-through rates in SEO and PPC, respectively.
In advertising, for example, a CTR of more than 1 percent on banner ads is not expected. Conversely, in SEO, a CTR below 10 percent is considered unsatisfactory and requires action (and, incidentally, a CTR of 20+ percent is highly desirable).
In other words, a good click-through rate is a very relative metric. Make it a habit to review your click-through rates frequently in Google Search Console, because that’s where you can identify the low-hanging fruit and increase the number of clicks on your specific content.
5) What happens if I don't improve my click-through rate?
Of course, it’s not just because of your blue eyes that you want people to click on your landing page, ad, or Facebook post.
You have certain goals for your content that you’d like to achieve. Whether you’re aiming for sales, traffic, brand awareness, or something else entirely, a low CTR results in:
- That you're missing out on traffic to your site—you've gotten the exposure, but not the clicks.
- That in the future, you may see lower organic rankings or a higher CPC (Cost Per Click) on your ads because the algorithms will determine that your content isn't relevant or good enough.
If you've been unsure up until now, that's why you should always keep a close eye on your click-through rates.
6) Why aren't people clicking on my search result?
When, despite a certain number of views, you don't get the desired clicks, it means that your content is either not relevant—or doesn't appear relevant to your target audience.
Therefore, it requires a qualitative analysis of each individual search result to determine why your target audience isn't clicking on the search result that appears.
Whether you want to optimize a keyword, a landing page, or an ad, it’s essential to start with what users see: namely, the organic SERP snippet or the ad itself.
The SERP is the text that appears in Google's search results and is also called a meta tag. It consists of a meta title, a meta description, and sometimes structured data such as rich snippets.
Google decides what appears in the search results—and the meta description may be a selected excerpt from the landing page rather than the one you specified yourself (for example, via Yoast!).
In the SERP itself, the three most common problems are:
- The text isn't clear or is incomplete regarding the content on the landing page—maybe you forgot to create it when you set up the landing page?
- The meta title and/or description are missing a CTA (Call to Action)—have you made it clear to your target audience what they should do?
- Users' search intent doesn't match the page's content—is the content on your page out of line with what your target audience is searching for?
So what do you do once you've identified a problem? You fix it—and if you're looking for examples, I'll give you some in the next section.
7) Which pages should I optimize for CTR?
The larger the site you manage, the more overwhelming it can seem to start optimizing your landing pages for CTR. After all, where do you even start?
The short answer is: in Google Search Console. Here, under the “Performance” tab, you can view clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position in Google.
(Remember to select the display options for click-through rate and average position; by default, only clicks and impressions are enabled.)
Filter either “queries” or “pages” by highest ranking, and then go to work on the keywords and landing pages that appear on page 1 of Google.
Optimize all CTRs below 10 percent—or whatever you've set as your lower limit for an acceptable click-through rate.
Why should you focus on the pages that are already on page 1?
You need to do this because almost all Google searches don't go any further than that. The SEO publication Backlinko has analyzed user behavior across 1,801 sessions by Google users.
The study showed that as few as 0.44 percent of visitors proceed to page 2 of Google’s search results. Furthermore, only 9 percent of the users in the study scrolled all the way to the bottom of page 1 of their search results.
If you work with SEO, it’s therefore absolutely essential to rank in the top 10 to get exposure for your keyword—and ideally in the top three.
Because Google's algorithm is constantly improving, you're most likely to find the answer to your search among the first three search results.
So, to sum up: The lower your ranking on page 1, the less exposure and fewer clicks you'll get, statistically speaking.
8) How to Optimize Your CTR
So how can you improve your click-through rate by optimizing your meta title and meta description? And how can you figure out your target audience’s search intent? You can learn more about that here.
Meta tags
A good meta text can make all the difference in whether your page gets a click or not. That’s why rewriting your meta title and meta description can often increase your click-through rate.
It's easy to identify the problem when it comes to a missing metatext—because then the solution is to roll up your sleeves and fill in the blank fields.
You often find yourself in a situation where you have a piece of text, but for various reasons, it isn't generating clicks. So what's wrong with it?
You can get several reliable suggestions by running the URL of the affected page through a CTR tool—a program that identifies and analyzes issues in your existing meta tags and can help you write a new one from scratch.
What the meta-checker looks for is whether the text meets Google’s technical recommendations and whether it uses engaging language (such as numbers, active verbs, power words, and calls to action).
For example, I can recommend this one from Storybase.
Search Intent
If you're getting impressions but no clicks, there might also be something wrong with the context in which your landing page is being displayed. This means your landing page isn't matching what people are actually searching for.
Let’s say you sell wine, and your landing page about red wines ranks on page one for the keyword “red wine” on Google. You’ve written a long, thorough, comprehensive article about grape varieties, types, production processes, and flavor profiles—and I’m here to call you out on it. But despite that great ranking, your CTR is only 1.3 percent, so something is clearly wrong.
If you search for “red wine” yourself, you’ll see that the remaining nine results on the first page are about buying red wine, and that they all link to online stores.
So even if you've done everything right, the outcome is still wrong. That's because users' search intent is different from what you expected.
A distinction is made between three search intents:
- Information searches. Here, people want to learn about something—for example, a lot about red wine, Pokémon Go, dog breeds—the list goes on and on.
- Navigational searches. These searches lead users to a specific destination—it could be a specific brand, a company’s website, or a particular pair of shoes.
- Transactional searches. Here, users are ready to convert—for example, by making a purchase, calling, or requesting a quote.
And this is where your landing page doesn’t match what people are searching for: it’s suitable for information-seeking, but users’ actual intention is to buy red wine. Armed with this knowledge, you can tailor the content—both in the page’s SERP snippet and/or on the landing page itself—to meet users’ expectations.
Get help with your SEO strategy
Well begun is half done. A bad start is… well, not good. If you don’t have the resources to develop a well-thought-out SEO strategy and would like help from an experienced SEO agency, you’re always welcome to send me an email at seo@amplify.dk.
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