CTR (Click Through Rate) measures how often people who clicked on something (advertisement or SERP) and arrived at your page
Organic CTR is becoming hugely important – it is one of UX (User Experience) signals that RankBrain measures to identify the best page for any given search
Google Engineer Paul Haahr created quite the stir at SMX back in 2016 when his slide showed that google looks for changes in click patterns
Put simply, RankBrain is paying very close attention to how you interact with search results – it’s looking at Organic CTR, Dwell Time, Bounce Rate and “Pogo-sticking” and using what it sees to rank how your page.
Optimizing CTR, is good for two reasons.
- It likely improves organic rankings (and what ranks towards the top gets clicked more.)
- If more people click on your search result, you can more traffic
In paid advertisements, CTR is seen as a measure of the immediate response to an ad, but not the overall response to an ad (ie it doesn’t measure conversion (does the visitor actually do anything when they land on the page?