Looking for an answer to your question, “what is click-through rate, and why does it matter?” Well, you’ve come to the right place!
Search engines, such as Google, put a high premium on a good click-through rate (CTR). After all, in a PPC campaign, the more someone clicks on an ad displayed in a search engine, the more money that search engine stands to make.
However, CTR is equally important to advertisers as well. When an internet user turns to search engines, they have a question that they want to be answered. They have already decided that they need something and are trying to find it. They tell the search platform exactly what they are looking for.
As an advertiser, it provides you with the unique opportunity to capitalize on this need and offer an internet user the answer that they are looking for, in the form of your services, products, and more. The ideal way to do that is to create a relevant paid search ad that boosts your click-through rate.
But what is click-through rate, and why does it matter? Read on to find out!
What Is Click-Through Rate (CTR)?
Simply put, click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of impressions that result in a click. For instance, if your PPC ad had 1,000 impressions and one click, it will have a 0.1% CTR. Click-through rate is a metric that tells you how relevant internet searchers find your ad. If you have a high CTR, internet users are finding your ad to be exceedingly relevant. However, if your ad has a low CTR, users are not finding your ad to be that relevant.
The ultimate goal of any pay-per-click campaign is to rope qualified users into visiting your website and performing the desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a contact form, etc. CTR is the first step to ensuring the success of your PPC campaign as it enables you to improve your ad’s relevancy, which will eventually help you derive the desired actions.
What Is a Good CTR?
If you’re wondering what a good click-through rate is, the answer is that it depends on your industry, the keywords you bid on, and the individual campaigns within your PPC account. For instance, branded keywords often generate double-digit click-through rates. Meanwhile, it isn’t unusual for non-branded keywords to generate less than 1% CTRs.
Why Does Click-Through Rate Matter?
CTR isn’t just an indicator of the relevancy of your ads. It also contributes to your ad rank in search engines, i.e., the position of your ad on search result pages. The top position in PPC campaigns doesn’t automatically go to the highest bidder. It goes to the advertiser with the highest Ad Rank.
Google calculates your rank by measuring your CTR against an expected CTR for your ad. It means that if you’ve run many ads with low CTRs, Google will assume any new ads you add to your campaign will have low CTRs as well and might rank them lower. It’s why you must strive to improve the CTR of your ads as much as possible.
Your ad’s CTR also affects its quality score, which is essentially a measure of its relevancy calculated by search engines. Quality Score is calculated based on your expected click-through rate, landing page experience, and ad relevancy. A higher CTR will naturally boost your quality score.
There’s no denying that CTR is an essential metric to measures the success of PPC campaigns. However, optimizing your CTR should always go hand in hand with optimizing your business metrics for your campaign to be successful.
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