DMN3 Blog

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are all about getting search engine users to click through to your website or landing page. Here’s some important info you should know about…

Click Through Rate (CTR) is the chief measure of the success of Internet advertising and marketing. Whether it's email marketing, pay-per-click (PPC), online display ads, social media or organic search results, the click through rate is the way Internet marketers measure the effectiveness of an ad or ranking. It is not the only measure, but let me leave that to later in this post.

Let me define a couple of terms so there is no misunderstanding:

Click through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click on the ad or link once having been exposed to it. Another way to look at it is the number of clicks per 100 impressions of the ad or link to online users.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): For my purposes, I define search engine marketing as off-page efforts to increase search engine rankings for specific keywords as well as paid advertising on search engine results pages (SERPs). Link building is the primary effort of off-page efforts to increase organic rankings with search engines. AdWords is the Google vehicle for paid search advertising for the same keywords.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): My definition of search engine optimization is what is done on-page to the website or landing page to make it search engine “friendly” both in general and for the specific keywords for which the organization wishes to rank high in search engine results.

There are a number of variables that affect click through rates, depending on the specific market, service, product, offer value, etc. In this post, I want to address the click through rates for organic search results based on rankings and accompanying PPC Adword campaigns.

Optify recently did a study to update their CTR curve given the evolving face of search engine ranking pages (SERPs). They used organic keyword visits for Google U.S. for a variety of B2B and B2C websites during December of 2010.

The results continue to reflect the value of being ranked on the first page, above the fold (top three positions) and in the number one position compared to other rankings. Ranking within the first search engine results page is critical to obtaining click throughs.

• You will have eight times the chance of getting click throughs on page one than on page two irrespective of where you rank on those pages. The average CTR on page one is 8.9 percent compared to 1.5 percent on page two.
• 60 percent of the click throughs go to the Top 3 rankings (above the fold).
• The top ranked search result averaged a 36.4 percent CTR.
• The number one ranking is even more important for competitive keyword(s) (>1000 searches per month). That’s because keywords with different search volumes have different CTR curves. While they have a higher CRT for position one, higher search volume keywords have a lower overall CTR on page one as opposed to long tail terms (< 100 searches per month).
• Adding AdWords (CPC) paid advertising to the first page if you are organically ranked on the first page will increase the CTR for the organic links. Interesting enough, being organically ranked on the first page does not increase the CTR for the paid advertising (CPC) on the same first page. This is especially true for less expensive CPC keywords.

Optify’s results reinforces the current SEM/SEO model: ranking high is important to drive organic traffic to your site. Ranking in the first position can drive three times as much traffic as ranking in the second position. First page rankings will drive eight times the traffic than second page rankings. Forget anything beyond page two for traffic reasons.

High rankings for long tail keywords (less competitive) may be easier to obtain and be more valuable for your success.

You should include a CPC campaign as part of your SEM/SEO strategy. A CPC campaign can gain your organization visibility while working on a longer term strategy to achieve high organic search engine rankings. Once you achieve page one rankings, a CPC campaign can also significantly boost your organic CTR.

Remember that rankings and CTR measures may not lead to obtaining your business objectives. It all comes down to measuring what is important to you. Whether it’s traffic, pageviews, leads or sales, you should be measuring how rankings and CTR affect those metrics.

Without a well designed website or landing page that is optimized to get visitors to take the action you want, i.e., convert them, you may spend a lot of SEO/SEM effort for little result.

I’ve written on this subject before:

So What?...A Question That Needs to Be Part of Your Marketing Vocabulary

Marketing on the Web Begins with the Website

Conversion Optimization: Is Your Website a Business Center?

You can read more about the Optify Study here.

Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing should be part of your online marketing mix. High search engine rankings are still as important as ever. Just remember to measure the right things.