How Much CTR is Good for YouTube?

In this article we're going to look at what CTR means and what CTR is considered good for YouTube.

What is CTR?

CTR is an abbreviation for 'click through rate'. With regards to YouTube videos, it is the percentage of people that see your video in their YouTube search results, and then click on your video to view it.

It's a ratio between video impressions and clicks. The more people that click on your video when they see it in their search results, the higher the CTR will be.

A CTR (click through rate) is between 0% and 100%.

What is the Average CTR on YouTube?

The average CTR for videos on YouTube is anywhere between 2% and 10%. In my opinion, anything from 8% upwards is considered good.

However, I have noticed that Google actively promotes your video more when you achieve a CTR of 10% or higher, so for me, this is the target to aim for.

Some videos can achieve a 15%+ CTR and YouTube will show your video to lots more people when you achieve that kind of number, as it shows that people are really intrigued with your video. It means you're doing something right.

What CTR Should You Aim for?

The simple answer is, as high as possible. The higher the CTR the more views your video will receive.

Videos with high CTR's not only receive more clicks, but YouTube will also rank them higher too, meaning it will receive more impressions and reach a larger number of people.

However, when your video has an average CTR of over 10% it's best not to experiment or change things as this might have a negative impact, rather than a positive one. As they say, if it isn’t broken, don't fix it.

How to Increase Your CTR on YouTube?

There's only two ways in which you can impact the CTR of your YouTube videos. These are the title and thumbnail image.

The video title and thumbnail image are what your potential viewers will see in YouTube. Whether it is in their search results, homepage feed, or even suggested videos.

To increase the CTR of any video, simply improve your video title and video thumbnail image to make them stand out and create curiosity.

You can check out our YouTube Title Finder article on how to write titles that attract more views.

You can read our article on does changing the YouTube title affect views to discover how doing so can improve the results and CTR of your existing videos.>

It's also important to give it enough time before making any changes. A mistake some YouTube marketers make is to keep changing the title and switching around the thumbnail frequently. Only change one at a time (the title or the thumbnail) and leave it at least one week. This gives enough time for the change to be picked up by YouTube, and for that change to be rolled out on YouTube and become visible.

You can then compare the CTR stats between two date periods and see which version gave the highest CTR.

After you have followed this process with the title and are happy with your final title, move on to the thumbnail and see if you can improve the CTR further.

Bear in mind, if your CTR is over 10% then you may want to leave the title and thumbnail as they are, as that's considered a good CTR for YouTube.