High search rankings are essential for maximizing organic traffic to your website. However, if people don’t click the link to your site, they’ll never see your content, regardless of how high it ranks. Optimizing organic click-through rate (CTR) goes hand-in-hand with your rankings to deliver the most value from search engine optimization (SEO). In this guide, I’ll explain how to measure your CTR and give you nine practical tips for improving it.
What Is Organic CTR?
Organic CTR is simply the percentage of people that click your link on search engine results pages (SERPs). When users see your link, that’s an impression. Divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions, then convert that number to a percentage, and that gives you the organic click-through rate.
CTR is affected by your rankings, and it’s normal to see differences in organic CTR based on your current rankings and the keywords you’re targeting. Links closer to the top of the SERPs naturally capture more clicks. However, you can still control several of the things that affect CTR, such as the following:
- Titles
- Meta descriptions
- URL slugs
Importance of Organic CTR
The importance of your CTR comes down to the potential ROI. Rising to the top of Google takes substantial effort, after which you can expect to receive about 20% to 40% of the traffic searching for a keyword, depending on the term and your niche. If your site ranks second, you’ll generally get half this rate, but a third-position ranking only delivers 10% or less of the query’s total search volume.
Certain keywords are more valuable than others because they bring you leads who are more likely to fall into your target audience or may be closer to a purchasing decision (think informational queries vs. transactional queries). A small increase in your search CTR — regardless of where your rankings fall — can yield massive returns.
However, another reason CTR rate optimization is important is its role in rankings. While Google has never publicly confirmed using engagement metrics as ranking factors, many researchers have noted this correlation since Google’s Panda algorithm update in 2012 (and the search giant stated as much in its monopoly court case).
Further movement in this direction occurred with the introduction of RankBrain in 2015. This machine-learning algorithm helped Google understand search intent better, and SEOs believe that your site CTR compared to the niche average is a factor in how it works. Fewer clicks than average signals to Google that your content might not be what users want.
There’s also the recent Google search documentation leak in 2024, which details several ways Google evaluates content quality and rankings using engagement data from Chrome, including impressions, clicks, and site interactions.
What Is a Good Organic CTR?
Given the importance of clicks, you’re probably wondering, what is a good CTR for organic search? Well, you can measure this in several ways:
- By keyword;
- By page; or
- By site.
Data from Backlinko, based on an analysis of four million Google searches, provides a detailed breakdown of the average organic CTR by ranking position. However, this can vary depending on the keyword. For more relevant metrics, check the estimated CTR for a given keyword, which you can find with tools like Ahrefs and Semrush. If you achieve a CTR higher than this estimate, you’re likely doing well.
Another way to assess your content’s CTR rates is by page. For Google traffic, you can do this by navigating to the Performance Report on Search Console, then checking Average CTR on the top filter panel and selecting Pages below the graph. This CTR rate reflects all keywords your page ranks for, allowing you to assess overall page performance.
Lastly, make site CTRs one of your SEO KPIs to measure the long-term performance of all your content. Industry benchmarks from Databox reveal a 1.51% median CTR across all niches, based on Search Console data. If your site performs better than your industry’s median, that’s a sign that your content interests searchers.
Will AI Overviews Impact Organic CTR?
It’s unclear how Google AI Overviews will affect CTR SEO, but they will probably increase zero-click searches for specific keywords. We’ll likely see two drastic changes overall:
- An increase in clicks to cited sources
- A decrease in clicks to other pages among the results
Whether users will click on cited sources will depend on how much information they need and whether Google’s AI Overview fully answers their question. With increasing awareness of how generative AI works, many users know to fact-check its output rather than simply believe it, which may drive substantial traffic to cited sources, making them another appealing SEO target.
If you’re worried about how Google’s push to expand AI in search may impact your SEO, CTR, and overall organic traffic, the best way to identify any trends and mitigate the impact is to continuously monitor your search CTR alongside the global AI Overview rollout. One of the easiest ways to check whether specific queries attract AI Overviews is to use a keyword research tool. You can also Semrush’s Position Tracking to quickly check how many existing keywords in your campaign include AI Overviews among the SERP features.
How To Find Your Organic CTR
If you know the number of impressions and clicks your content receives, you can measure its CTR by dividing the clicks by the impressions and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. For example, if a page receives 1000 impressions and 80 clicks, the CTR is 8%.
However, you can skip the math as Google Search Console can list CTR percentages within the Performance Report. To find this information:
- Click Full Report on the top-right of the graph on the Overview page or click Performance in the side menu tab.
- Adjust the date to the period you’d like to measure.
- Check the Average CTR filter at the top of the graph.
- Select Queries or Pages from the table below the graph to see the average CTR by keywords or pages, respectively.
There are also other filters you can check. Average Position is typically the most important, as it helps you assess how rankings affect your CTR.
How To Improve Your Organic CTR
Wondering how to improve CTR SEO to gain more traffic from your content marketing? Here are nine tips to make it happen.
1. Increase Organic Rankings
Organic rankings correlate directly to CTR because people perceive higher rankings as indicating authority and value. As such, improving your rankings almost always brings more clicks, with jumps of about 2.8% in CTR per position, according to data from Backlinko.
However, gains tend to be exponential, with larger jumps as you get closer to position one. Backlinko found a 27.6% average CTR for position one, which dropped to 15.8% for position two. In similar studies, Perficient noted a 19.23% CTR for position one, which drops to less than half that by position two, whereas Advanced Web Ranking found position one attracts 44.97% of clicks, which falls to 13.62% for position two.
2. Prioritize Search Intent
Think of search intent as the user’s goal when using a search engine. For example, they may seek information or want to purchase something.
People are more likely to click on links that match their intent. It’s often easy enough to get an idea of a keyword’s search intent just by its wording. However, you should also verify this with keyword tools and perform SERP analysis to evaluate what content Google recommends. Create relevant content that offers unique value to maximize both your rankings and CTR.
3. Target the Right Keywords
Not all keywords carry the same value. Some even generate zero-click searches. You’ll typically see this for simple queries like “weather in New York” because Google can directly provide what the user is looking for within the SERPs.
Semrush allows you to check what search features a keyword attracts. Ahrefs also provides this information alongside an estimate of zero-click searches. However, SERP analysis is still often necessary to gauge what to expect. It’ll also help you identify unique angles your content can target to optimize information gain.
4. Go After Featured Snippets
Featured snippets appear at the top of SERPs, attracting an average 8.6% CTR regardless of the source content’s ranking, so targeting them is an easy way to get more value from lower-ranking pages.
Earning snippets primarily involves breaking content into multiple, concise sections to fit the brief snippet format of small paragraphs, lists, or tables. Aim to answer simple questions within about 50 words, then provide further context afterward if necessary.
The easiest way to evaluate whether existing content has a chance of being featured is to perform keyword research and SERP analysis to see what search features exist on the page. From there, adjust your content to provide an improved answer in the format Google wants.
5. Write Enticing Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions outline the point of your content, enticing users to click the link. A good description should:
- Summarize the content.
- Provide unique selling points.
- Offer specific details.
- Include a compelling call to action (CTA).
- Not exceed 160 characters.
Take a look at the differences between these two examples:
- Bad: “We offer the best services in the industry. Visit our website for more information.”
- Good: “Learn how to bake perfect sourdough bread at home with our step-by-step guide. Discover tips, recipes, and techniques for beginners!”
While both are concise and include a CTA, the second example fully explains the page’s purpose and outlines unique benefits users can gain.
6. Use Schema for Rich Snippets
Rich snippets enhance search results with extra information such as reviews, prices, and ratings. These details also make your link stand out, encouraging more clicks.
You’ll need to add structured data to your pages to create rich snippets. To do this:
- Visit Schema.org to identify the markup appropriate for your content.
- Implement the markup using the JSON-LD format in the page’s HTML head section.
- Check everything works correctly with the Schema Validator.
Alternatively, it’s often possible to implement schema automatically with plugins or extensions, depending on your CMS.
7. Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on your site target the same terms. For most queries, Google only ranks one page from a specific site, meaning that cannibalization dilutes the individual CTR.
The easiest way to spot cannibalization is by conducting regular site audits. Some keywords will inevitably overlap. However, you should adjust or potentially consolidate content when terms with high value or volume overlap.
To prevent cannibalization, consider creating a keyword map to assist with content strategy. Using long-tail terms as primary keywords also helps reduce the chance of future overlap between similar topics.
8. Update Years in Titles
Including the year within title tags can improve CTRs and show users that content is current. However, it’s best to do this only for time-sensitive information and only if you’ve actually updated it. Otherwise, you risk frustrating visitors. Google has also indicated it can spot this artificial freshness.
A great example of a content update done right would be adjusting “Best SEO Practices for 2023” to 2024 after tweaking the content to maintain its relevance. However, it wouldn’t make sense to change “Best Pasta Recipes” to “Best Pasta Recipes in 2024.”
9. Create Short, Optimized URLs
While it may seem trivial, short, clean URLs look more trustworthy and relevant, attracting higher CTR rates. Overall, URLs should:
- Be descriptive.
- Contain keywords.
- Use hyphens to separate words.
- Avoid special characters and numbers.
- Create a logical site structure.
For example, on a digital marketing site, the page “Keyword Research Tips” may get the URL example.com/keyword-research-tips. To maintain logical site architecture, you could also further categorize the content under example.com/SEO or example.com/PPC hierarchies.
Boost Organic CTR With an SEO Partner
Boosting your CTR increases traffic from the work you’ve already put in, ensuring you get the most return out of your efforts. However, this optimization requires you to do many little things correctly across all business-critical pages. Unsure where to begin? Reach out for a free SEO consultation with Victorious, and we’ll develop a tailored strategy to improve your search performance.
