With the many acronyms in marketing, CTR is one of the most important. Short for click-through rate, CTR refers to the percentage of clicks you get relative to the number of people who saw your offer. Marketers use the metric to see how well their ads, landing pages, social media posts, and other offers perform.
This critical number provides guidance for your overall marketing strategy. Use it to hone your marketing and learn more about what your audience wants and needs. Improving your CTR can increase your leads, sales, and other marketing goals.
Why Is Click-Through Rate Important?
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Click-through rate (CTR) can give you an idea of how effective your landing page or offer is in getting you the result you want. For example, when you have 500 out of 1,000 visitors click a link, you end up with a 50% CTR. That means that your offer did its job of getting people to click through to another page.
Essentially, a higher CTR is better than a low CTR. Let’s use the example above. If you had 1,000 visitors but only 200 clicked through, you end up with a 20% CTR. However, if 800 clicked through, your CTR becomes 80%. That’s 60% more chances to have someone take advantage of your offer, make a purchase, sign up for more information, etc.
If you’re consistently ending up with low CTRs for your offers or landing pages, you can determine that something needs to change. It might be your landing page design, call-to-action, or the offer you present. Either way, your CTR can be one of the first signals that you should do something differently.
6 Steps for Optimizing CTR
Optimizing CTR for your ads, social media posts, and other strategies that send people to your business can increase the likelihood of people responding to your offer. Try these tips:
1. Optimize Everything That Shows on Google
Google displays a lot of information from your website page or blog post that can encourage people to click through to your site. A catchy headline could entice people to want to read more, and a detailed meta description can do the same. Therefore, be sure to optimize what Google sees when you write content.
Also, think about your call-to-action (CTA). This phrase tells people what they should do, such as “Read this guide to learn more” or “Click here to sign up.” Here are 50 CTA examples that might inspire you.
2. Make Your Ads Stand Out
If you’re running ads on Google, there are a few ways to help your ads potentially get more clicks. One way is to use ad extensions, which are extra bits of information Google includes in your ads, like a phone number or a special offer. When you set up your ads, you’ll find extensions in the Ads & Extensions tabs.
Secondly, work on improving your Quality Score, which tells Google about your ad’s performance based on its relevancy to searched keywords and how well your landing pages align with your ad. Optimizing landing pages and doing strategic keyword research can boost your score.
3. Use the Right Keywords
Long-tail keywords can be better than short-tail keywords to target if you’re looking for more click-throughs in Google. Why?
These longer phrases are more precise. People searching for them are looking for something specific. When your page shows up in results for that specific keyword, it’s likelier to get clicks compared to being in the results of a very general keyword.
4. Make Your Site Faster
A speedy site keeps visitors there longer, therefore improving your rankings with Google. Making your site mobile-friendly and compressing images are two easy ways to boost site speed and improve SEO. Also, minimize the usage of redirecting URLs, and remove any unnecessary scripts that can bog down a site. If using WordPress or a similar site builder, deactivate and remove excessive plugins or add-ons.
5. Market to the Right People
When you target your optimal audience in your marketing, you can raise your number of click-throughs. After all, people interested in heavy-duty trucks aren’t likely to click on an article about classic cars, but classic car enthusiasts will.
As a bonus: Doing this can not only lead to more clicks, but also to more conversions. When you find your ideal audience, you’ll have a solid bank of people who are more receptive to your offers.
6. Test Your Creatives
Like most aspects of marketing, CTR optimization requires testing. Experiment with meta descriptions, headlines, landing pages, and other marketing elements that factor into your CTR. Use A/B testing to tweak one element at a time and determine what works best until you’ve found an optimal mixture of creatives that improve your CTR.
Getting people to click is half the battle. The other half is getting them to convert once they’ve made it to your site. Learn more website optimization strategies to enhance the customer experience on the ShareThis blog.
If you’re running cost-per-click ad campaigns or Google Analytics to track your website traffic, clicks, and conversions, privacy should be top-of-mind. Stay compliant and give your visitors another reason to trust you by creating a comprehensive privacy policy with ShareThis’ Privacy Policy Generator. It’s free to use and built for every type of business, from blogs to websites and online stores.
