Today we look at Click Through Rate and try to understand it in the most basic sense.
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The blog post includes answers to the following questions-
1. What is Click Through Rate(CTR)?
2. How to calculate CTR and what is the formula of CTR?
3. Why is CTR important?
4. What is considered as a good CTR?
5. How CTR affects Ad ranks?
6. How can you improve your CTR?
Let’s start with the most basic and simple question,
1. What is Click Through Rate (CTR)?
Click-Through Rate can be defined as the percentage of viewers who click on your ad/content based on the number of impressions made.
So for example, your ad was shown to 1000 viewers, however only 1 person clicked on it, then your CTR would be 0.1%.
To understand this better, it’s important to know how search engines work.
And it’s pretty simple to understand when you actually implement it.
If you were to use Google to search for “Order Chocolates”.
Now, there would be a list of websites selling chocolates online, that would pop up on the 1st page of the search results.
But you may not click on all of these links, you might consider only a few that interests you.
How well the content ‘interests’ a viewer, is what determines a higher CTR.
So it revolves around capturing the right kind of attention, thereby the likelihood of your content being clicked on is higher.
As a simple benchmark:
A High CTR means that viewers are considering your communication to be highly relevant.
A low CTR means that even though you are visible, you are not as appealing to explore.
2. How to Calculate CTR?
To calculate the CTR, take into account the following information:
i) The number of impressions made by your ad/content
ii) Number of people who clicked on your ad/content
The formula for CTR is
CTR = Total number of Clicks/ Total number of Impressions X 100
Let’s take an example to understand this calculation better,
Suppose your content was viewed through paid search, 50,000 times.
And out of those 50,000 impressions, your website was clicked 200 times.
Now using the formula given above, you can calculate your CTR as
200/50,000 X 100 = 0/4%.
Pretty simple right?
And you need not worry about calculating this on your own, Google does the work for you through analytics or search console.
3. Why is CTR important?
It boils down to answering this question, why do we need to care about a high CTR?
CTR is important because it is one such metric that helps you understand your customers better.
It helps you in figuring out the need to edit your content to increase the CTR.
A low CTR clearly denotes that you need to change your style to appeal to more people.
Whereas a High CTR will help you determine what works better with your communication style.
Now that being said, let’s look at points that will directly denote the importance of a high CTR.
i) Lower Cost Per Click
When it comes to Google, they always provide special and personalized treatment to a website that has a higher CTR, this can guarantee a lower Cost Per Click for you.
ii) Organic rankings are improved
While Google algorithms might be automated, they are fairly easy to understand.
Google ranks what people like, it’s as simple as that.
And a high CTR means that people like what you are sharing, this is clearly an indication that google must rank your content higher.
iii) Conversion rates are increased
If you do not know what Conversion rate is, you can ready my simplified explanation here.
It's simple math, if your CTR is improved 2x times, your conversion rate is also bound to go up by 50%.
4. What is considered as a good CTR?
Now CTR differs based on multiple parameters, given your niche, the competition as well as the industry average.
So there’s no- one number fits it all option here, it’s more about researching and getting your industry average.
On average on google search, a good CTR is considered to be around 1.91-2%.
5. How CTR affects Ad ranks?
Let’s understand what are Ad ranks
Ad Rank is a value that is used to determine your position in the search result.
So yes, bidding for the right keyword does matter when it comes to ranking your ad, however, it's not always that the highest bidder gets the top spot.
The top position goes to a brand that has the highest Ad rank, and one of the most important metrics to ensure a higher Ad rank is CTR.
The most important point to consider is that, if your ads are running at a low CTR, there is a big possibility that Google might assume this to happen with your new ad as well.
So if Google thinks your new ad will also work with a low CTR, it will automatically rank your content lower.
6. How can you improve your CTR?
Improving your CTR is dependent on multiple factors and is a consistent process, not something you can do once and expect it to grow.
If your CTR needs to be improved on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, you can look at increasing or adding relevant hashtags to widen your reach.
But in general, you can keep the following points in mind to improve your CTR
i) Optimize your copy and keywords
Your keywords hold the utmost importance in your ranking and thereby helps improve your CTR.
So utilize the initial part of your copy, and include your focus keyword- which helps google as well as your readers to understand the content well.
ii) Include a goal in your communication
What do you want your users to do at the end of it- knowing that is important!
Include a CTA that will help your viewers understand your goal.
iii) Improve your post description
If a viewer doesn’t know what the post is about, the possibility of a click is extremely low.
So ensure your meta description is perfectly placed with the right keywords so a viewer knows what to expect when they click on your website.
iv) Optimize your images
Images are placed in a separate section on google, so if someone is only looking for an image, and your optimized image pops up there, your CTR will increase.
v) Keep your title- simple!
I have always stressed on this, keep it simple for everyone to understand.
We can take the example of this blog post itself- the title tells the search engines as well as viewers, what they can expect from the blog post.
Conclusion:
CTR plays a crucial role in determining the success of your ad campaigns and the overall ranking of your content across social media and google pages.
So ensure you consider the above-mentioned ways to improve your CTR.