CTR is a term that often appears in all guides for running a successful PPC online advertising campaign. It is one of the many indicators that allows you to check whether the e-marketing actions taken are bringing the intended effect. Clickthrough Rate – this ratio can have a positive impact on the cost of your advertising activities, brand recognition and reputation, as well as conversion. In the following text you will learn exactly what CTR is, how to interpret it and ensure its high value.
What is CTR – basic information
The assumptions behind CTR are very simple. It is a ratio that shows how often users click on the link they promote after viewing your content. Thanks to this, you can carefully check if a given ad is working well. A high score usually means that potential customers found the content helpful and factual, which prompted them to take the next step, which is to click on the link. A low one may indicate that the message is not encouraging, misleading or targeting the wrong group of people. CTR is an indicator that also applies to organic search results, and in this case it works according to exactly the same principles. Shows what percentage of people who saw your page in a search engine decided to visit it. Since Google introduced the rule that sponsored links are displayed above organic ones, they have become an even more effective supplement to SEO efforts. According to analyzes carried out by the WordStream portal, as many as 65% of users who decide to buy choose the links included in paid ads.
How to calculate CTR?
Whether it’s an organic CTR or a PPC campaign, the click-through rate is based on an uncomplicated formula. Two values are taken into account. It is about the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. The result obtained must be multiplied by 100 to obtain the percentage value. For example, you launched a Google Ads campaign for your website and after some time the ads were displayed, the statistics say that 1000 people saw them, and 100 of them decided to click on it and move to your website. This means that the CTR is 10%.
What CTR is good?
There is no clear answer to this question, as it depends, among other things, on the industry in which you operate. However, it is worth knowing the average values that can become a benchmark for your work. According to research by WordStream, the average CTR is around 2% for a search ad and 0.35% for an ad displayed on your website in the form of a banner or other ad formats. These figures do not seem very high, but still reaching them can be quite a time-consuming challenge. Especially in the case of organic traffic. All results exceeding these values are already above average and prove well-conducted marketing activities.
CTR versus Predicted CTR – see the differences
Expected CTR is an auxiliary data that is useful when creating an ad. Their task is to calculate the likelihood of clicking a link using certain key phrases. However, please note that the eCTR value is predicted and does not take into account other factors that affect ad performance such as ad position, format or device on which it appears.
Importantly, eCTR is taken into account by Google when determining the Quality Score for a given ad, and thus may improve its positioning. Approximate values for Predicted CTR are “above average”, “average” and “below average”. This allows you to see if the content you create will have a chance of achieving the expected success in a given form.
Improving eCTR – how and why?
While Expected CTR is all about forecasted data, it cannot be ignored. Improving this indicator contributes to increasing the Quality Score of the ad in a short time, which in turn will be helpful in increasing the value of the correct CTR. Already at the stage of creating the advertisement, you should ensure that the eCTR is average or above average. In the event that the values of this indicator are lower, you need to re-analyze the key phrases used in the ad. They may be poorly chosen or the content is insufficiently saturated with them. You also need to remember that eCTR is a variable value and the fact that you have achieved above average does not mean that it will be consistently at that level. For this reason, you should regularly check this indicator and analyze the strength of the keywords used in the ad, so that in the event of changes, you can react early and modify the content. As in the case of other marketing activities, also in this case it is also worth carrying out A / B tests and paying attention to the activities of direct competition.
Does CTR affect other indicators?
Clickthrough Rate is not only an analytical value that allows you to decide whether or not you should make adjustments to the advertising content. High CTR translates into measurable benefits. The first and most obvious is that more clicks mean more leads. This allows you to generate more traffic on the website and improve conversion rates. If this is not the case, and despite a high CTR, you still have a low conversion, the problem is probably not the advertising content itself (as it encourages you to click), but the content of the page it refers to. This may involve, for example, offering a product or service that does not match what the ad is saying. It is important that, according to research published by Clutch, as many as 33% of users click on advertising content based on how closely their content is related to the phrases they search. The solution to this problem may also be excluding key phrases, the use of which in the search process will block your ad from showing. For example, if you mark keywords such as “new car parts” as negative in a situation where you only offer second-hand equipment, you will reduce the risk that someone who is looking for only unused parts will click on your ad. That person will certainly not make the purchase, and you will have to pay for clicking them. According to the Hubspot blog, the average conversion result from advertising, without distinguishing between specific industries, is 2.7% for search ads and 0.9% for ads displayed on pages.
CTR also affects another indicator. It is CPC, i.e. cost per click. You will set the maximum cost when creating an advertising campaign, but it can often be much lower. The more users click on your ads, the more the cost of maintaining them is reduced. Hence, this translates into real savings.
Does CTR affect website ranking?
It has not been proven that CTR itself is a ranking factor for a website. Search Engine Land reports that the statements of Google employees over the last 10 years have repeatedly confirmed that the multiple factor has little or no impact on positioning. On the other hand, sites that rank high in organic search results also tend to have a much higher CTR than the lower-ranked competitors. It is therefore a correlation that cannot be ignored.
