Average Click Through Rate: Catapult your Paid Search

What exactly is meant by your Average Click Through Rate?

Click through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people that click through to your site in a given period, in relation to the number of times your ad was shown in that same period (Impressions).

The formula for CTR can be expressed as: 

Click Through Rate = (Total Clicks on Ad) / (Total Impressions) x 100

For example, if your specific search ad was seen 1000 times in a 24 hour period, and was clicked on 27 times in that same period, your average CTR would be 2.7%. 

How is your Average Click Through Rate used?

In short: Your Average Click Through Rate indicates how well or bad your specific ad is performing within a given period. A high Click Through Rate indicates that a large percentage of people who saw your ad were intrigued enough to click through to your webpage. They found your ad relevant, helpful, and enticing. A low Click Through Rate on the other hand could be an indication that your search ad needs to be re-evaluated and optimized to ensure success.

Why is your Average Click Through Rate important?

In addition to indicating the overall relevance of your search ad, the Average Click Through Rate is also a very large contributor to what your Expected Click Through Rate (eCTR) will be in a given period.

Your Expected Click Through Rate (eCTR) is Google’s estimation of the rate at which people that view your search ad will click through from your specific ad to your website in a given period. To determine the Expected Click Through Rate, Google closely looks at how well your specific ad keyword has done in the past, based on the current position of your ad.

Your Expected Click Through Rate is a crucial component of your Ad Rank; which decides the order and position in which your ad will appear on the Google search engine results page. 

In addition to influencing your Ad Rank, a high Click Through Rate is also extremely important as it directly affects your ad quality score and performance i.e the amount you pay for each click. 

Another way to maximize your budget is with Ad Scheduling.

A low-quality score has the potential to significantly lower your Ad Rank which will lead to an overall decrease in your search ad’s performance. Fewer people will get to see your ad, fewer people will in turn click on it, and you will end up paying a lot more for each click.

Having a high-quality score drives more traffic to your website, significantly decreasing your cost per click, leading to an increase in your ad’s performance overall.

So what is a good click through rate?

The answer – It depends. Click through rates tend to vary from industry to industry, keyword to keyword, account to account, and even campaign to campaign. Everything from your ad copy to  your ad position to your timing, plays a role in determining your ultimate Average Click Through Rate percentage. It’s very difficult to come up with a benchmark that addresses all these scenarios.

To help find an answer for your particular circumstance and business you could start by doing some research on average click through rates of industry standards in your area. You could reach out to other businesses closely related to yours and compare results. You could use your own historical data as a benchmark of what success would mean for your business in the future.

That being said, it is generally accepted that an average click through rate of 4 to 5% across industries, on the search network or 0.5 to 1% on display networks is considered successful .

How to take your Click Through Rate to the next level?

Any seasoned Paid Search marketing professional will tell you: There are no shortcuts to an effective paid search campaign. This might be true, but there are definitely some best practices you can put in place to help you increase your Google Ads Results.

Let’s look at three of these best practices:

Improve your quality score

Simply put: Ads with a higher quality score generally enjoy a higher ranking on the Search Engine Results page. There are many factors that influence your quality score, but key among these to pay attention to is: 

• Ad headline
• Ad copy
• Ad Url

Use Ad Extensions

There are a wide variety of ad extensions available at the moment. Not all of them will work for your business or particular campaign, but if you are not fully utilizing ad extensions, you are missing out.

Make use of smart bidding strategies

With Google’s focus on constantly improving their automation, smart bidding strategies are becoming ever more important.

With Smart bidding, Google allows you to automate when your ads will appear, with the intent of entering your ad in the auction where you are more likely to get clicks.

Having a dedicated Paid Search team on your side is crucial in navigating all the ins and outs of a successful ad campaign. NAV43 is one of the best at what they do in the business.

Make sure to contact us should you have any questions about improving your click through rate.