Why A Good Click Through Rate (CTR) is IMPORTANT

Written by Sandra Argese
on 09 Jul 2020

So you want to win leads hey? You’ll like Google Ads, but that’s only if you understand what makes a successful ad, well, successful.

When it comes to targeting potential clients through Google Ads, understanding what a ‘click through rate’ is and how it works can help strike all the right chords in your advertising strategy.

Originally known as Google Adwords until mid-2018, Google Ads can steer people interested in your product or service towards your website.

If you know how to use the platform, that is.

Google Ads (Or Google Adwords, for that matter) gives you a number of metrics to help you understand how your ads are performing, and why they are performing that way.

CTR, otherwise known as click through rate, is one of the key metrics Google Ads (Google Adwords) provides that helps answer these very questions.

(READ: How Fixing Orphaned Content Can Help You Rank Higher On Google)

So just how do click through rates in Google Ads work? What is a click through rate?

Google defines a click through rate as ‘A ratio showing how often people who see your ad end up clicking it.’

A CTR can help you gauge what’s working, what isn’t, what needs to be changed, and what needs to be kept the same.

It’ll help you decipher just how enticing your ad is and how closely it matches relevant (and high-performing) Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) keywords and other targeting settings, Google says.

(READ: How SEO Can Improve Your Search Engine Rankings)

If you want to calculate your CTR, take the number of clicks your Google ad receives, and divide it by the number of times your ad is shown (impressions).

Let’s say you have 8 clicks and 80 impressions. This would make your CTR 10%.

Achieving a higher Google Ads CTR percentage indicates that users find your ads useful, relevant, and of course, helpful.

‘The more your keywords and ads relate to each other and to your business, the more likely a user is to click on your ad after searching for your keyword phrase,’ Google says.
Handy Note – When you hit the blue headline of a text advert on Google, Google Ads considers this a click.

You may notice the number of clicks on your Google Ad and the number of people visiting your website is different. This is because while someone may click your ad, they might not actually reach your website (perhaps the website is temporarily unavailable).

(READ: Copywriting 101: Why Tailoring Content to your Customer Avatar is Crucial to WINNING Leads)

You may be wondering, ‘What is a good Google Adwords click through rate?’

Across all industries, the average CTR for a search ad is 1.91%, and 0.35% for a display ad.

But hey, ‘average’ isn’t always going to cut it. With the right approach, you could achieve stronger numbers.

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