Best SEO Practice To Increase CTR From Google SERPs

Posted by Maulik Patel

April 05, 2018

SEO 24 min read

Ideal SEO professionals will always ensure that their websites’ CTR (Click Through Rates) remain high than his competitors. In fact, a common debate you can find in any online forums about CTRs and SEO rankings. If you are looking to rank your website at the top of Google’s first page, you need to optimize your CTR ranks as it plays a crucial role in ranking your website on the top of the search engines.

Increase Click-Through Rates

What is CTR?

For a beginner, you need to understand what is CTR. It is a metric similar to other click-through-rate metrics used in email and PPC campaigns. When you log in to your Google Search Console and direct yourself to Search Traffic > Search Analytics and you will find the CTR rankings there.
It simply tells you how many users clicked on the link in comparison with a total number of people who saw it.

Unfortunately, most of the SEO professionals put their sweat and blood in ranking their websites on the first page of Google and consider their job done. It is a mistake. If you don’t get high CTRs, all your efforts are in vain and you need to forget about conversions and ultimately, revenues.

Here, in this blog post, we will discuss some proven techniques to boost your website’s Click-Through-Rates organically.

Identify Low CTR Content:

If you are in a position where your particular page is ranking high, but the CTR is low, it means that there is an issue with that snippet content. By just improving the snippet content, you might get superior CTRs. There are many possibilities why your snippet is not getting enough clicks. Check out the relevancy of your content with the search query. Furthermore, check out the published date. If the date is outdated, people might consider it as irrelevant.

Yoast SEO title and meta description too is important. They should be catchy and enticing enough to draw an attention.

Appealing Headline Plays a Big Role:

Headlines do matter when it comes to clicking on search results. Just type any information on any random topic on Google and check out the headlines. You will click on links with attentive and creative headlines only. It is a human psyche.

headlines

Headlines instantly create everlasting impressions and lure users to click on the link. From the SEO perspective, you can add a primary keyword in your headline. Ensure that keyword addition does not make any impact on a headline’s uniqueness and engaging factor. Here, I don’t mean putting the keywords merely in the headline, no, it will not serve the core purpose. Ensure that you have a good and attention-grabbing headline.

Moreover, you can also add other information about your offerings. If you are offering videos or infographics, highlight such things in a headline. It will tempt people to click on your search result.

Perfect Meta Descriptions:

Most of the SEO professionals fail to understand the importance of a creative, descriptive and engaging meta description. It is actually a chance to tell people about how different you are compared to your competitors. Let your creative content writers suggest you some good options for effective meta descriptions.

Give a brief introduction of what you offer. don’t use fancy words that people don’t relate to. Make it simple yet impelling.

Don’t Forget To Use Dates In Time Sensitive Articles:

Users come to Google for updated, latest and engaging information. If your date does not rank in date keywords, no matter how relevant your content is, they will simply ignore it. Always mention dates and years in your meta title and description. It will help users to know your content is updated and new.

Rich Snippets:

Snippets are the best feature that can help people to get the information they are looking for on the Google page itself. It has reviews and other supportive information that oblige users to click on the search result.

Rich-Snippets

There are snippet plugins available such as All In One Schema Rich Snippets, Schema ProGoogle SEO Pressor for Rich snippets, WP Product Review Lite, and Rich Reviews. Also, in Google Search Console, use the data highlighter. These snippets are highly customizable and work superiorly.

Add Dates To Blogs:

Which blogs will you click on Google? A blog that was written in 2009 or a blog written for just 5 days? Go to SEO > Titles & Metas > Post Types in your Yoast setting and enable “date in snippet review.”

If your blog was written a long ago, you can update it today and it will work. Just by editing a post, it will show today’s date on the snippet. There are blogs on your website that were written quite a long time before and are still relevant. If you want to encash them, visit blog by blog and keep updating them.

Google’s Featured Snippets:

Though it is a bit tricky practice, if you do it, Google always rewards. Choose portions of the content that directly and quickly answers a question in paragraph, list or table and Google will feature it with a “featured snippet”. The million dollar question is how to do it. You need to use targeted question keywords and write an accurate, informative and engaging answer with a table of contents and subheadings.

google-featured-snippets2

Use keywords that are used in the question keywords. Search for relevant queries that have answer boxes which are not good and appropriate. Use references and links to be authoritative with a specified question.

However, to obtain a featured snippet answer box from Google, you need to be on the first page of Google.

Jump To Links:

Google have come up with some superior features to encash possible opportunities. One such feature is to get “Jump to Links” that redirect the user to your content with a Table of Contents and structured content. However, here too, Google will decide whether to facilitate you with Jump to Links feature or not.

The best way is to come up with a detailed and structured article of almost 3000+ words with a table of contents and other subheadings and information that is presented in a detailed manner.

Descriptive URLs:

URLs with a long list of numbers does not look good and in addition to that, are hard to remember and not SEO-friendly. How about a descriptive URL that a user can relate to? Go to Settings > Permalinks and use post name format when you are posting a blog.

Correct Your SEO Meta Titles And Descriptions:

Verifying your website with Google Search Console must identify which web pages have errors and which snippets have errors.

Your SEO Meta Titles And Descriptions

By making them correct, your CTRs will improve automatically. Visit each page and check for errors. Modify SEO metal titles and meta descriptions accordingly and you are done. You can also use Yoast’s bulk editor to edit all titles and descriptions simultaneously. You don’t have to do it manually.

Summary:

CTRs are important to boost your website traffic and ultimately, to boost your revenues. By implementing these listed tips, you will find a boost in your traffic and conversion rates.

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