There have been millions of times when marketers pay their entire attention to discoverability when it comes to SEO. They strike the balance between keyword optimization and keyword stuffing. But here is the catch: Attaining the first rank on the SERP won’t be beneficial if users or searchers are disinterested in the information you are providing through your content.
You have to keep in mind the things that turn the searchers into readers and readers into customers. And the first step towards this is to boost the click-through rate.
CTR is one of the valuable metrics that drives the health of your website. Here, we have come up with the answers to the questions: What is CTR, why is it important, and how can we boost CTR? Keep reading to satisfy your intellect.
What is the Click-through Rate?
Click-through rate is defined as the percentage of users who click on a particular link on SERP. It is a representation of the effectiveness of the search engine listing to attract people so that they are compelled to visit your webpage. The calculation of CTR is done by using the formula of clicks divided by impressions, and the result is then multiplied by 100.
CTR = (Clicks ÷ Impressions) x 100
Why is it Important?
CTR helps you get a better idea about the needs of your customers. It is the indicator of where you should focus more while reaching the target audience. If it shows a low CTR, that means you have not yet targeted the right audience and reaching out to the wrong ones.
The importance of CTR lies in the fact that the higher it is, the more visitors your website will have. These visitors are much closer to becoming your customers. So, it is important to attract them to your website. You can predict the organic traffic through CTR and accordingly decide the improvements to make.
How to Boost Click-Through Rate?
Now that you know the definition and importance of CTR, let’s find out how to boost CTR.
Relevant keywords
You have made a creative and catchy copy. But is that enough? Not at all. You have to make efforts to organically insert keywords in that copy too. The trick is to be specific. Use long tail keywords to improve CTR, especially in the title tags and headings. Being highly descriptive, long-tail keywords can effectively match your content with the search intent.
These keywords have higher chances of getting the users what they are looking for. It motivates them to click on the URLs as they are confident enough to get the information they want. You can use keyword research tools to get a list of focused keywords.
Descriptive URLs
What is the first element that SERP shows for your website? The answer is your web page URL. So, if you want to increase organic traffic, optimizing the URLs is one of the ways. Make it descriptive by organically including the keyword. Additionally, don’t forget to optimize the SEO Slug for boosting the CTR.
It strengthens the foundation of the topic, thus showing the relevancy of your content to the users. Keep the URL short to make it more attractive.
Effective meta descriptions
The next method of how to improve CTR is to write captivating meta descriptions. These are the snippets that you must have seen below the title tag on the search engine results page. What makes a meta description compelling enough to attract the readers to click on your URL?
It is written in a concise manner, using only 160 characters, informing your users of what the page is about. If you succeed in answering the questions of the users in the meta description, you are already halfway through winning the CTR journey. Use keywords and powerful and persuasive language to write the meta descriptions, thereby eliciting stronger responses.
Optimizing site speed
Who likes a slow-loading website? No one. If your website takes a long to load and visitors start going back to the search results, the “click” won’t be counted. Site speed has become all the more important, with page experience and web core vitals becoming significant website ranking factors.
If you haven’t optimized the speed for your website, visitors will quickly bounce off the link, impacting your CTR. You can use tools like Ahref, Moz, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and Google Analytics to optimize the page load speed.
Using Schema
Schema is the structured data that is added to the pages of the website to attain more space in the search results. It makes it stand out from the other websites as you get extra content included in the results shown by the search engine. For instance – You are searching for a recipe of a particular dish.
You must have seen that numerous search results show extra information like the image of the recipe, ingredients used, rating, and much more. In addition to the recipe pages, you can use schema types like FAQ, table of contents, etc.
Conclusion
When your website is going through a click-through downfall, the above-mentioned tips will become the backbone that will give a boost to your CTR. Use the right tools and follow the above tips to get the desired results. This process doesn’t have to be a pain in the neck.
If you are experiencing any challenges, a reputed SEO company, namely SEO Propellant, will help you with its expertise in every aspect of SEO. Get in touch with us for more information.