SEO Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Measure how often your search listings generate clicks.

Track all your SEO KPIs in one place

SEO KPI Example - SEO Click-Through Rate Metric

What is Click-Through Rate in SEO?

Click-Through Rate (CTR) metric measures how often your listings on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) generate clicks compared to the number of times your listing appears in search results. While keyword ranking metrics are the bread and butter of SEO analytics, click-through rates demonstrate how effective your listings are at prompting clicks.

This SEO KPI has also been paired with another important web analytics metric: Goal Completion Rate (GCR). GCR measures the number of goals completed by visitors coming through a particular channel, such as organic search. While few doubt the impact of highly ranked keywords on your SEO traffic, smart marketers ensure that traffic-generating keywords also generate new business. Learn more about tracking similar web analytics metrics on a Google Analytics dashboard.

SEO Click-Through Rate (CTR) Key Terms

Click-Through Rate: The number of clicks compared to the total number of search impressions.
Goals: A marketing objective for your audience to complete, such as subscribing to a mailing list.
Completion rate: The number of web visitors divided by the number of goals completed.
Organic Traffic: Visitors that discover your website by entering searching a keyword in a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and that click on your listing.

Success Indicators

A high click-through rate for a search term.
A high goal completion rate for a search term.

SEO Click-Through Benchmarks

Google AdWords released industry benchmarks for both search and display click-through rates. Here are highlights of the data for search:

B2B: 2.55%
E-Commerce: 1.66%
Health & Medical: 1.79%
Real Estate: 2.03%
Technology: 2.38%
Consumer Services: 2.40%

SEO Click-Through Rate Best Practices

Attractive search results, especially those with images and well-written meta descriptions, are much more likely to attract visitors. Here are some experts tips for a high keyword click-through rate:

Adam Audette, SVP of SEO, Merkle

Data is helpful for SEOs when creating projections. If you know existing rank positions and search volume and can estimate new ranking positions, you can create an approximate forecast of the SEO work to help rationalize budgets, resources, and time commitments.

How to Monitor Click-Through Rate in Real-time

The Keyword Click-Through Rate should be coupled with related web metrics to provide a complete view of your digital marketing performance. Consider tracking this KPI alongside the goal completion rate metric on an SEO dashboard.

Learn more about how to track your Keyword Click-Through Rate on a Web Analytics Dashboard and Adwords Campaign Dashboard.