CTR analysis and optimizations

Intro

What is CTR?

CTR stands for click-through rate, a metric used to measure an editorial strategy’s success. Compute it by dividing the number of clicks on a search result page snippet or link by the number of times it was shown. CTR is an important measure of success  since it helps gauge the effectiveness of a campaign and helps inform audience development and editorial teams on  decisions about how to optimize future campaigns.

The SEO impact of CTR

Analyzing ranked pages’ click-through rates can help determine how many estimated visitors from the search engine results page (SERP)  arrived at the page, providing a basic forecasting model. Although appearing as the first SERP result may seem like a success, it is not the only factor contributing to SEO; rather, what matters is the amount of qualified traffic and conversions the page receives.

Source

For this reason, click-through-rate optimization is critical when gauging SEO efforts. Multiple studies demonstrate that the click-through rate significantly increases as a site’s page ranking improves. Therefore, generally speaking, higher rankings lead to higher click-through rates. Another study by Sistrix found that the first three search results have the highest CTR from the top 10 ranking pages, indicating that they receive the lion’s share of organic traffic from the SERP. Therefore, a crucial factor affecting the CTR of an organic search result is its position in the SERP.

Is CTR a ranking signal?

The CTR of an organic search result can be impacted by numerous factors such as ranking position, presence of ads, SERP features, type of query, and the appearance of the snippet. Larry Kim experimented with comparing CTRs of 1,000 keywords from the same niche on both paid and organic searches. He noted that something unusual was occurring and hypothesized that RankBrain was elevating the rankings of pages with higher organic CTRs.