Every business that relies on the Internet to generate sales leads or drive actual online purchases should know the value of impressions. While impressions are an important factor in generating more traffic to your business website, they are not an absolute guarantee of success.

With organic search marketing, an impression is simply the number of times a URL from one of your web properties is displayed for searchers in the search engine results. This URL could be your home page, a special landing page, one of your social media profiles or local directory listings, or even an online press release.

While a well-trafficked location can be critically important to a traditional brick and mortar business, location alone will not get customers inside the store. Likewise, impressions serve to attract the attention of Internet “passersby” but cannot draw customers to your web offering per se. Once that impression has been generated, the user has to be enticed to “enter your store” by clicking on your listing.

Organic Traffic is Measured by Your Click-through Rate
One of the best measurements of your organic search marketing efforts is the click-through rate or CTR. This is expressed as the percentage of “eyeballs” or impressions that actually click on your listing to view your content or offer.

• Your ranking position on the search results pages. Exactly where in the search results your page listing will be displayed depends on how relevant your page is to the search term being queried and on how well your page scores for the estimated 232 factors that make up the Google search ranking algorithm. The higher your position in the search engine results, the more clicks your listing is likely to receive.
• The text that displays in your search listing. The more appealing and relevant the information in your title tag and meta description tag, the greater the likelihood that the user will click on your listing.

How Many Clicks Should You Expect?
With a low search ranking on the page and mediocre text in your listing, your CTR could be as low as 1 percent. With a decent ranking and descriptive listing copy that appeals to the needs of the search user, your CTR could be as high as 40 to 50 percent.

Assuming that your keywords are well-targeted and receive at least several thousand monthly impressions, you should be achieving a 20 percent average CTR. Focus on the keywords that are the most relevant to your business and that deliver the highest number of impressions.

Two Analytic Tools that can Help Increase Your Search Engine Traffic
When you connect your Google Webmaster Tools account with your Google Analytics account, you’ll be able to track your search engine rankings by keyword and view the number of impressions each of your search listings are getting, the number of clicks, your average ranking position, and your click-through rate. If you don’t already have these powerful analytics tools working for you, visit https://accounts.google.com and sign up for both free of charge.