Click Through Rate (CTR) Advertising Tips

CTR is the abbreviation of Click Through Rate, that is a way to explore how successful an online advertising campaign is. CTR shows that on average how many clicks were made per 1000 online ads of the company (for example on a banner or on a link in an eDM mail). This is a very important part of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisement campaigns. During these campaigns the advertisers only pay for those ads that have been clicked/viewed by visitors, so they won't pay for each impression (appearance) of the ad. This is a cost-saving method in contrast to other advertising methods on the internet.

CTR can be counted two ways:
The first is when CTR rate is counted as "# of clicks" divided by "# of impressions". In this case CTR is increasing with each click.
In the second case CTR do not change when the same person clicks on the ad several times, while "# of persons" is divided by "# of impressions".

The CTR is usually given in percents (%).

1. A company sends out 1000 eDM e-mails for their consumers.
2. The consumers open the mail, read it or delete it. But only 5 people clicks on the ad included in the letter.
3. Then we can count CTR as 5 divided by 1000, so 5/1000. This is equal to 0,005.
4. So the Click Through Rate in this case is: CTR=0,5%.

You will know if your ad campaign was successful, because the CTR rate will definitely determine that how effective your message was. The higher the CTR rate is, the more convincing your ad was to customers and the more people clicked on your link and took the next step towards reading the content or buying the item you want.
If you have several links included in your letter than it is advised to have different CTR rates for all links, so measure all links separately.
E-mails and banners that are full of really useful content about the item you want to advertise are much more popular and give you higher CTR rates than those that are short, not informative or are just positioned badly (the ad cannot reach the target audience).

CTR rate can easily be estimated with the help of Google search-based keyword tool or the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
These tools offer you several keyword ideas based on your website (or you can even search without giving your website). The keywords offered are searched several times on the internet worldwide (through Google search engines).
With the help of Google Analytics you can also easily monitor what keywords drive the most traffic to your site.

1.) Get to know your target audience

It is vital to figure out who are the proper audience for your campaign and what message you want to use to reach them.

2.) Try to optimize your search listing

Title and description helps you the most, while these can pique the interest of the people. Try to include the most important keywords in the title and also try to be specific but short at the same time. Long titles seem uninteresting to costumers.
In the description you can further try to catch attention, as well as you can furher convince your future readers or customers that you page worth their time. Never forget that a meta description does not affect the ranking of your site, so you can try to make it better from time to time.

3.) Try to have several of your sites listed in search engine search results

The best is when you have several pages of the same website listed in search engine results and are ranked on the same results page. If you achive this you can find that Google combines the listing into so-called Intended results. For example when your home page ranks second for the words: "green gift ideas" and your "/green-gift-ideas.html" page ranks 8th for the same term then your pages will be listed in search engines in the 2nd and the 3rd position.

4.) Optimize your quicklinks

Only working links can help consumers to get to the (landing) page you advertise.

5.) Use highlights

Try to always highlight the content somehow you want to advertise the most.

5+1.) Analyze regularly

Analyze your results on a daily basis. Try to always develop your content and your ad according to the best results.

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