What is click through rate (CTR)?

The click through rate (CTR) captures how many people click on a search result, ad or link relative to the number of people who have seen it. The CTR is used to measure and improve the effectiveness of search results, ads, emails and CTAs.

In Dutch, click through rate is also called click-through rate or click frequency, but nevertheless, most Dutch subject matter experts talk about CTR.

Calculating CTR

Calculating the CTR is child's play! Below you can read how to calculate the click through rate, expressed as a percentage.

The CTR formula is: CTR = Total clicks / Total impressions x 100

A display occurs when someone sees the search result, ad, CTA or link.

CTR expressed as a factor

Would you prefer to express CTR as a factor instead of a percentage? Then simply omit multiplying by 100! You then only divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions.

Google click through rate

The CTR from Google is very important to keep an eye on. It gives a picture of how attractive your Google search results are for your target audience (the searchers). It is also a way to attract more visitors to your website.

To bring in more traffic from Google, two things are needed:

• Good positions/rankings
• Good CTR

Many people tend to focus blindly on rankings. Our tip: pay attention to CTR for a change! This is mainly determined by the title of your page (title tag) and the meta description. Therefore, make sure they are keyword-rich and written in an attractive and activating way.

For Google, two different click through rates are important. From organic traffic (unpaid) and from paid traffic (Google Ads). With paid traffic, we talk about ads instead of search results. But since an ad also consists of a title and a description, the same tips apply!

Organic traffic

Once you are found in Google for certain search terms, analyze how often your page is clicked for each search term. You can find these statistics in Google Search Console.

Most SEO experts agree that the click-through rate has a long-term effect on your rankings. So it is important to optimize the CTR.

Google Ads

For Google Ads, the click through rate is also important. It indicates the percentage of people who saw your ad who also clicked on it. Google values this because it says a lot about the quality and relevance of the ad.

The CTR is therefore included in the quality score of Google Ads. And this quality score influences the ad position and costs. So very important to analyze and optimize.

Tip: link Google Ads with Google Analytics to analyze the CTRs at all levels.

CTR in email marketing

In email marketing, we do not talk about impressions. Finally, an email is not shown to a user. An email is sent and (if lucky) opened by the user. We therefore have two different click through rates in email marketing:

• CTR click to open = number of clicks / number of opens x 100
• CTR click to delivered = number of clicks / number of successful sends x 100

Tip: steer on the click to open CTR! This is because this click through rate is just influenced by the open rate. In addition, this CTR is closer to the regular formula for the click through rate. After all, when someone opens an email, chances are that they actually see the link (or CTA) (display).

Click through rate in HubSpot

In HubSpot's software, click through rate is used to analyze CTAs and emails.

You can find the click through rate of a CTA by clicking on 'Call-to-action' via 'Content'. You will then see an overview of all CTAs. In the overview you will also find some statistics. These are about the number of 'Views', 'Clicks' and 'Submissions'. You can find the CTR of a CTA by looking at 'Views > Clicks'. This is how you assess the quality of your CTAs.

The click through rate is also very important when analyzing emails. This is how you measure what percentage of the people who open your email also click through to your website.

In HubSpot, you can find this data by clicking on one of your emails and then looking at the 'Performance'. Under 'Engagement,' you'll then see the percentage of click-through rate.

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