Is CTR A Ranking Factor In Organic Results?

Anyone who knows about SEO know that SEO companies are always trying to find out the various factors that will influence the ranking by Google or other search engines. We talk about Google here because that is what most people use. SEO is successful only if the website is optimized for factors that will affect the ranking on the SERP. The aim of SEO is to get a higher ranking on the SERP so that the website receives more traffic. There are various factors that Google considers when ranking a site and the aim of SEO companies is to find out which are the most influential factors so that they can use that to get better ranking.

Understanding CTR And Ranking On SERP

The article tries to find out whether CTR or Click-Through-Rate is a factor that Google considers when it ranks a website. To understand the intent of the article you must know what CTR is and the importance of ranking on the SERP. Click-Through-Rate is mentioned in percentage. It is the percentage of people who clicked on a website link in the SERP out of those who viewed the page. To put it simply, if 20 people out of 100 people who viewed the SERP clicked on your website link, then your CTR is 20%. The more the CTR it means that more people visited your website. But, does Google use that when ranking your website on the SERP.

This brings us to ranking and how it is important for your business. The ranking on the SERP means the position that your website link appears on the page where search results appear. The chances of people visiting your website are more if your ranking is good. It is a fact that people hardly visit websites whose links appear on any page other than the first page. This means that your website link should appear on the first page. It is also essential to try and get the top position to get more traffic to your site. This is what companies offering SEO in Singapore are trying to achieve for your website.

Ranking Factors For Search Engines

Though different search engines use different algorithms to index and rank a website, the parameters they use are almost similar. This is what makes the job of agencies doing the best SEOeasy because they don’t have to look for different factors for different search engines. Most SEO companies look at what Google uses for ranking a website. There are various factors that are used by Google it has not openly said that these are factors they use. However, experienced SEO experts have found out what parameters are mainly used by Google to rank a page to the top of the SERP.

Optimization to keywords is the main factor because this is what Google uses to rank a website against particular keywords. Content is another parameter that Google gives a lot of importance for. The aim of any search engine is to satisfy the user and not give ranks to the websites. The ranking is done only to make it easy for the search engine user to find what he or she wants. So, content is very important. Other factors that affect your ranking are speed of page loading, internal links, backlinks, security of the page, etc. Does CTR figure among the parameters that Google uses for ranking the page is what we are trying to find out.

Does Google Use CTR As A Factor For Ranking?

Various studies show that Google doesn’t use CTR for ranking websites. It does use CTR for other purposes. When Google wants to test a new algorithm, it uses CTR. It also uses the measurement to test the changes made to its search algorithm. It studies the effect of changes made in the algorithm using CTR and decides whether it wants to continue the changes or discard them. CTR is only used in controlled studies to check the satisfaction of its users with regard to search results.

It has also been found that Google has used CTR within its freshness algorithm to find out what topics are latest and trending. There is enough evidence to show the SEO agency that this is not a factor that the search engine uses for ranking the websites.

It Is Not A Reliable Factor

One of the reasons why Google doesn’t use CTR as a direct page ranking factor is because it is very easy to manipulate the results. Suppose the best SEO companieswere convinced that CTR was one of the direct factors they would be using that very easily. It is not difficult to get bots to click on the links innumerous times to increase the CTR. The bots can be made to visit the site and stay there. Another method is to pay people to click on the links and get as many clicks as possible. It is not something that is difficult with so many people willing to do many things for money.

Another reasons why this is not reliable is because of pogosticking. This is a process where a person clicks on a link, stays there for a short period, returns to the search results page and clicks on another link. The user doesn’t return from the second link. This will imply that the first link was not satisfactory and the second link was better. But that need not be the truth. There are many people who might change sites for more information. They may be interrupted while on the second website and didn’t return to the SERP. It is not a reliable method. Moreover, nobody can define what is a short visit. There is nothing that specifies a particular duration to say whether the visit was short or long.

It Is A Very Small Sample Quantity

Google crawls all the pages that are available on the internet when it indexes websites and ranks them. Compared to this the number of links available on the SERP is very small. We are only looking at sites that appear on the search results page that are likely to be clicked by people. There may be so many other sites which are not seen as they don’t appear in the search results. These sites may also be worth ranking on the SERP. Google will not depend on such a small sample set for ranking the websites.

It can be safely concluded that Google doesn’t use CTR as a direct ranking factor. It is something that is very easy to manipulate. If it was that easy to get ranking on the SERP, you will have every SEO specialist in Singapore claiming that they can get you top ranking. That doesn’t seem to be happening. No reputed SEO company guarantees you quick results.

Google has also confirmed they use CTR for evaluating the effectiveness of their search methods. This is done in controlled exercises only. Google also uses the CTR for finding out new trends and to test their new algorithms. SEO companies and experts must not give much importance to CTR as a direct factor for ranking.