Your article CTR is one of those stats that people look at and gloat about, but rarely really understand the meaning of.

Sure, we’re under the idea that an increase in article CTR means people click through and then land on our website… but that’s about it.

Should I be happy with a 3% CTR? Or would you like a 30% CTR?

Jeff Johnson stated that achieving a 30% CTR for email campaigns is a fluke and that the open rate is typically around 10%.

That’s the problem with email. Do you really not know why they signed up, what they want from that email, or did you answer their question in an email and then they left?

But with articles people come to your article. You don’t submit what you think people will like, they may show up in search engine rankings, and are roughly targeted to a certain keyword.

It doesn’t matter if you have 4 people or 400 people viewing your article, if they don’t do what you want them to do, then the article is worthless.

Does your item CTR then depend on your resource box?

In a way yes. Because your resource box is directly related to your article. It should never have a generic signature because that article might not be linked to it.

I wrote about foods that adjust blood pressure. And then my resource box pointed them to exercises for low blood pressure, which was a generic signature.

My CTR was low, like very low. Why?

Because it just didn’t reflect the article. If you offered a low blood pressure diet book, you might have had some success. Or you could have gotten a better CTR if you forewarned even more through a landing page that had a bunch of extra food tips. Which would then filter more people and then increase the conversion of paying visitors.

Therefore, your resource box is not an automatic money-making tool, far from it. What it is is an address to what you want. And you can only want a few things:

1- someone to buy something on the landing page
2- register
3- Increase your AdSense earnings through targeted ad placement.

But the resource box is necessary because it allows you to work backwards. If you know what result you want, you can design the article to achieve that goal.

If you create your article first and then your target, the CTR of your article is reduced each time.

For example. I wanted to sell a product on AdSense templates. Now the article should not be about Adsense but about the best placements for AdSense and why. Then the visitor will want to know more and will be forwarded to my second article, which would be how I increased my AdSense CTR using templates.

One article warms up visitors who are already hot (they want to know about it), the other article offers an easy solution to building AdSense positions.

Every time this has increased the CTR of my article, because I have worked backwards.