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Click through rate or CTR: what is it and how is it measured?

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"What you can't measure, you can't improve", is a phrase often heard in the world of digital marketing, and it is clear that if you don't measure your actions, how will you know if they work or not. This is where metrics come in, which are used to measure the success of your campaigns.

Today we bring you what is the CTR or click through rate and how to calculate this basic KPI for digital marketing. Read on to find out all about the Click through rate!

what is the Click through rate or CTR?

The CTR, which translates to click through rate, measures the number of users who have clicked on a link or ad with respect to the total number of impressions of this, i.e. the number of times it has been seen.

The click through rate is a KPI that is responsible for measuring the impact that a digital campaign is having. It is part of the analytics of your website, and in addition to measuring the performance of an advertising campaign it also serves to measure the positioning in search engines or SEO. It measures the latter because the CTR measures the number of clicks that a web content has in relation to the number of times that link has been seen in Google's SERP .

how is the click through rate calculated?

The CTR formula is very simple as you will see below:

(Clics / Impressions) x 100

This KPI is measured as a percentage, so it is necessary to multiply it by 100. It is obtained by dividing all the clicks obtained on that link, ad, CTA, etc, by the number of times it has been seen, that is, the impressions, and then multiply it by 100.

Let's give you an example with numbers to make it much easier to assimilate. Imagine that your ad has been seen 2500 times and you have obtained a total of 50 clicks, your click through rate would be calculated as follows:

(50 / 2500) x 100 = 2

Your CTR would be 2%.

There is no exact figure to indicate the success of your campaign, but to give you an idea, in Google Ads a good CTR is around 1-2%, while in display advertising it is lower, around 0.5%.

But other factors must be taken into account, such as the high competitiveness of the sector or keywords, the budget that has been invested in the campaign, the segmentation carried out, etc. Even if a campaign is very well targeted and segmented, if there are many similar ads it is more difficult to get the click.

why is the click through rate important?

The CTR has become one of the main KPIs of a digital marketing campaign, and it is the metric that indicates whether your actions are being efficient or not.

Although there is no exact formula to create a perfect campaign, the CTR tells you the ratio between clicks and impressions, so it tells you how interested users are in your ad. This helps you to see if your ad is interesting or if you need to make a change because it is not appealing.

It is also important because it helps you to increase traffic to your website or landing page, because the higher your CTR means you are getting more clicks, if your click through rate comes from an ad it will direct you to your website or some specific content, if it comes from a CTA or call to action, your traffic will be driven to a landing page to perform an action.

Knowing your click-through rate also helps you to make your advertising more profitable. By knowing the level of interest your ads are getting, you can better focus your campaigns, and not only that, Google favours better quality ads, so you will get a better positioning.

how to improve CTR?

As you have read throughout the post, the click through rate is one of the basic metrics that you should include in the analysis of your campaigns, because it is not only useful to get traffic or to get the user to perform an action on your website, but also to improve your SEO positioning and appear in the first results of the SERP.

It is important to optimise your ads well, choose a good title and a description or meta description is essential, as well as a friendly URL, forget the links full of symbols and numbers. In the title and URL do not forget to include the keyword for which you are betting.

Listings are links that get a higher number of clicks, as they are easy to read, contain a lot of information in an orderly fashion, and betting on this format can help you get more clicks from users.

Improving your SEO also helps you to have a better CTR rate. If your website is correctly optimised and you are targeting the right keyword, your click through rate will be good.

You already know what CTR is, how to measure it and how important it is for your website, so now it's time for you to calculate this metric in your campaigns. It should be part of your main KPIs, as it helps you to measure the tracking of your strategies.

we hope we have solved your doubts and that you have enjoyed the reading!

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