5 Simple Ways On How To Increase CTR In SEO

The organic click-through rate, or CTR, is how many clicks an organic search result receives out of how many times it was clicked on. Search engines are constantly evolving and new features are being added that make it more difficult for marketers to rank at the top organically. This has led to a decline in the CTR over time.

In this post, we will discuss 5 simple ways on how to increase your CTR in SEO!

Identify Low Performing Pages in Google Search Console
Attractive Title
Informative Description
Structured Data
Optimize Your URLs

Things To Note Before You Start Optimizing CTR:

Before you proceed to improve your SEO click-through rate it is necessary to make a backup of previous and current CTR graphs and values.

Then, edit the sheet as per the below-mentioned criteria:

The first step is to create a spreadsheet with the following columns: Domain, Title, Description, URL/Permalink, CTR (%), Position. The next column would be for notes where you will note how much your click-through rate has improved or worsened. You should also include how long it took you to improve this metric and any other pertinent information.

A spreadsheet can be as simple as a table in Google Sheets, or you could use an external service such as Microsoft Excel. Make sure that your file is secure and protected from prying eyes!

It’s also important to note how much traffic each page receives so that you know how well the CTR improvement has affected it.

After you have made a backup, it’s time to get down and dirty!

Identify Low Performing Pages in Google Search Console

The first step is to identify low-performing pages. This involves going into Google Search Console and looking at a couple of different metrics:

Coverage – This report shows you your top landing pages from organic search by impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate (CTR), average position, etc. Find the pages with the lowest CTR and investigate how they can be improved.

In GSC go to:

Open Performance
Select the Pages tab
Check on Average CTR

It is suggested to sort according to the impressions you will get to know which page has a low performing CTR.

Once you collect the data and know which URL needs to improve. Let’s move on to other factors.

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Attractive Meta Title

Your meta title tags are the first impression you make on visitors scrolling through search results. They need to be eye-catching, informative, and helpful in directing users toward actionable pages.

Remember that searchers rarely read past your headline when deciding how they want to proceed with their task or goal! And since the average person only reads 25% of any page (and skips right over large blocks of text), it’s important to get straight to the point in order for people to actually click into your content. A study by Conductor shows how different websites have organized their most visited landing pages according to how much of the page users actually read. The majority (80%) of pages studied had a headline and sub-headline, followed by an image or graphic – but over half (58%) didn’t display content below this section!

When writing your meta title:

– Make it short and sweet: Ensure that you are staying within the character limits (50-60 characters) Use Moz Title Testing Tool (https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag)

– Use keywords, including how users might search for your topic: For example, “how to increase CTR in SEO” is more likely to rank than just “improve ctr SEO”

Power Words for Meta Title

People cannot resist being influenced by powerful words, they are so persuasive! If you were to type “dog training” into Google, how many results would pop up? Probably a lot. Now, how about something more specific like “how to train your dog not to bark” – which search result do you think is more likely going to catch your attention from the get-go?

Many marketers have been using powerful words to improve their conversions and CTR. Check out this article to get a list of power words (https://optinmonster.com/700-power-words-that-will-boost-your-conversions/)

Informative Meta Description

A meta description is a place where you can explain your product/service or unique selling point to catch the maximum attention of your target audience. It is a short description of how you can help them and why they should check out your website.

The meta description is one of the most important elements on how we can increase CTR in SEO and it’s a great opportunity how we can make more clicks from organic searches. It should be clear, concise, and compelling enough to engage users which can potentially convert them into leads or sales.

If you cannot explain what your website or product is all about in a few words how can you expect people to click and visit your website?

While writing the meta descriptions keep them under 155 characters so that it fits within Google’s search results which display around 156-160 characters of the description depending on the device it’s viewed from. If you go over this, then users may see a truncated or ellipses version of your meta description.

Tips to write an attractive meta description

Check out Ad copy for your target keyword: An ad copy will give you tons of ideas on how you can write your meta description
Power Words: Find power words that will make your product or service more appealing to the audience.
Keep it simple: Don’t try too hard on explaining your service, Talk about benefits for the user
Add Call-To-Action: Include a CTA, i.e. “Learn more here.”

Make sure you do not spam keywords in the meta description.

Structured Data

There is an increasing amount of competition when it comes to getting ranking and traffic from search engines, particularly with the rise of paid advertisements which can be placed prominently at the top or side of a page.

The knowledge graph has also taken over some SERP real estate, while featured snippets have started showing up for many queries too – all taking away valuable screen space that may otherwise go towards providing searchers with more information about how they can accomplish their tasks by clicking through onto sites.

Structured data (or rich snippets) has become one of the most useful tools for increasing how high a site can rank for any given search query. Using structured data markup helps to improve how the SERP displays your content, and this often provides searchers with more information about how exactly they can complete their searches by clicking through onto sites.

Moreover, because of how much attention-rich snippets have been receiving as of late from Google as well as how beneficial they can be for increasing CTR, there is no reason not to get started implementing them right away.

Image markup is another way in which you can use structured data to improve how well your site ranks within search engine results in pages (SERPs). Using image markup allows you to make it clear exactly what the images are that are being displayed on your pages, and how they can be used to help with a particular task.

For example, if you have an eCommerce site selling clothes then it may make sense for each product image to feature a ‘buy now button in order to allow users interested in that item the opportunity to easily add it to their basket without having to navigate away from the SERP.

Adding product markup to each image will help you achieve this, and also improve how high your site ranks on a given search query as well as how many clicks it gets through to its destination page (which is of course what every SEO wants!).

Using tools like this schema generator(https://technicalseo.com/tools/schema-markup-generator/), SEOs can now integrate a variety of schema types by clicking a few buttons. Deploying structured data has become much more accessible than ever before.

Optimize Your URLs

URLs are how search engines categorize your site’s content. Make it easy for them to do their job by using unique, descriptive URLs that include relevant keywords and make sense to users (not an overwhelming string of numbers or random characters).

For example, this URL: domain/professional-seo-services-company

Is much easier to read and understand than: domain.com/professional-seo-services-company?location=simpsonville&state=sc (and ranks higher in search results).

Using keywords throughout your URL structure is also helpful, like how we use the term “SEO” multiple times on our New York SEO Company URL.

To Conclude

When it comes to rankings and conversions, organic Google CTR has been crucial for clients.

Indeed, conversions don’t happen quickly without rankings (which most people are focused on), but orders mean little without traffic that leads to conversions (which many people neglect). See how we can optimize your website’s CTR through our website SEO services.

How to Increase CTR in SEO