As a website owner you probably know how important it is to keep your frequent and new readers engaged. As a business who are promoting your advertisements online you have similar sentiments because you want to generate more clicks and engagement.
To be able to track your how well your advertisements are doing and in relation to that they keywords, that they are paired up with. One way to track how well your ads and keywords are doing is via CTR (click-through rate). Click through rate is a ratio that shows how often people are seeing your advertisements and clicking on them.
How click-through rate works is the amount of clicks your advertisement receives divided by the amount of times your advertisement is displayed. So, CTR = clicks ÷ impressions. A high CTR is an indication that your ads and your keywords are getting significant exposure and clicks which is good!
The benefit of CTR is that you can use this to gauge where you are in terms of relevancy. A high CTR indicates that your ads are relevant and gaining attention which can translate into your keywords. Having your keywords and your ads relate to each other and the content on your website increases the probability of a higher conversion rate.
What is a good CTR?
A good CTR is 1% anything lower than that showcases a low-quality score and signifying that your ad is irrelevant. Having a good CTR benefits how you rank on Google and is a good indication at how well your ads are working. Note that CTR is different for every industry. Depending on what sorts of advertisements you have and the content of your website the click rate can vary.
Not only does having a good click through rate mean your ads are getting exposure but Google AdWords and other marketing platforms offer discounts for ads that are relevant and keeping readers engaged. Having a good CTR ensures you’re staying up to date and can also maintain a position where you can promote your ads for less cost.
How to Calculate your Click Rate
Understanding what click-through rate is and how to calculate it is beneficial for your website because it shows who your advertisements are reaching and how successful you are.
So how do you calculate your click-through rate for your website and do you need an online calculator? In order to calculate your CTR go to your account and there you are able to see the click through rate of your listed ads and keywords. The formula to calculate your CTR is fairly straightforward and all you need to do is; CTR = clicks ÷ impressions. There you have it! Very simple and easy to follow.
Measuring Traffic on Your Website
Since you’ve calculated your CTR what else could you do? In relation to keeping everything above that 1% here are a few other things you can monitor.
Keywords. Frequently update your keywords list so that you constantly have more to work with and also allows you to be a bit more lenient with where you can pair up these words. Remove words that haven’t been helping you and replace them with ones you do. Remember things get repetitive over time and like the media everything is constantly changing and so should your keywords list.
Search Terms. Using a default setting called broad-match keywords, your ad will come up with someone searched a collection of your broader keywords. A network that Google has called “Search Term Report” allows you to see a list of relevant words that are driving people to go to your website!
Quality scores. Monitoring your CTR leads to a better Quality Score. Quality Score is Google’s way of segregating the irrelevant from the relevant. You want to have a higher Quality Score because it ahs the ability to affect how well your ad will perform as well as how much you pay per click.
When High Click Through Rates Can Be Bad
You’re probably wondering how can it be bad that you’re generating engagement and viewership? Unfortunately, it can be bad financially and doesn’t actually lead to any true business. Keywords that aren’t relevant to your advertisements and still generate clicks don’t amount to much. The idea of having keywords relate to advertisements is what generates good click through rates – because they complement each other and for the most part someone clicks one and because of the other.
Not only do irrelevant keywords don’t generate true engagement it can cost more than you think. You still have to pay for certain keywords as well as ad space. If neither of those are benefiting you in anyway then it’s doing more harm than good.
You are also paying for clicks (known as your cost-per-click or CPC). When certain websites choose to allow ads on their site you as a business who want to promote your add will come to an agreement in terms of how much you will pay for a click and the percentage of profit you will receive. Take into consideration there are multiple platforms that you will most likely go through to do this – Google Adsense is a large one. You will be proving a portion of your profit to Google as well as the website displaying your ad.
It’s a lot of money to keep this all up and doing it in the most cot-effective way possible is ideal – because you can be spending that money elsewhere! With that in mind make everything you do relevant to what you are trying to target. You want to make a profit not lose money because you think any popular keyword will generate the business that you want.
