Do you know the search marketing language?

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CTR, CPC, PPC, ROI, DKI… It’s all pretty confusing when those crazy internet guys start talking in their foreign language. Let’s define (in plain English) two common terms in search marketing, Clickthrough Rate and Cost Per Click.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR) is obtained taking the number of people who clicked on an ad and dividing it by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if your ad had 2,500 impressions in one month and it received 194 clicks, it would have a CTR of 7.8% for that month.

It is important to know that different industries will have varying levels of successful CTR. What may be a high clickthrough rate in one industry may be considered low in another. So, it’s difficult to determine an average CTR for everyone. For large volume industries that get millions of nationwide searches a day, you may find that 2% is a great CTR. However some campaigns may find a CTR of 14% to be their benchmark.

The reason it’s important to strive for the best clickthrough rate is because the more people that find your ad to be relevant, the lower your cost per click will be (specifically citing Google Adwords ranking formula).

Cost Per Click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines or other Internet publishers for a single click on its ad that brings one visitor to its website. This term is much easier to understand since it’s so straight forward. No formulas needed. Well… Let’s do one, just for fun.

Pretty simple, right? Cost per click is just how much you pay per visitor that comes to your site through an ad that you place on a search engine. You want this number to be as low as possible so you won’t be spending a fortune on your search engine marketing.

Still confused? Yell at us by leaving a comment below. We’ll answer your toughest questions or delete the comment.

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