CTR Explained

The main aim of PPC is to maximize the impressions/exposure of your ads by focusing on highly targeted traffic in order to generate a solid click-through rate. Ad impressions refers to the number of times, or frequency in which your ads appear within the Google search results, whenever  your target audience search for your keywords.

The proportion or ratio in which ad impressions successfully generate clicks is referred to as Click Through Ratio or CTR.

A Click Through Rate (CTR) is a simple method of measuring the overall success of your campaigns, based on the number of times your advertisement appeared and the overall number of times a visitor clicked on your link and visited your website.

For example, if your PPC advertisement appeared 100 times and only a single person clicked on your advertisement, your overall CTR would be estimated at 1%.

CTR is defined by the number of clicks received divided by the number of impressions (views), rather than simply by the number of clicks itself.  

Your CTR is an integral part of your PPC marketing campaigns because it will be the ultimate determining factor as to how much you end up paying for every click to your ad.  Google Adwords takes your CTR into careful consideration when setting your quality score, a rating system that dictates what each advertiser will pay for every click-through to your ads.

The higher your quality score is, the less you pay per click.  Better yet, if you are able to maximize your quality score, you can end up paying less for the exact same spot as someone else who is paying more per click for exposure.

(Example: If your quality score is 7 and someone else’s is 5, you would actually rank higher within the search engine results while paying less per click).