Measuring Click Through Rate (CTR) in Google SERPS

Measuring SERPS effectiveness has always been an important part of any SEO campaign. Google has recently made improvements to how its Webmaster Tools reports on number of impressions by keyphrase as well as click through rates (CTR) in search engine results pages (SERPS).

This data is crucial in measuring the effectiveness of your website metadata as well as keyphrase performance according to landing page.

As you can see from the above screen grab, Google reports on the position of keyphrases in SERPS. The reported position fluctuates from 3 – 10, which highlights the reality of personalised search where rankings will vary by individual.

The second columns refers to number of impressions over the reported time period. The third column highlights the click through rate (CTR) for that keyphrase – in this case 11%.

The published fluctuations in rank gives us a useful insight into the effects of personalised search. But even more crucially, the reported click through rate allows us to measure our SERPS effectiveness and adjust our metadata as part of our SEO copywriting campaigns.

Whilst the Webmaster Tools data may not exactly match our web analytics data, it gives us enough insight to make iterative improvements to our SERPS content.