It has been a little while since I have put together a specific blog on SEO, so I thought it was about time you had another installment. This time, I want to focus on how to improve your organic Click-Through Rate (CTR), and ultimately increase your rankings.
What is CTR?
Click-Through Rate, put simply, is the number of people clicking through to your website from search engine results pages, compared with the number of people who had the chance to click through. You are better off having a high CTR and a low number of impressions, even though impressions are great for a brand awareness point of view.
If you want to know what the current CTR for your website is, Google Search Console is fantastic for this. It calculates everything you need to know. You can even filter to see the CTR for certain countries and devices.
You can also sort your pages by lowest CTR, giving you a good indication on which pages you need to make more engaging to your visitors.
Why should you focus on CTR?
A higher click-through rate means that your website is receiving more focused traffic. People are clicking through to your website because your title and meta description are compelling, and match their search query.
The more targeted the traffic arriving at your site, the more likely these are going to turn into conversions. As long as you have optimised your website for the correct keywords, that is!
Increasing your CTR by x2, will increase your conversion rate by 50%
Your search engine rankings will also increase slightly if you can increase your CTR. Think about it for a minute. If you have a page on your website that has a high CTR, it shows Google that visitors find the content interesting. So your website will appear higher. Bingo!
So how do I go about this?
The main way to increase CTRs is to get your creative brain on. You want to grab the attention of potential customers:
1. Pay attention to your headlines
This is the first bit of text your potential visitors will see. It needs to be short, punchy and grab their attention immediately. The more intriguing you can make it the better – it needs to be click-bait. 8 out of 10 people will click on a title if it is compelling.
2. Optimise your meta descriptions
By now, you should know what these are. But in case you don’t – this is the snippet of text that is shown on search engine results pages. Much like headlines, this text needs to encourage potential visitors to click. A great way of doing this is to provide an answer to a question. Think about the problem they are looking to resolve when searching for your keyword.
3. Include breadcrumbs
As you can see in the diagram below, breadcrumbs are exactly that. They let search users to see the step-by-step path from the homepage, to the specific page they will click onto from their search engine result. It makes navigation of your website easier, this improving page open rate and CTR.
4. Set up conversion goals
You need to have an understanding of what visitors are doing once they are on your site. Are they completing your contact form? Are they actually converting into leads? If you have forgotten how to set up these goals, check out Tom’s article on contact form tracking.
Another thing to note, whilst we are on the topic of Analytics, is bounce rate. Bounce rate is the number of visitors who arrive on your site and leave immediately, without visiting another page. This is a good indication of the overall performance of your website.
5. Trial using heatmaps
There are several really great bits of free software out there, which can create heatmaps of specific pages on your website. Our favourite has to be HotJar. This fantastic tool also shows you how far visitors are scrolling down the page, and where they are clicking. It is a great way to see how traffic is interacting with your content.
If you want me to run over anything in more detail from this blog post, or have any questions at all – just get in touch ([email]marketing@laser.red[/email], or 01472 878496)