Optimise your CTR: boost your traffic and conversion rate

CTR, or "Click Through Rate", is one of the most important performance indicators in digital marketing. It measures how many people click on a particular element, such as an advert, a call to action, or a link, compared to the number of times it is seen. This KPI is essential for assessing the effectiveness and relevance of your campaigns—whether it’s paid advertising, SEO, email marketing, or retargeting.

What is CTR?

CTR shows the proportion of people who click on a piece of content (like an advert, CTA, or link) out of the total number of impressions (the number of people who have seen it). Click Through Rate applies to many clickable elements: emails, landing pages, Google Ads, the SERP, blog articles, and more. The reason click-through rate matters is that it reveals whether your campaigns are actually encouraging users to take action.

A practical example

Suppose an advert receives 10,000 impressions. If 100 people click the link, the CTR is 0.01. To express this as a percentage, multiply by 100 (1%). Only unique visitors are counted, so repeated clicks by the same person don’t distort the results.

Useful tools

Manually calculating and tracking your CTR across different campaigns is unrealistic. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Incremys can accurately measure CTR and provide detailed reports, helping you identify what’s working and what isn’t. Incremys also offers a range of modules to help you optimise CTR and improve your conversion rate, including personalised AI, content production and the performance reporting module, supporting businesses in their ongoing digital growth.

How should you interpret click-through rate?

Questions like "What is considered a good CTR?" or "What is the average click-through rate?" are common in digital marketing. There’s no single answer, as what counts as a good Click Through Rate depends on several factors…

Industry sector

Your business sector is a key factor, as some industries naturally attract more search queries than others. Optimising your CTR doesn’t mean aiming for the same numbers across all sectors. There are significant differences, as shown below:

• Pet care: 6.45%
• Legal services: 3.84%
• Leisure: 10.67%
• Home equipment: 4.21%
• Travel: 8.54%

Acquisition channel

Click Through Rate varies greatly depending on the channel. For example, on Google Ads, the average CTR for a search ad in the SERP is 3.17%, while on the Display Network it’s just 0.46%. For email marketing, the average CTR is around 2.5%. In SEO, your results depend on your efforts and your ranking in the SERP.

Brand awareness

Well-known brands tend to achieve higher CTRs. If you’re just starting out with your first campaign, don’t expect instant results. In these cases, a CTR between 1% and 2% is perfectly respectable.

Other KPIs to consider

CTR is important, but it should be analysed alongside other metrics. Cost per click and conversion rate (be sure to distinguish between SEO conversion rate and SEA conversion rate) are also crucial. For example, if you run an e-commerce site, it’s better to have a 5% CTR with a 10% conversion rate than a 30% CTR that doesn’t generate any sales.

Why and how should you optimise CTR?

There’s no one-size-fits-all method for optimising CTR—it depends on the marketing channel you’re using.

Paid advertising

In paid advertising, a high CTR means users find your ad relevant. This validates your strategy, especially your choice of keywords. A strong CTR can also improve your ad’s quality score on Google, leading to better placement and lower cost per click—so your campaign becomes more cost-effective.

CTAs

Call to Action buttons on your website have a direct impact on conversion rates and should never be overlooked. To optimise CTR, make sure your CTA is clear, stands out, and is well positioned on the page.

SEO

Optimising CTR is also vital for your organic search strategy. A link with a high Click Through Rate is seen as relevant, as Google aims to deliver the best results to its users. By offering high-quality, relevant content that matches the search intent of your audience, you can significantly increase your click-through rate.

Email campaigns

For email marketing, CTR should be considered alongside another KPI: the "Click to Open Rate" (CTOR). For someone to click a link in an email, they must first open it. To measure link effectiveness more precisely, look at CTOR. For example, 100 clicks from 1,000 emails sent gives a CTR of 10%. But if only 500 people opened the email, the CTOR is 20%.

In summary

Optimising CTR is essential in digital marketing. However, as we’ve seen, not all Click Through Rates are equal—they depend on the marketing channel and several other factors. Remember to put this metric into context and always consider the bigger picture.

SEO and Digital Marketing knowledge base