How to Boost your Click Through Rate with Simple Steps
When running an online business, your prime focus remains to achieve high search engine ranking. That’s understandable, as higher-ranking translates into more traffic and increased sales. However, one important aspect which most online business owners tend to neglect is the fact that search engine ranking without a high click-through rate (CTR) isn’t worth anything.
To give you a brief idea about the importance of CTR, it’s one of the important aspects of your search engine ranking and Google does prefer and reward websites with high CTRs. Apart from its significance towards SEO, CTR also helps boost brand awareness and bring higher exposure to your business.
Below we will be looking at 7 simple steps you can implement to boost your click-through rate and improve overall business performance using Google Search Console.
If you are out of time, here’s a showdown of things you will learn by reading through the blog:
- Improving your site pages
- Understanding your website’s average CTR
- Identifying weak performing pages
- Analyzing high performing pages
- Check functioning of schema
- Measuring progress
Website components you need to optimize to boost CTRs
Now, before we jump on to our steps to boost click-through rates of your website, here’s a quick look at different website components you will need to optimize:
URLs:
Your website URL should directly correspond and supplement your meta description. In cases where the two don’t correspond, that’s a red flag in the eyes of any user. Similarly, URL that doesn’t make sense or isn’t descriptive of your business model appears unprofessional.
Title Tags:
According to research conducted by Digital Gravity, title tags that connect with users emotionally tend to achieve higher CTRs. In essence, you should use the most powerful words precisely describing your business model that triggers users’ interest.
Meta Descriptions:
Meta Descriptions are yet another important component that impacts all aspects of SEO including click through rates. The best meta-descriptions make intelligent use of keywords (related to search queries) used in correspondence with the powerful words that spark curiosity for users.
Organic Markup:
According to a study by Digital Express, integrating rich snippets can help businesses to increase their click-through rates by as much as 30%. This is simply because optimized snippets enhance the scope of your search results.
7 Steps to boost your Click Through Rate
Step 1: Find the Average Click Through Rate of your website
Before you begin improving the click-through rate, it is important to know your current standing.
You can easily find out your existing CTR using Google Search Console.
Simply log in to Search Console and browse to Performance
Check the “CTR” tab and you are done.
Now you will be able to see average CTRs for your keywords.
It is important to remember that the average click-through rate will depend on a number of factors and may vary from query to query.
For instance, you may have a higher CTR for branded queries and comparatively low CTR for generic search queries.
Step 2: Identify and improve the low performing pages
Once you have your average CTR ranking, the next step is to identify low performing pages on your website.
This is important because your weakest pages are at the highest risk of falling out of the search engine ranking pages and thereby, need immediate optimization to improve CTR.
Here’s how you can identify low performing pages:
- From Google search console go to >> Performance Pages >> “Queries to Pages”
- Here check our the CTR, position, and impression for individual pages (you can download the entire report by scrolling down to the bottom)
- Open the report in Excel/Google Sheets to identify the average impression and CTR position
- All pages lagging behind the average are your low performing pages which need immediate improvement
Step 3: Identify the highest performing pages
Following a similar procedure, as described in Step 2, you can also identify your highest performing pages.
- By comparing the two (highest and lowest performing pages) you will be in a great position to analyze reasons for low CTR performance for specific pages.
- It is recommended to compare similar pages (lowest Vs highest performing) – product pages with product pages, landing page with the landing page, etc.
This comparison will be your best guide to improve click-through rates and conversion rates, which many haven’t still fully understood.
Step 4: Mobile and Desktop comparison
Today, mobile searches made up the majority of search queries, so you can’t miss out on mobile CTR.
Here’s what you need to do:
- From Google Search Console browse through to Devices. Here you will see the CTRs for all different mobile devices
- From the dropdown icon, you will have the report to compare click-through rates on different devices
- Here you can also test specific queries to understand why some pages are performing lower than other pages
- It’s important to understand how title tags and meta descriptions influence SERPs.
Bread crumb navigation is an important technique that needs to be implemented in an SEO strategy to improve click-through rate; especially for mobile devices.
Back in 2015, Google announced the replacement of the URL for mobile devices with the name of website and breadcrumb path. This new setting enables users to have better site navigation, while also improving the click-through rates for your site.
Step 6: Check Functioning of Schema
There’s a super quick way to check out the proper functioning of schema within the Google Search Console.
- Simple scroll to the Search Appearance in Search Analytics and click Bread Crumbs
- Here, you will be able to track the entire list schema used across the website
- Check out all Schema to be the use of their functioning
Also, make sure that Schema for pages haven’t been changed after the latest updates to the website
Step 7: Measure your Progress
At the end of the day, it’s important to constantly measure the progress of your site’s CTR. It’s recommended to at least monitor the site’s progress on a monthly basis. This will give a fair idea if you are improving and any changes you need to make in optimization strategy.
Conclusion
Remember, users are looking for answers to their problems and the faster you can address their issues the better your chances to boost your click-through rates. So, the best strategy to improve your site’s CTRs is to ensure that you are offering users with straightforward answers to their queries because they don’t care about anything else.