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How to Improve Your Click Through Rate

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Last editedOct 20212 min read

Improving your click through rate is one of the best ways to grow your business. In this article, we’ll take you through some key steps you can take in order to boost your click through rate and see your business reach a wider market.

What is click through rate?

Firstly, let’s answer the question: what is click through rate?

Click through rate, sometimes abbreviated as CTR, refers to the proportion of people who follow a link they see advertised on an email, web page, social media post or video. In mathematical terms, it is the ratio of clicks your ad receives proportional to the amount of people who view it. It is calculated using the following equation:

Clicks / Views = CTR

For example, if 1,000 word people saw your ad, and 20 clicked on it, your CTR would be 20 / 1,000 = 0.02 (2%).

What is a good click through rate?

What is a good click through rate will depend on certain aspects of your business, e.g., size, scope, target audience. However, some generalizations can be made about what constitutes a good click through rate.

According to Instapage, the average click through rate for Google Ads is 5.06% for search. “Search” here means the targeted adverts that people see when making specific Google searches.

However, the average click through rate is not particularly relevant to your business. You need to consider averages by industry in order to understand whether you have a good CTR or not.

The average click through rate for vehicles, for example, is 7.35% and for real estate, it’s 6.19%. Find the average for your relevant industry to see how you compare.

How to improve your click through rate?

Fortunately, there are a number of ways you can improve your click through rate, and in doing so improve your business’ exposure (which will translate to more sales).

Create eye-catching headlines

There is a huge amount of advertisement content online, and it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. In order to improve your click through rate, you need to draw people to your ad with something that stands out and catches the eye.

A great way to do this is by creating an attention-grabbing headline. If your headline promises compelling content, you will receive far more clicks.

In order to come up with intriguing headlines, you need to do your research. See what other headlines are attracting the most attention and analyze why. Then, see if you can apply some of the same tactics to your own content.

Write great ad copy

There is no room for sub-par ad copy when it comes to receiving a better than average click through rate. If your copy is indistinguishable from your competition, then don’t expect to perform any better in the CTR department.

To improve your ad copy, try thinking about what makes your business unique and how you can express that in a succinct and emotive way.

Focus on the visuals

One of the best methods for drawing people to your ad is the use of attractive images and photos. This is because humans respond much more rapidly to visuals than text.

However, it’s not just as simple as choosing the perfect images. You also need to make sure they’re optimized. This means that you need to utilize the accompanying elements: image alt text, image title, and image caption.

Work on your quality score

Quality Score is the Google Ads metric which allocates each keyword in your ad a score from 0 to 10. It’s a means of measuring the relevance of your ad and has a direct effect on how many clicks it will receive.

To get more familiar with Quality Score and how it can improve yours, see Google's Guide to Quality Score.

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