Click Through Rate (CTR) is one of the important metrics of SEO. Not only having a higher ranking in SERPs is important but also having high CTR is as much important. It certainly gives you a broad view of how well your content attracts the visitors. Your website CTR determines the gap between your potential visitors and actual visitors. If you think you are ranking well in SERPs but not able to attract more traffic. One of the possible reasons is you are having low CTR. It is high time for you to not overlook this metric and follow the tips to improve your website CTR.
What exactly Click Through Rate (CTR) is?
If you are not having much idea about CTR, here is a brief description of it.
CTR is basically defined as the percentage of impressions that results in a click on a web page.
CTR= (Total Clicks On Your Web Page * 100) / Total Impressions
For example, if your web page is having 1000 impressions and your web pages are getting clicked 50 times, then your website CTR is 5%. Thus, the higher CTR is the more traffic. So obviously it is important to improve it.
How Can You Track Your CTR?
Now you know what CTR is. But the question is how can we track our CTR is. The answer is ‘Google Search Console’. You might be well known for this tool. Just go to Search Console, then click on Search Traffic>Search Analytics. Here you can see search terms, keywords, Clicks, Impressions & CTR etc. Below is the sample snapshot of my website.
Now you have all the required data, what’s next? The next step is to sort on the basis of CTR (in ascending order). Pick the articles having CTR <5%. Follow below tips to improve your website CTR. Once done, wait for at least one month to get articles indexed again. If you will implement mentioned tips, you will definitely see a drastic increase in your CTR 🙂
Tips To Improve Your Website CTR
There are many factors that can impact the CTR. Following are the major factors that you should focus in to improve your website CTR.
- Writing Enticing Title or Headline
The title is one of the most important factors that can impact your CTR. Title tags are often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page. Title or Headline is the first thing that visitors see on search pages along with meta description. (We will see meta description in the next point). Based on these parameters, users decide that weather should click on your web page or not. So, it is your responsibility to have an enticing title. There are many things included in writing eye-catching headlines:
- Try to include your keyword in the title (preferably in starting). If your title tag contains the keyword that users are searching for, such keywords will be bolded in your title tag.
- Title length should not be more than 50-60 characters.
- Use compelling words in your title. As per my experience, I have figured out compelling words that have helped me in improving my website CTR. Few of them are: How To, Free, Tips, Best, Ultimate, Guide and Tricks etc.
- Have unique title for all your posts. Having a duplicate title tag would affect your rankings in a negative way.
Also Read: Understanding Sales Funnel Management To Increase Conversion Rate
2) Having Promising Meta Description
As mentioned above, search engines show meta description also while showing your page in the search listing. The meta description is shown below title tag. Both title and meta description tag compel users to click on your web page. Similarly to the title tag, there is a limit on the length of meta description also. If you exceed that limit, your meta description will be truncated and which does not look good. The ideal length is 154 – 160 characters. Make use of these characters wisely. As a good practice, you should have your keyword in meta description also.
3) Writing Optimized URL
Optimizing Permalink (URL) structure is one of the important tasks in optimizing websites. The URL is shown along with title and meta description in SERPs. You should focus on writing clean, specific and optimize URL for your web page. Make sure URL is short and contain one of the keywords that you’re hoping to rank for. It motivates users to click it because the keyword they searched for is highlighted.
Few more things to keep in mind while choosing relevant URL:
- Do not Make Too Hierarchy and Sub Folders In URL
- Avoid Duplicate Values In Your Permalink
- Use Hyphens Instead of Underscores
- Do Not Include Stop Words In Your URL
4) Using Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs enable navigation of your website by following a structured hierarchy. Confused? Let us take an example – An online store (say Amazon) may use the hierarchy of Clothing > Men > Shoes to help men find the shoe collection for them. If you also use breadcrumbs to markup information, Google will replace the URL of your website and display the breadcrumbs. Google prefers breadcrumbs so do visitors. It will help in improving your website CTR. So, you can also make use of breadcrumbs to structure your content. You can also use rich snippets, in the form of Schema markup, to add elements such as visible star ratings to results. Thus, breadcrumbs help to improve website navigation and user experience.
Also Read: Latest On Page SEO Strategies For 2016
5) Using Long Tail Keywords
There is no second thought that using Long Tail keywords can help you in ranking higher. But do you know using long tail keywords in your title and meta description can help you to improve your website CTR? Users prefer to see the long-tail keyword in your headline. For example, when a user search for ‘Tips to improve your Website CTR’ in search engines, assuming this article is in SERPs & it is providing the solution what user is looking for. SO, using long tail keywords is a great strategy to improve CTR.
6) Content Should Be Up-to-date
You might be thinking how the regularly updating website can help in increasing CTR but it does. Let us assume that your article ‘SEO Tips & Tricks To Rank Higher in 2008’ is in SERPs. Will anyone click on this? Simply no. Because it is 2016 now and lots of search algorithms and updates have happened over past 8 years. So, keeping the website up to date is also important.
That’s all in this article. What tactics are you trying to improve your website CTR? I am sure our readers will love to read them. Do share your feedback and views in the comment section below.
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Thanks for giving such a great information about CTR in a beautiful manner.
Hey Mohit,
Thanks Some important tips share with us website CTR its important part of our website.
Thanks for sharing these 6 simple way to increase website CTR. Ad placement is Very important for online marketing. Also, the background of your website. And u can do some testing on your ads by alpha-beta testing .If you remove the border and make the ads look a bit more like the rest of the content on the web site.