What is a Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

CTR is one of the key metrics of measure the impact of organic search traffic on a business. With thousand of organic visitors, businesses build brand value and user engagement.

A click through rate, abbreviated as CTR, is a measurement of how many times a link that is involved in paid inclusion is actually clicked on when it appears on a search engine results page.

The click through rate is measured by dividing the number of times a link appears on a search engine results page by the number of times it is actually clicked on by a visitor. For example, if a link appears one hundred times, or has what is called one hundred impressions, and it is clicked on twenty times, the click through rate of that particular link is twenty percent.

The higher at CTR is for a website means the more people that are seeing the web page, and more conversions that could possibly happen, depending on how well the web page convinces people to partake in the chosen action for that particular landing page. Attractive search results, especially those with images and well-written meta-descriptions, are much more likely to attract visitors.

Banner ads have click through rates as well, though these are becoming obsolete. Most banner ads have a click through rate of less than one percent, and are rarely chosen as standard paid inclusion tactics. Yet, improving click through rates is as easy as placing the banner on specific web pages. Those banner ads which are located on web pages that have something to do with what the banner is advertising have a higher click through rate than other banner ads. Many advertisers choose to simply go with paid inclusion through search engines though, and work on using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve click through rates.

SEO has an effect on click through rates as much as the description tags do. When a link has a description tag that is optimized for natural search engine results, the chances of the click through rate being higher grows. Descriptions that list the target keywords or keyword phrases, as well as descriptions that are well written and concise can draw a visitor to click on that particular link more frequently. A higher click through rate mixed with search engine optimization can be exactly what a web site needs to have a higher conversion rate.

Key Terms

Click-Through Rate: The number of clicks compared to the total number of search impressions.

Goals: A marketing objective for your audience to complete, such as subscribing to a mailing list.

Completion rate: The number of web visitors divided by the number of goals completed.

Organic Traffic: Visitors that discover your website by entering searching a keyword in a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and that click on your listing.