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CTR – how to increase click-through rate

Is your website working well? What is the effectiveness of your advertising or e-mail newsletters? There are many indicators that can help you find out the answers to these questions. But without a clear understanding of how users interact with your website or social media account, you will miss opportunities to increase sales and grow your business.

One of the best ways to increase productivity is to track and improve the click-through rate (CTR) of an online project. Let’s understand together what CTR is and, most importantly, what needs to be done to make this indicator higher.

CTR

What is CTR?

Click-through rate, or CTR, is a metric used to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. It is the percentage of users who click on a link that leads to a website in a search or an advertisement.

The increase in the number of clicks proves that the offer is relevant and interesting for the target audience. Data on the CTR of a web resource will help to determine whether SEO optimization efforts are paying off, will provide information about what content is most attractive to your audience. But we emphasize that the CTR formula is not a panacea. To get a complete picture of the effectiveness of the site, you need to take into account other factors.

How to calculate Click Through Rate (CTR)?

There are many complex concepts and terms to understand in online marketing, but fortunately, click-through rate (CTR) is not one of them.

Essentially, click-through rate is the ratio between clicks on a link or ad and impressions.

To clarify how to calculate CTR, we emphasize that this indicator is expressed as a percentage. For example, a CTR of 10% means that 10% of your ad impressions resulted in a click on it.

What does the click-through rate depend on?

A good CTR is the dream of every Internet marketer. The value of this indicator depends on several factors:

  • thematic niche. Determination of the benchmark CTR, which is worth striving for, depends on the field of activity of the enterprise. To find out about it, you need to conduct a study of the average CTR in the industry;
  • type of keyword query. A higher CTR can be useful if you want to attract customers to your website using a specific keyword or phrase. But if this query does not convert into sales, but is only a source of traffic, then it may be worth including it in the negative words when setting up PPC advertising;
  • placement of the link. If you analyze the CTR of ads placed in the Google Display Network, its position affects the value of this KPI, is an indicator of the quality of the source of conversions;
  • type of advertising. There are PPC advertising campaigns, email promotion, Google Ads, display advertising, social media advertising, etc. They all use CTR as a performance indicator. Accordingly, the figures will differ.

The formula for calculating CTR will work only when these and other factors are taken into account. And then you will get an answer to the question of what conversion is and how to calculate it, and especially how to increase it.

What does CTR affect?

CTR is an important metric because it helps you understand your customers. Based on its analysis, you can find out what works and what does not work when trying to reach your target audience. A low CTR may indicate that you are targeting the wrong audience or not speaking their language convincingly enough to convince them to click.

Take, for example, a paid search advertising campaign that directs people to an online store or landing page. The CTR of online advertising allows you to find out how effectively the ad attracts potential customers. You can then compare the ad text, placement type, and call-to-action to see which ad has the highest CTR.

A detailed analysis of this indicator will allow you to make adjustments to your work and get closer to your potential customers.

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How to increase the click-through rate?

We can talk about how to increase CTR only taking into account the channel where interaction with consumers takes place. Let’s consider these areas separately.

CTR in advertising

To increase CTR in your ad campaigns, we advise you to closely monitor user reactions and test different creatives and calls to action. In particular, do the following:

  • make sure that the text and call to action match the mood of your audience. For example, if the “Buy Now” offer is intended for an audience that is at the stage of getting to know the product, there will be fewer clicks and the call to action should be changed;
  • Narrow your audience. To make sure that your actions are correct, run ads for different segments of the target audience for a while and measure the click-through rate. Then you can develop the segment where there will be a higher response;
  • work on the advertising text. Visuals make ads attractive, and the text convinces that this is a product or solution that is needed right now. So, use strong words, create urgency, be personable and do your best to make your message strong;
  • choose an intriguing headline, add interactivity. Remember that it is the headline that attracts attention, so place a call to action in it, ask or use numbers. Studies show that numbers in headlines help to increase CTR;
  • express yourself concisely. When trying to find the ideal length of Facebook posts, it is believed that short posts provide higher engagement and CTR.

Free offers, promotions, discounts work well. This makes people click on ads more, but this way of attracting attention and increasing click-through rate should be combined with the overall marketing strategy.

CTR of organic search results

Everyone knows that Google takes into account more than 200 ranking factors, but not everyone knows that pages with higher than average CTR have higher rankings. We offer you some proven ways to increase the CTR of your site and its individual pages:

  • use low-frequency queries, which will help to increase the number of targeted conversions;
  • write short and effective meta descriptions. Capitalize every word in them, use signs that attract attention;
  • use images, video content on the pages. This is necessary to increase the click-through rate and, of course, engagement;
  • Create simple but attractive headlines. Pay special attention to the design of the snippet. You can read more about it in our article “Website snippet: what it is, how it is formed, how to create it correctly”;
  • optimize the page loading speed. This is an important factor that determines the success of CTR in marketing. If a web page loads slowly, people will go to another site.

When thinking about how to find out the CTR and increase it, regularly compare the performance of your site with competitors. If it turns out that your web resource is worse in terms of CTR and traffic, it is important to find out what caused it. Most content that gets a good response has meta tags, titles and content that are synchronized with each other and created to achieve a goal (informational/advertising) depending on the nature of the search. Make sure the content is also synchronized and keywords are used appropriately.

CTR of newsletters

Although it may seem that this method is outdated, it should not be discounted to attract customers. In 2022, the average CTR of email newsletters is 2.69% in all industries. To increase the click-through rate of sent emails, try:

  • make an unbeatable offer to generate clicks;
  • create content specifically designed for a specific audience;
  • use keywords that people are looking for.

Some marketing methods to increase attention to offers include promotions, drawings, price discounts, limited time or offered only to certain users.

Do not forget to include a map of your offline store location, seller ratings and contact details. These text extensions can give an additional advantage over others.

Conclusions

In most cases, the question of how to increase CTR often remains open, because time goes on and user preferences change. Try to experiment with the use of marketing strategies, monitor the changes in indicators. If you are not very well versed in the development of such strategies and monitoring systems for important KPIs, you can ask for help from our agency, where this work will be done professionally.