Creating a website is easy. Everyone can get a domain and WordPress and make a website in about 10min, maybe even shorter. What after you made your website? Should you be waiting for people to come to visit your website, or should you do something about it? Usually, people make a website, and they start struggling immediately. Nobody checks their website, and they wonder why is that? We are here to tell you that the problem is you. Not investing enough in your website's SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will leave you without any visitors. One of the ways, or one of the best ways that help you make your SEO better, is getting organic search traffic.
Organic-search traffic is the traffic that you get directly from search engines, and it happens to be the best one because the more you get, the better your overall SEO will become.
Let us be honest, how often do you check Google's second search page? What you need for your website is to be on Google's first page to be seen, and one of the best ways to get in there is having a high CTR (Click-Through-Rate).
In this article, we will show you how you can get organic CTR without any cheating, so you can get some organic traffic on your website and become famous.
Do you tend to trust the results on the first page of Google?
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What Is Organic Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
How many people see the link to your website, and how many of them click it? CTR is the number of people who click on your website's link among those who see it. There are two types of CTR, and in this article, we will be focusing on organic CTR. Organic CTR is the click you get from Google's search page and not from an affiliate or pay-to-click links.
The number of CTRs is crucial for most people, and it should be noted for you too. You made your website for people to see it. If no one clicks on it, then all the effort you put into your content will be wasted. The same thing happens with conversion rates. If you have a product and no one clicks to purchase it, all the effort you put in it will not matter. CTR will also have a direct impact on your website's SEO, which we will talk about further below.
You have to make sure that whatever you are doing, you are doing it in the right way, and you are getting the most out of it. If you are writing an article like us, make sure you do it right so that your effort returns the value.
The Effect of CTR on SEO
Many people think that CTR does not matter for the SEO ranking of a website. That is not true. You can see from the picture below that the websites with a better ranking on google also have a better CTR. This fact shows the direct impact of CTR on a website's SEO. If CTR did not influence your SEO, it would not be a subject of discussion in the world of analytics.
Google's algorithm makes it very clear that click-through rates are significant for your website. If someone sees a page and clicks on it, then we get to a conclusion that the page had superior content compared to other pages. Exactly like real life, if a shop or a restaurant has more customers, we can arguably say that they have better products and services. If a page is in ranking and it gets more clicks, the ranks will go higher. The same things go the opposite way, and if you get less CTR than expected, your page will lose value and drop in terms of rank. All these ways are for Google to understand whether you are doing a good job or people like your website.
You can use some benchmark tools to see what is the expected CTR for your website. By improving your CTR, not only you get more people into your website, but you also improve your SEO and your organic traffic. If you are running an online store or a business, CTR is even more valuable because the higher your CTR, your conversion link will be higher.
How to Improve the CTR of a Website
In this section of the article, we will be telling you about how you can get more CTR, and the fore, improve your SEO. We mentioned how CTR affects SEO, but even if it did not, CTR is still valuable for you. In any online business that you want to make, CTR is important because you write so that people can see it. Sadly, organic SEO CTR is on a downhill slope right now because there are many inorganic traffic sources.
Search engines are now more complicated than they were a few years ago, and they need something more than just CTR to give you a better ranking. All of this will result in a lot of techniques to improve because being the rank one on the Google page might not get you CTR.
We gathered some of the best and substantiated methods for you to get CTR and help yourself to become a more popular website that everyone clicks on its link.
Know What Contents Make Your CTR Weak
Of course, for a better CTR, you need to know what makes your CTR go down, and you must avoid them. You must focus your content on what search engines want. If you improve your SEO and a better position on google's search page, you will get more CTR.
10 percent of the websites on top of google's search page have CTR twice As good as what they need to have. From another aspect, the websites on the lower end of the search page, have a CTR 3 times less than average. Based on this information, if you do not know what you are doing, you might end up destroying your CTR.
To avoid making mistakes that will decrease your CTR, you can use analytics tools such as Hallam. Another great tool for analytics is Google itself. Google provides you with a lot of analytics tools that people do not use that often. One of these tools is the Google search console that you can use to see your SEO CTR against your organic Seo ranking position. With the data you get, you should be able to optimize your keywords and your overall page to increase the click-through rate.
Invest in Long-Tail Keywords
Keywords are essential for your website. Everyone must have a strategy for their keywords. One thing that can enhance your SEO and help you gain CTR is investing in long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are not keywords, but key phrases. Users are more likely to use these key phrases. As an example, when someone wants to buy a cheap mobile phone, they are going to search for "cheap mobile phone" instead of "mobile."
Having long-tail keywords is a very efficient way to improve your website's amount of CTR. If you are having an online store, long-tail keywords will grant your more conversion rate and sale. Especially when people want to buy a product, it is more possible for them to search for a phrase instead of one word.
One of the best types of phrases that you can use as long-tail keywords is a question. For instance, if you want to know the best plugins for WordPress, you will search "what are the best plugins for WordPress."
Another type that people also search a lot (I search this one a lot) is something similar to what we did in this article, "Top 10 methods to improve CTR." If you want to write an article and talk about a few things, you can use this type of key phrase as well.
Write a Good Meta Description
When people search for something In Google, they see some pages with their links and their meta description. The meta description is one of the few things that people see, and it makes the most of your entry on the search result page.
A meta description is what gives people an idea about what they will find on your page. If you write your meta description effectively, you will see how enormous it will affect your CTR and SEO. One of the factors for having a good SEO is a good meta description.
Unlike a book that you should not judge by its cover, a meta description can bring you a lot of users if you write it well. You must use the meta description to your advantage.
Your meta description should include about 160 characters. If you do not have a description for your page, Google will automatically show the phrases you wrote around your keyword to get some context about your page, this can be good for some websites such as Amazon because they have a detailed and clear product description, but for the most parts, you want to write an honest meta description that will clearly and simply show what users will find on your page.
You can control your meta description and write it most efficiently by using tools such as Yoast SEO in WordPress.
Many other techniques will allow you to get more CTR, but getting a good meta description is one of the basics that every website must have to make your page better. A meta description is a big deal, and we cannot stress enough how important it is for your page.
Do you ever get interested in a search result because of the meta description?
1 vote
Your Data Must Be Structured
We say that your data needs to be structured, but what do we mean by it? As an example, search "how to cure a cold" on Google. What you will see is that Google will give you a result based on a website that wrote them. The thing that happens is that Google algorithms will pick up the data from that website, and they will represent it to the users. The users are also more likely to click on them because they might think that if Google thinks this page is good, then it is good.
If your data is good enough and you are backing it up by statistics or examples, you are structuring them in a good way and there is a chance that Google's algorithm will pick them up and index them like the example we gave you. There will be more chances that people will click on your page if your web page is represented by Google itself.
We call this type of representation by Google schema markup and the sign of it is an interactive info box that appears above all of the searches on Google.
Social media such as Twitter or websites such as Wikipedia also have great schema markups. The effect of schema markup is clear, and as it will add new colors or shapes to your page, it will make you more visible than the other links on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
Use Images on Your Posts
Images are crucial for your posts. Not only do they increase the rate of the clicks you get, but they will do a lot more than what you think. Images are worth a lot more than words, especially in terms of CTR.
Images will allow your website to also get in the image section of Google, and if you have an article and need an explanation or some data, images are the way you want to go. The advantage that images have compared to text is that they are visual, and sometimes, you can explain things better using visuals. As we said, structured data is a great way you can get scheme markup on Google and get more CTR. The best way to structure your data is through using images and representing proven data. You can put graphs and many profitable data in a picture that you cannot do with words, just like we did in this article.
Helping with structuring data or getting you a position on Google images is not the only advantage that using images gives you.
According to studies, using images in your email will increase your click-through rate from email by about %40. Using beautiful visuals and pictures on your post will also make them more attractive and interactive, and your readers will have a much better time reading them. In all social media, using pictures will make your content look more attractive.
If you want to use visuals and pictures in your article, make sure they are relevant and preferably original and unique.
Make Sure Your URLs Are Descriptive
If you want to have a good CTR then you must make everything that the users will see from your page look great. That includes your page URL as well. Your page URL is one of the few things that will show up on the search engine result page as a link preview. If the users can see it, then it must look clean and simple. The length of your URL, category, and the path will also affect the amount of CTR. Your page URL is one of those small things that might not matter, but it matters. If what users see on SERP does not look good to them, they might get the impression that you do not care about your website.
For a clean URL, you need to categorize and subcategorize your pages properly. You also need to make it simple, and if you are from another country and your website is not in English, we still recommend using English for your URL. URLs in other languages that do not use the English alphabet might turn out weird.
A great example of a clean and good-looking URL is Amazon.
Simplify the Format of Your Titles
As we mentioned in the previous example, everything that users see from your page in the SERP must look good. The title of your page is the most important thing that they will see because it is the most relevant thing to what they searched. You can also use Yoast SEO in WordPress to customize your page title however you like.
One of the mistakes I have seen some people make is that they will turn their title into something of a slogan. You should always keep in mind that your title must be short and self-explanatory to what the users will find on your page.
Another important thing for your title is branding. If you do not need any special branding, then you do not need to put the name of your website on your title. Some people are doing it, but that is so that people would not mistake their brand with another brand. Although putting your brand name in your title will not have a great effect on your SEO, if you have strong branding.
Watch some examples of good title writing and learn how professional websites write them so that it is efficient for both SEO and CTR.
Make Your Contents Optimized for Mobiles and Localize Them
The usage of mobile phones for searching on Google is now at its highest rate. Since the year 2016, people use their smartphones to search for something more than ever. This is because mobiles are more accessible and easier to work with compared to computers. If you want to search for something real quick, will you take out your phone, or will you turn on your computer because of a simple search? The usage of mobile is now more than ever, and that is the reason why Google changed its algorithms to focus more on website optimization for mobiles.
Another thing that changes when you use your mobile is the search results. The result on SERP might be different when you are using your phone to search for something because Google will also consider your current location. If you have a type of content that is related to location make sure you localize it. Why is that? Let us assume that a user is from California and wants to know what kind of restaurants are near them. If you have your content, it will show up on the result page based on the user's location.
Studies on Moz show that the location became a more important factor than what it was since 2015. Proximity is also the most influential factor in SEO localization.
Also, if you are having a website or a page for your business, register it on Google My Business for it to show up on a map when people search about that. When people search your keyword on Google, your business will show up on an infobox so make sure you put the necessary information for people to contact you.
Make Lists for Your Posts
Exactly like what we are doing here, you should also make lists in your posts. We already mentioned that making lists is a great way that will result in a better CTR, and people love it. I love it myself.
Right now, listicles are everywhere. This trend is clearly because of some websites such as BuzzFeed or Cracked.
The sweet spot for this type of article is top 10 or top 20.
This type of article is the most popular trend right now.
There are a lot of ways you can turn an article into a list. Just like what we are doing, if you want to teach something you can write top 10 methods. Maybe you want to write about some products, and you can even top 20 or top 10 products. You can even write a step-by-step guide using this kind of article.
Improve the Loading Speed of Your Website
Google does not count a click if your webpage is not fully loaded. The speed of your website will directly impact both the user experience and the CTR. Your page speed also affects your SEO ranking on SERP. Here is how:
If you have a page that does not load fast, people will leave it before they enter it. Your page should also be optimized for all kinds of devices. Keep in mind that smartphones are usually weaker than computers, therefore the mobile version of your website should be optimized as well.
Having a good speed for your website is one of the most important things that you should be focusing on because it improves your SEO, CTR, and user experience.
There are many tools you can use to make your website faster. You can lower the size of your images and you can use some plugins such as Smush to make your general website faster. Using some websites such as GTmetrix you can see how fast your website is and whether it is good enough or not.
Use Yoast SEO if You Are Using WordPress
This other part is a bonus section because you can use it only if you are using WordPress for your website. Yoast SEO is a free plugin for WordPress that tells you what you need to do with each post to make it optimized for CTR, SEO, and the general experience. It will give you tips about how you should write your posts, how you should write your title, meta description, URL, and many other useful things.
We highly recommend you use this plugin because it will make everything so much easier for you, and it will tell you about the quality of your post. If you are a newcomer this plugin is a must-have.
Have you ever used or heard of Yoast SEO?
1 vote
Conclusion
In this article, we told you about some of the best ways you can use to get better CTR, and generally, a better SEO ranking. There are still many ways you can improve, and this article should not be all you rely on to improve your CTR. Many of the techniques depend on you, and there is no special magic in boosting your CRT. For the most part, you need to be patient and do some basic methods over and over again. It might get tiresome, but if you have a good strategy and enough interesting content, it will work.
