13 Ways to Improve Your Organic Click-Through-Rate (CTR) in Google

13 Ways to Improve Your Organic Click

So you have built a website, and nobody's visiting you as expected? The problem could be that you’re not getting sufficient organic search traffic. And you must be doing something to increase organic traffic to your site right now! Does it include building more backlinks or content?

Building links and content meme

And does these methods improve your websites organic search traffic? No?

So how should I increase the organic traffic to my site?

Organic search click-through rate (CTR) optimization.

What is CTR?

The click-through rate is the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. For example, if you’d like to calculate your CTR, you can use this formula:

Clicks / Impressions * 100 = Click-Through Rate

If your website page had 1,000 impressions and 10 clicks, that’s a 1 percent CTR. As you can imagine, the click-through rate is a significant metric that you want to observe carefully. Your click-through rate tells a lot about your web pages. For example, a high CTR is a good indication that your web page title and description are resonating with your target audience.

Why is CTR important?

If you have high positions in the search engine results pages SERPs, that's impressive. But sometimes even top rankings can't guarantee more visits to your site.

Remember higher click-through-rate=more traffic.

What is important is how many people are clicking on your page and not bouncing back immediately. You need to attract more visitors who are likely to stick around and then convert. For instance, if you increase your CTR from 10% to 20%, you just doubled your traffic… without greater rankings. It's important to know that studies confirmed that, on average, if you beat the expected click-through rate, then you're considerably more likely to rank in more prominent positions in SERP.

How this works because when users know what they’re getting into, they’re more likely to click. Now let's check out some factors to increase CTR for better traffic, and here’s the most helpful checklist for you:

1. Be on Google’s page #1

The initial step of our operation is also the hardest. Optimize the pages that appear on Google's page #1. Yes, it is important to sort out which pages appear on Google's page #1. Without being on Google's first page, you can forget about raising your CTR. And there is an old SEO saying:

Google searchQuote: The best place to hide is Page 2 of Google Search Results

And search results indeed get exponentially fewer clicks the farther you go.

ranking on page one in Google

Although it’s undoubtedly recommended ranking on page one, it doesn't mean you must rebuild your entire site’s SEO, to get every one of your pages in the top 10 ranking positions. There is a more reasonable way: Start with the pages that are already ranking on Google's page #1. By finding out these, you can improve their CTR and more of your pages will rise in rankings as an outcome of your site growing more authoritative.

2. Optimize the pages with low CTR

Discover your average CTRs first, so you will get some basic idea of which pages have the lowest and highest CTR. You’ll want to have all your pages to be optimized, but before you start working on your CTR, you need to set a baseline. Eventually, you’ve got to start somewhere particular, and so the best pages to do first are the ones with the lowest click-through rates. They will be easier to improve because, if their CTRs are abnormally low, they must have some noticeable flaws that will be easy to fix.

3. Search for long-tail keywords

Getting clicks requires grabbing the attention of interested users. And that's where the keywords come in. Before you start researching keywords, it’s vital to learn how to organize them. One way to classify them is head, body and long-tail keywords:

  • Head keywords: They are usually just 1 or 2 words and have a high search volume.
  • Body keywords: They are 2 to 3 word phrases with a good search volume, not too high, not too low.
  • Long-tail keywords: They consist of 4 or more words together with a low search volume. These account for the majority of web traffic.

Just because they have a low search volume, it doesn't mean they are not necessary. Medium to long-tail keywords is a crucial part of any SEO strategy. The essential factor is the longer the phrase, the more definite it is, and fewer search results there’ll be when people search for it. By combining them into your website, you’ll significantly boost the volume of related organic queries you rank for.

For instance, when a customer searches for “best trekking shoes under $400” or “black Trekking shoes,” they’re more likely to buy than when searching “shoes.”

4. Make clickable meta titles

Meta tags build the foundation for your SERP entry. They tell visitors what to anticipate when clicking a link.

What makes a title clickable?

Don't be a copycat.

Create unique content - Copycat mem

  • Do not write duplicate page titles on your site and you should avoid plagiarizing if from other sites too. There will be a large group of similar services providing the same, and unique content will always stand out and attract more clicks.
  • A good title should match the page’s content. If the title describes one thing and the page has something different, you will lose clicking users and as well as your site may face the Google penalty.
  • Make sure the title stays within the character limit of 60 words. If you limit your titles under 60 characters, you can expect about 90% of your titles to display correctly.
  • Yes! The title must contain the keyword. You already know that the best keywords match user search intent. Your titles should involve at least one such keyword, preferably right at the beginning.
  • It must include attention-grabbing words. One of the best ways to create clickable meta titles is packing them with emotions. Brian Dean of Backlinko suggests using these words where appropriate. Brian Dean of Backlinko suggested using these key terms:
    • Add parentheses and brackets to the end of your titles.
    • Use numbers not for just listing something but also for other data.
    • Use power words like Updated, Complete checklist, x%, Infographic, New research, Visual Guide.

5. Make clickable meta description

Like your title tag, make sure your meta description should include keywords to reassure the user that your site has the answer they’re looking for. Keep them below 160 characters or descriptions may be cut short in your search result. To make meta descriptions more clickable, make sure it matches the content of the page and title tag. Best practises are:

  • Make sure it's unique
  • Include a call to action
  • It should match with the content
  • Include power words

6. Uncomplicated URLs

Shorter URLs are preferred. They are much easier to copy-paste and share on social media. Also, shorter URLs are visible in the search results and can help you get more clicks. It should be descriptive and readable as possible for both users and search engines. The ability for humans to read URLs makes them better for search engines. URLs should be as consistent as possible. Make a plan and stick with it through your whole website. It should include your target keyword. Using keywords in your URL makes it easier for the human eyes that see your URL on Social Media or in an email to understand what you are linking them to. Let’s look at these URLs:

Short URL examples - BBQ Accessories

Short URL examples

Clickable URL example
Which URL looks good to you?

7. Rich snippets are everything

Now, you’ve undoubtedly seen search results that had more details apart from the main three features (Title, Description, URL). Rich snippets or structured data markup are results that have images, review scores, rating stars, products’ prices, and so on. And they show this extra information between the URL and the description of a webpage. And people like to click on web pages with this added information.

Rich snippet for SEO - example

Rich snippets are essential to SEO as they stand out from the other snippets, it looks much nicer, and a searcher will instantly know more about that webpage, just by looking at them. If the click-through rate of a snippet raises, you’ll get more traffic from that search result. As more and more people click on your result, Google will mark that people prefer your page above other ones. This will improve your rankings in the long run!

8. Get in Google’s Knowledge Graph

Listing your business in Google Knowledge Graph is an important SEO term. Google wants to give the most reliable search results to users, and the Knowledge Graph is the way of providing information directly. When you search for “famous musicians,” their images and name will appear at the top of the Knowledge Graph result.

Listing your business in Google Knowledge

On searching for “Amazon,” a short profile along with Amazon logo, founders, address, customer service number, and so on will come on the right side of the search. Results on the Knowledge Graph will vary as per the data or individuals you search for.

9. Get site links

The main purpose of Google is serving site links to users is helping them navigate through the site. They are the additional links that appear in the search snippet under its main body and look like this:

Sitelink extensions for brands - example

Sitelink extensions make your brand more appealing because they can navigate users to particular pages on your site directly. They can add up to 8 links, which is a great benefit: not just one, but multiple links leading to your website, all in one ranking position. Sitelinks are generated automatically by Google’s algorithm, and they are entirely out of your control. However, sites with site links tend to have some things in common. If you meet these specifications, Google might determine you deserve site links.

  • Rank #1 for your brand name
  • Have a practical, easy-to-use site structure
  • Have links to all fundamental pages from your home page

Sitelinks can promote your site in several ways. Sitelinks:

  • Build brand reputation through visual cues
  • Grow trust by showing proper contents
  • Presence of more links boost click-through rates (CTRs)
  • Decrease conversion funnel as visitors are taken straight to the product, services or contact pages

10. Add Breadcrumbs

A breadcrumb is a small text path, most usually located at the top of a page and also appears in Google search results. Breadcrumbs enable more straightforward navigation to all pages on a website with a significant amount of content and pages. And you can create a list of breadcrumbs via HTML or can use structured data. By implementing breadcrumbs for all pages, the users can navigate to all main categories on the website. They show the users which page they are currently located in the hierarchy of the site.
When designers do not provide a breadcrumb path for a site, users tend to click on embedded links or use the back button to exit or navigate to other pages. The users may get disappointed to keep using the back button to return to the main category. To overcome this issue the breadcrumbs are given, the users can then get back to the desired page on just a single click.
Breadcrumbs are also helping search engines to have a clear understanding of the website construction and its usability to the customers. It enables the SEO to know the page connection and the hierarchy of the website. If the breadcrumbs contain the appropriate keywords, it’s an added advantage for SEO.

11. Improve page loading speed

Searchers can get disillusioned and frustrated with your site if they find that they have to wait for ages for pages to load. When a page takes more time to load, users tend to exit the site. Site loading speed is vital for improving clicks and overall user experience. This is the primary reason why exit rates can start to climb. Faster your pages can load the more they are efficient. You can improve your site speed by:

  • Compress large pages.
  • Minimize on-page components.
  • Optimize visual content.
  • Review your hosting plan.
  • Eliminate unnecessary plugins.
  • Use browser caching.

12. Compare Mobile vs. Desktop Experience

Are we checking all these strategies for desktop only? Especially as we’re in a mobile-first world now, it's essential to verify your mobile CTR too. An entirely correctly loading desktop page may not correctly loading in a mobile version. It's image size, page loading speed, content or some other feature may be broken. Thus make sure you have optimized all your pages of the mobile version is fixed to improve CTR.

Mobile vs. Desktop Experience comparison

Under Devices option, Google Search Console will give you a summary of your Click Through Rate by device mobile, desktop, tablet.

13. Compare against your competitor

If you’re still wondering why your site is underperforming and your competitors are on page #1, take a look at every site ranking above you and see what they’re doing differently to rank #1.
The below screenshots are from page 1 and page 5 of the SERPS for the search query “What are the basics of image editing.” Can you notice the difference how the page 1 results are keyword-specific, with the URLs, title tags, and meta descriptions all geared towards influencing the searcher that their page will help them with the basics of image editing?

Organic search traffic is free customers coming in to browse your brand, business, products and services. After implementing these checklists, all you have to is analyze if your efforts have worked or not. SEO is not a one-time implementation work. It is recommended to check your progress weekly or at least every month. Compare 30 days before and after you implement changes. See how they affected your CTR, what things needed to be improved, and so on. By improving your CTR, you’ll boost overall organic search traffic and conversions.

It's a competitive market. Contact us to learn how you can stand out from the crowd.

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