Thoughts on CTR on both PPC and SERPS

I've been trying to get my head around what kind of CTR I can expect to my website for both the PPC advertising that I use and from my natural position on Google Search Engine Results Page.

I would really appreciate the thoughts of anyone on this forum with a better understanding of this than I.

I found some metarial on the web that gave the following click through rate based on SERPS position. It is based upon a total of 20,000 serches for a specific keyword and I have rounded the figures up or down.

Position Clicks

1 42%
2 12%
3 8%
4 6%
5 5%
6 4%
7 3%
8 3%
9 3%
10 3%
11 0.66%

For a particular keyword (Space Toys) I believe that there are 400 searches per day (Australia) and I am currently getting about 15 hits per day for this keyword. This amounts to a CTR of 3.5% which seems to agree with the above table since I am ranked Google number 7 for this particular keyword.

Does anyone else have any information on CTR based on SERPS which either agrees or disagrees with the above table ? It seems that there is a huge difference between just being on the first page and being in the top 3 in Google.

I'll be working on my site to try and improve this number 7 position for this particular keyword but in the meantime I'm also using adwords to try and get better exposure. So I pay my nominal amount and get position 1 or 2 for the term "Space Toys" within adwords.

From that number 1 or 2 position I get about 10 clicks per day (2%) for the same term and based upon about 400 impressions. I know that "Space Toys" is a fairly general term so it's not going to have a high CTR but it still seems pretty low compared to the number 1 position with SERPS on Google.

If the information that I have found is correct then if I were number 1 in SERPS on Google then I could expect 160+ clicks from 400 searches for the aforementioned term. Yet, when I'm number 1 in adwords for PPC I can expect only 10 clicks for the same term.

It seems odd that while 42% of users will click your site if it is ranked number 1 in google for the term that they searched and only 2% of users will click your same site with the same message if it is a PPC advert at the top or right hand side of the page.

Are my calculations correct or is the information on SERPS and CTR that I have found, out of date or wrong ? Does any one else have any thoughts on this ?

Not sure whether this post belongs in the PPC category or the Google Page rank category so will post in both.

Cheers

Cyberman

Hi cyberman,

I think those number are realistic, however CTRs will vary a great deal for each individual keyword.

I have one account I manage that gets greater than 50% CTR on some keywords and only 0.002% on others.

Another campaign I managed showed 80% CTR on position 1 and very low CTRs on every other position.

When trying to look at this on a macro level your data doesn't mean much. It only becomes meaningful when you are managing it on a micro level.

On organic listings you are going to get very different results just by changing the page titles and meta desription tags. Essentially these are the elements that display your "free" ad copy in the natural index. The better this copy is the more clicks you are going to receive.

You SERP position is only one part of SEO, your page title and description will have a great effect on whether anyone actually clicks on your listing.

Many thanks for your comments on CTR and Serps. I'll pay some close attention to my SERPS title and description and also experiment with the PPC position and text to see what does and does not make a difference.

Cheers

Martin

The numbers are reasonable assumptions.

Bear in mind that CTR varies a lot not only with the Keyword but how your SERP appears, that means that a well written title and a good content snipet will convert better than a standard generic keyword title.

Also, PPC is going to be a lot lower CTR compared to ORganic because of the positioning on the page.

The right hand side is one of the least viewed areas of the page. Google AdWords gives a heat map of where people view a site. Top left and top - mid center are the most viewed areas of the page.
Plus also bear in mind when people search they know where the results are going to show up so that is their area of focus.

I agree partially with your assertions, but if you read my earlier post, I mentioned that some keywords can achieve much higher CTRs than natural listings.

Not all ads are on the right. If your ad has a great quality score and you bid high enough, your ad will be displayed in the top left column, above all the organic listings. Many people are not able to distinguish these paid listings from natural results and you typically will get much higher CTRs.

As I stated previously it varies from keyword to keyword. Average results have little or no bearing on your actual results.