What is a Good Keyword Organic CTR Score?

[randfish]

Hi Folks! You might have seen my discussion on What Is a Good Keyword Difficulty Score, and this is a continuation of the same vein. Keyword Organic CTR is probably my favorite score we developed in Keyword Explorer and Moz Pro. It looks at the SERP features that appear in a set of results (e.g. an image block, AdWords ads, a featured snippet, or knowledge graph) and then calculates, using CTRs we built off our partnership with Jumpshot's clickstream data, what percent of searchers are likely to click on the organic, web results.

For example, in a search query like Nuoc Cham Ingredients, you've got a featured snippet and then a "People Also Ask" feature above the web results, and thus, Keyword Explorer is giving me an Organic CTR Score of 64. This translates directly to an estimated 64% click-through rate to the web results.

Compare that to a search query like Fabric Printed Off Grain, where there's a single SERP feature - just the "People Also Ask" box, and it's between the 6th and 7th result. In this case, Keyword Explorer shows an Organic CTR Score of 94, because we estimate that those PAAs are only taking 6% of the available clicks.

There are two smart ways you should be using Organic CTR Score:

1. As a way to modify the estimated volume and estimated value of ranking in the web results for a given keyword term/phrase (KW Explorer does this for you if you use the "Lists" and sort based on Potential, which factors in all the other scores, including volume, difficulty, and organic CTR)
2. As a way to identify SEO opportunities outside the normal, organic web results in other SERP features (e.g. in the Nuoc Cham Ingredients SERPs, there's serious opportunity to take over that featured snippet and get some great traffic)

OK, so all that said, what's actually a "good" Organic CTR score? Well... If you're doing classic, 10-blue-links style SEO only, 100 is what you want. But, if you're optimizing for SERP features, and you appear in a featured snippet or the image block or top stories or any of those others, you'd probably be very happy to find that CTR was going to those non-web-results sections, and scores in the 40s or 50s would be great (so long as you appear in the right features).

[kthoreson]

This is so helpful!

I was thinking that a score of 51 wouldn't be too hard to rank for but as my site is brand new, I think I"m going to target lower hanging fruit for now, around the 30 range. Thanks for your guidance, it's much appreciated.

[Nps1337]

Thanks you'for you're Information sir i hopful it's make me great soon

[Mechanised]

At the time of writing, it was named Potential but now it's named Priority. The meaning has stayed the same though. What I tend to do is focus more on the Organic CTR because if the Monthly Volume has "no data" it will make the Priority score very low. You can change this by applying your own modifier in "My Score" but it depends on what your Potential cut off is. E.g. I won't target any keywords under a Potential of 40.

[KLSmoz]

I wonder if 'Potential' in the phrase "KW Explorer does this for you if you use the "Lists" and sort based on Potential" should have been 'Priority' instead?

[Mechanised]

There is data out there that gives you a CTR estimate based on the SERP position. For example, position 1 gets approx 34% clicks, position 2 gets approx 17% clicks etc. I wrote an article on this a while back for desktop and mobile CTRs > https://mechanised.co.uk/seo/does-being-at-the-top-of-google-make-a-difference/

So using the Moz CTR data you know that 100% of searchers click on organic results and 34% of the clicks go on the first result.

[michal320436]

This is great but as I understand t gives the Organic CTR for people to click any organic result (blue links), what about getting the estimated CTR by position? is it possible? are there any plans for presenting that kind of data?

[BeadWorldLove]

Gosh, wish this article was published a day sooner.  I am having a difficult time trying to let people know that there is "Still a Chance" and this is going to be very helpful in the future.  Thanks MOZ