Traffic vs. click-through rate?

Question

In theory, shouldn't CTR and organic traffic be closely (if not almost exactly) correlated?

Answer 1

Not necessarily as traffic can be 'direct' i.e. some one can come to the site by just typing in the URL, there are also situations were a refered visitor, can be read as direct by Google Analytics.

Answer 2

You're not totally off - since Google uses CTR as the one of the most important elements for determining changing rank for particular keywords - as your CTR grows, so will your organic traffic. That's why your meta tags and title tags as displayed in organic search are modified by Google; Google is trying to find the best display meta and title that increases your sites CTR.