What are your click through rates telling you?

As I've become more and more involved with online marketing, I've begun to realize that some statistics that may initially seem insignificant can be hiding important information. For example, the "click through rate" or CTR. CTR generally refers to the number of clicks that your banner ad or sponsored search engine link received, divided by the number of impressions (the number of times your ad was shown to web visitors). So, if your sponsored link on Google was shown to 1,000 people, and 10 clicked through to your website, then you have a CTR of 1%.

At first, I thought that CTR was an unimportant consideration, especially with regards to paid search campaigns. Since you only pay for the clicks, why should I be worried if 1,000,000 saw the ad, but only 10 clicked through? I didn't pay for the 999, 990 other impressions, so what does it matter, right?

Wrong. An extremely low CTR can be an indicator that your paid search campaign has not been optimized to its full potential. If your ad copy and keywords are properly aligned, then your ad should be extremely relevant to those who are seeing the ad, and therefore should be generating a strong CTR.

So what IS a good CTR? Now THERE's a good question. It depends heavily on your industry, the keywords on which you're bidding, your competition, etc. In general, however, anything over 1% is usually acceptable. I've found, however, that particularly relevant and well-placed online advertising can generate CTRs up to 8%! Try getting that kind of a response with a direct mail campaign!

Bottomline: high relevance = high CTR. High CTR means more traffic, which hopefully means more business for you!

Why Del.icio.us and Digg Matter to SEO

If you have never heard of del.icio.us or digg.com, it's time for you visit these sites! Why? Because search engines LOVE them! Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, which means that you can create a free account and then import all your bookmarks from your favorite browser and take them with you where ever you go. Example: You go out of town on a conference, and you're using a public computer to show a colleague a great site, when you suddenly remember that the site is saved in your favorites on your desktop at home. If you've imported your favorites into del.icio.us - no problem! Just log into del.icio.us, and there're your favorites!

So, why do search engines LOVE social bookmarking sites? Because they're searchable! Not only can you post your favorites, but you can share them with the rest of the community if you so choose and add tags to your postings. And of course, you can search other people's postings for good recommendations. You and your friends are essentially voting for the websites that you bookmark on these sites. Another reason that search engines love these sites is that they are updated all the time. Search engines want to provide their searchers with the most up-to-date information, so sites that regularly have new content get more attention.

Google and other search engines see posts on social bookmarking sites as ranking votes. Google says, "Hey, fifteen people on digg.com think that www.tuscaloosaonlinemarketing.com is a cool site that shares valuable, relevant information. When other people search for the keywords that this site has been tagged with, I think I'll move tuscaloosaonlinemarketing on up the rankings." And, as you're undoubtedly aware, higher rankings = more traffic = more customers for you!

Del.icio.us and Digg are just two of many, many different sites that provide similar services. To see more of these tools, just click the addthis.com share button below...