What’s a good clickthrough rate? In this report, we share industry-segmented clickthrough rate benchmarks for Google ads as well as the top 3 organic search positions. Our data was drawn from client PPC & SEO campaigns between 2018 and 2022, and consists of 73% B2B and 27% B2C companies.
Average Paid and Organic CTRs by Industry
| Industry | Average Google Ad CTR | Organic Position 1 CTR | Organic Position 2 CTR | Organic Position 3 CTR |
| Overall Average | 1.6% | 39.6% | 18.4% | 10.1% |
| Aerospace & Defense | 1.3% | 42.7% | 19.6% | 11.2% |
| Addiction Treatment | 1.1% | 36.4% | 17.5% | 9.5% |
| Automotive | 1.6% | 40.3% | 18.6% | 9.9% |
| Aviation | 1.4% | 39.5% | 17.4% | 12.5% |
| B2B SaaS | 2.1% | 39.8% | 19.0% | 11.3% |
| Biotech | 1.4% | 42.2% | 18.0% | 11.7% |
| Commercial Insurance | 2.3% | 41.0% | 17.4% | 9.5% |
| Construction | 1.3% | 39.1% | 18.9% | 10.1% |
| Cybersecurity | 1.7% | 38.7% | 16.9% | 9.9% |
| eCommerce | 1.7% | 35.4% | 15.2% | 8.8% |
| Engineering | 1.4% | 41.9% | 16.2% | 14.1% |
| Entertainment | 1.5% | 37.7% | 19.7% | 12.7% |
| Environmental Services | 1.9% | 38.9% | 17.5% | 9.2% |
| Financial Services | 1.1% | 39.4% | 16.4% | 9.1% |
| Higher Education & College | 0.9% | 37.5% | 18.8% | 10.0% |
| HVAC Services | 2.3% | 36.2% | 19.2% | 9.6% |
| Industrial IoT | 2.2% | 43.0% | 19.2% | 10.8% |
| IT & Managed Services | 1.8% | 41.1% | 20.2% | 10.6% |
| Legal Services | 1.5% | 36.8% | 19.3% | 10.4% |
| Manufacturing | 2.0% | 40.4% | 18.4% | 9.2% |
| Medical Device | 1.5% | 41.2% | 19.1% | 11.1% |
| Oil & Gas | 1.6% | 40.1% | 18.6% | 9.4% |
| PCB Design & Manufacturing | 1.8% | 43.4% | 19.0% | 10.3% |
| Pharmaceutical | 0.9% | 38.1% | 18.1% | 9.9% |
| Real Estate | 1.0% | 38.3% | 18.5% | 9.7% |
| Software Development | 1.6% | 39.9% | 18.9% | 10.0% |
| Solar Energy | 1.3% | 37.6% | 16.9% | 9.0% |
| Transportation & Logistics | 1.9% | 39.8% | 18.0% | 10.7% |
How to Improve Your CTRs
The standard advice for improving CTRs is to write more customized meta titles and descriptions, or use clickbaity phrasing to entice searchers to click on your page. While this is good advice, the table above shows that ranking position is far more important to CTR.
Improving paid position is simple: spend more than your competitors for the given keyword. Improving organic position is more difficult, and requires investing in thought leadership-based SEO. Thought leadership-based SEO is an approach that emphasizes the importance of high quality content, and accomplishes the following:
- Responds to Search Intent: Searchers for a given keyword have an implied question or problem, and clearly answering this question significantly improves engagement rate, leading to higher search rankings and CTRs.
- Delivers Original Insights: People have become savvy enough to identify run-of-the-mill content written solely for SEO purposes. Providing real, original insight is the best way to engage their interest.
Thought leadership content must be combined with keyword targeting using the Hub & Spoke model and a high frequency of publishing in order to rank for competitive keywords. Typically, it takes 4-6 months of consistently publishing original content to see results. When executed well, however, the resulting increases in search position have a much greater impact on CTR than any other factor.
Working With CTR Experts
The process of improving organic CTRs requires a strategy and a team to execute on it. Most businesses don’t have specialized team members capable of doing so in-house. For that reason, many companies choose to work with an experienced marketing partner.
Our agency has worked with clients across a wide variety of industries to improve CTRs by consulting on paid advertising campaigns and increasing organic search rankings. Feel free to contact us if you’re interested in discussing a partnership.
