There are a number of things you need to do to fully optimize your website. Keyword optimization, backlinks, and many other factors are all important elements of SEO. Another thing you need to focus on is your click-through rate (CTR). Your click-through rate is defined as the ratio of clicks on a given site in comparison to the number of times the site appears in search results.
There are two kinds of click-throughs: organic and paid. Organic clicks-throughs are the ones that people make because a site is properly optimized. Paid clicks are the ones that are paid for by advertisers. There are different CTR metrics for each type.
Let’s take a closer look at how you can assess your CTR and examine several ways you can improve it in order to gain more traffic on your site. Before you start out, you should consider using a rank tracker, which is a useful tool that can assist you throughout the process.
Assessing your current CTR
In order to get an accurate assessment of your current CTR, you should look at the Google Search Console. In it, you can find a report called “Performance.” Once you open up this report, enable the sections called “Impressions” and “Average CTR.”
By looking at your “Queries,” you’ll be able to see your organic CTR by means of a percentage of the number of Impressions. You can conduct this type of search either for a whole site, or for each of the URLs by itself.
Potential causes of poor CTR
Poor CTR can come about for a number of reasons. In addition to the content of any given meta description, there are several other factors that can negatively impact CTR results.
Results automatically available on the SERP
If people are looking for straightforward, factual information, it is quite possible that this information will appear on search result pages in the form of Quick Answers, Knowledge Boxes, Featured Snippets, or Top Stories. In these cases, the results will be right before people and there will be no need to click on additional links.
A given SERP might have too many ads on it
It often happens with search results, particularly if queries have to do with products or things that are widely advertised, that SERPs might have a large number of ads on them. This will consequently push a given result further down in the rankings and make people less likely to click on it, as people tend to click on the first three results on any given page.
Inappropriate meta descriptions
As mentioned above, poorly written meta descriptions can also be a factor in producing a poor CTR. Aside from potential issues resulting from webmasters’ own inadequate efforts, there can also be problems with the engines themselves.
It can happen that the engines themselves rewrite meta descriptions for sites based upon some particular algorithm. As a site owner, you should make a conscious effort to look at the descriptions that appear on SERPs because you never know when they might have changed unbeknownst to you.
How can you improve your CTR?
Now that you know what issues to look for, you can start to think about how to manage them. Here are some concrete steps you can take.
Think about your audience
As with all aspects of marketing, you should do research on your target audience before you put your site (and, of course, your meta description) together. You should familiarize yourself with the exact type of language that would speak to your potential site viewers and utilize it carefully.
It is also suggested that you use a call to action in your meta title. People are drawn to short, punchy statements, and especially ones that are evocative.
Optimize your titles, meta descriptions, and URLs
Titles
In addition to getting the tone of your titles and meta description accurate, you also want to be sure that they are fully optimized for the search engines. It means you need to add a target keyword in there as it’s the most important component of ranking on top of a given list. Your keyword should be relevant to your industry and your product; it should be the main thing that your target audience searches for.
You also want to be sure that your chosen keywords are sufficiently strong. Keyword difficulty is rated according to a specific scale, with a score below 40 being considered strong. You can check your keyword difficulty using a Google rank tracker.
In addition, there are other important components to having strong titles. Titles should be around 50 characters, within approximately a 20 character range.
You should keep in mind that, depending on the device your viewers do their searches on, your titles could be truncated, and you could be losing valuable information. Therefore, it is always a good idea to test your search results on different devices. Also – as with meta descriptions – the search engines sometimes rewrite titles, so beware.
Your primary keyword should ideally appear at the beginning of the title and only once. Excessive keyword usage in titles carries the same potential for downgrading as keyword stuffing in body texts.
Meta descriptions
Your meta descriptions are also critical as these are, of course, the first whole sentences your viewers will read. You want to be sure that you construct them carefully because if you ignore them, search engines might generate them for you, and you don’t know what you’ll end up with if they are auto-generated.
Meta descriptions should be of a specific length; the recommended length is about 160 characters. If they are much longer than this, they will end up being truncated and this will not reflect well on your site. Meta descriptions should also contain your most important keywords as this is part of creating a winning SEO formula.
URLs
The structure of URLs is a too-often neglected area that plays a quiet role in your site traffic. Although it is not formally a part of the SEO ranking, having a clean and memorable URL will stick in people’s minds. No one wants to scramble to remember some long, complicated URL with more random symbols in it than words. And if you are in the business of catching and trying to hold people’s attention, you want to make things as easy as possible for them. Remember, there is competition out there and people will often lean towards the easiest options available.
Clean up your site structure
This might sound obvious, yet it can get lost if you don’t make a point of paying attention to it. You want to be sure that each of your pages is optimized and properly linked so that any relevant queries related to the pages’ information can lead there directly. If one or more of your pages contains either excessive or inadequate information, consider removing it and reorganizing your remaining pages.
You should also ensure that anchors leading from one page to another are appropriate and contain exactly the right kind of wording.
If you have primary pages and less important pages, you should also make sure that they are grouped together by topic. This helps search engines make sense of your site, and it also makes the viewing process easier for site visitors.
Additional tools you should consider
In addition to optimizing your content, titles, and meta descriptions, you should think more broadly about tools you can employ to make your page stand out.
Structured data
If you’ve ever wondered how certain companies manage to get additional information to appear in SERPs, the answer is that they do so using structured data markups. Including structured data markups is a way of telling search engines more concretely what a given page is about. That information can then be transformed into what are known as “rich snippets,” including reviews, how-to information, or recipes.
Featured snippets
A related tool is the use of featured snippets. Featured snippets provide answers to common queries in clear and obvious language. If you structure your page correctly, Google can extract the information on it to provide your question and explanation, then display it for people to see on the SERP. Using bullets, numbering, or other clear and simple language can help optimize your content for featured snippets.
Keep on top of your site
Once you’ve gotten the knack of testing and improving upon your CTR, be sure to make it a regular process. Remember that the elements comprising SEO are changing all the time, and it’s up to you as a site creator to be sure you’re on top of the trends.
