In this video, Matt Cutts, a software engineer for Google, answers a question posed by Amalve in Bangalore. Amalve wants to know if tweaking titles and descriptions of web pages will increase his CTR.
CTR stands for “clickthrough rate.” Your clickthrough rate measures the number of times someone clicks on a link to your site through a search engine. This video specifically talks about clickthrough rates that measure when people make a search for keywords in your titles, tags or descriptions, and as a result of their search, a link to your site comes up organically. It does not refer to clickthrough rates for paid links or advertising links.
Cutts answers this question by saying yes. Ultimately, to increase sales or increase visitors to your web site, you want to focus on increasing your clickthrough rate even more so than improving your search engine rankings. People often over-focus on getting top search engine rankings without focusing enough on getting people to click on your link once your site comes up in their search. Your title and descriptive text should compel people to want to click on the link and visit your site. You can tweak both and see what kinds of text bring you more visitors.