The undisputed aim of all digital marketing campaigns and SEO efforts is to improve your organic research results. Every savvy digital marketing manager follows Google’s best practices is essential to a sustainable and successful digital marketing strategy. But how do you make sure your click through rate (CTR) is improved whenusers complete an organic search?

The CTR is oftentimes overlooked by digital marketers and should be taken into account, as engagement and CTR is always associated with your organic listing on Google.

It’s a really great idea to complete a digital marketing course so that you understand the importance of having a high CTR for your organic listing.

Click through rate (CTR) defined

Just as the words imply, click through rate, is the ratio of clicks your website receives, whether organically or through paid advertising. The determine your click through rate, your CTR is calculated by the number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown.

Does your CTR affect your search engine ranking?

There literally hundreds of ranking factors that Google takes into consideration to determine where your site shows up on organic search engine result pages. However, taking note of the major factors is vital to the growth of your SEO, such as long-tail keywords, high-quality backlinks and meta tags, for example.

So, the simple answer is yes, your CTR does affect your overall search engine ranking and this is why its an important ranking factor, and recently this ranking factor has become far more important.

Why your CTRis important to Google?

Once you fully understand how important your CTR is to Google, you will make sure that this metric is evaluated as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. It’s important to note that you must evaluate all of your digital marketing campaigns in order to get an accurate reflection of your CTR, as the CTR rate of a single SEO campaign means very little.

How does CTR rate relate to your SEO?

Now we understand that your CTR rate is important for Google’s organic listing, let’s take a look at how your CTR rate affects your SEO rankings. Making it to first place on the SERP results doesn’t guarantee click throughs to your site and after all, driving traffic to your site is the number one goal of all digital marketing. So just how does your CTR rate relate to SEO and if you gain a higher click through rate will Google move your ranking up to the top of the first page results?

This topic has been part of many debates and it turns out that your CTR is indeed important for SEO and if you increase your CTR rate Google may well decide to bump up your ranking on the SERPS.

Tips to increase your CTR rate

It is possible to increase your CTR rate even if you are not the highest ranking on the search engine results page. Recent studies show that this is possible, and you can even outperform those who rank above you – This is great news for digital marketers.

There are quite a few ways in which you can influence your CTR rate positively but for now here are a few tips on how to do this successfully.

• Use negative keywords – You’ve probably heard it a million times how important the correct keyword selection is to your SEO; well this is where negative keywords come in. The key is not to show up on the search engines for unrelated searches, no matter how closely related.
• Be creative with ads – It’s necessary to be super creative with your digital marketing ads to engage your audience and prompt a click through to your site. When it comes to digital adverting don’t just do what your competitors are doing, think outside the box and create a stir.
• Increase your bids – By increasing your bids you automatically get more exposure of your ad and a higher ad position, which is great for increasing your CTR.
• Sitelink extensions – Sitelinks are located under your headline and description and one of the most commonly used extensions in paid per click ads. Remember Google has control over which sitelink they choose to show.