As an SEO or a publisher, you should aim to improve your CTR at all costs. In this post,
I’ll put you through strategic ways to improve your CTR, in turn, your overall SEO campaign to double your traffic in no time.
Contents
What Is CTR?
Generally, in digital marketing, CTR means Click Through Rate – the number of times a link is clicked out and the total number of times that link is seen.
CTR, as it applies to SEO specifically, is the rate at which your website webpage is clicked out of the total number of times it is seen on the SERP.
The formula for calculating Click Through Rate (CTR) = Clicks / Impression X 100.
In essence, Click Through Rates are recorded in percentages.
CTR is one of the metrics made available on Google Search Console so you can measure your SEO results.
What is a good CTR for SEO?
CTRs are not like the normal school grade where anything less than 50% is poor. Generally, CTRs are lower in comparison.
But how low can a CTR be? Or what’s a Good Click Through Rate?
From the SEO point of view, anywhere between 5 – 9% CTR or more is a very good one. 4 % is also decent. 3% CTR is fair.
However, anything less than 3% CTR needs serious improvement especially when it has to do with web clicks.
It is important to mention that the standard for CTR for image clicks on Search Engines is even lower. Read my guide where image and video SEO are both compared viz-a-viz.
Also, understand that a good CTR for SEO is not necessarily a good one for email marketing.
Why You Need To Improve Your CTR
One standout reason why you need to improve your CTR is when posts are getting a lot of impressions on the Search Engine getting little or no clicks.
In some instances, this happens to a few pages on your website and needs fixing by improving your CTR.
Another reason could be out of a routine need to improve your website SEO to get more organic traffic.
Higher CTR means that one website would get higher organic traffic than another website from the same number of impressions. That’s a big difference-maker.
For example, let’s assume two websites have 100,000 impressions each in a month.
Website A has a 2.5% CTR and website B has a 7% CTR, which means 2,500 and 7000 organic monthly traffic respectively from the same number of impressions. That’s the power of CTR.
Whatever your reasons are, in this post you’d find out how to improve your search engine Click Through Rate.
Ways To Improve SEO CTR (Click Through Rate)
See below 5 effective ways to improve SEO CTR (or Click Through Rate).
1. Use Powerful & Emotional Headlines
Just changing your headlines or H1 is one of the best ways to improve the Click Through Rate of any page on your website.
One main reason why the headline is so important is that you have total control over it, unlike meta description where Google pulls out any part of your content that matches the searcher’s query.
The headline is a major determinant of your SEO Click Through Rate.
Therefore, you need to write headlines that can make people pause a little from scrolling and clicking your link.
What kind of headlines or topics improves CTR? Headlines that evoke emotions and are “clickbaity” in nature get more clicks.
A good formula is this: Headline = Keyword + why a searcher should read your content
For example, if your keyword is how to get AdSense approval, a good headline could be:
How To Get AdSense Approval FAST – Thorough Guide.
Powerful headlines like this have made a lot of difference in the CTR of many websites on Search Engines today.
Understanding this, has led to the invention of many online tools that rephrases a weak headline to a powerful and converting one.
Therefore, I recommend that you rephrase all your headlines to the format highlighted here. You’ll definitely have a dramatic improvement in your CTR.
It worked for me and I believe it will work for you too.
2. Add More Unique Images to Post
Images are important to SEO. But many forget to mention that it’s unique images that count.
Using stock images that thousands of sites are using is not a good SEO practice.
Having one unique image as a featured image is good but not enough to dramatically improve your CTR.
While stock images cannot be totally avoided, I suggest that you use a combination of 2 to 4 of them in a creative way to make sure it is unique.
On Canva, creating basic designs is super easy.
Add about 4 to 5 unique images in a post and you’re sure to get a higher CTR and more clicks from that post.
3. Include Related Keyword In Content
Related keywords are not the exact keywords you optimize your content for. They are keywords that are similar in meaning to those you optimize that your content can well rank for.
The best place to get these kinds of
Check the GSC for keywords you did not optimize for but are showing up under the Query tab.
Alternatively, you could use a third-party tool like SEMrush to get these related keywords.
Whichever method you use, ensure you naturally include these keywords in your existing content and watch how your CTR increases.
4. Add FAQ Block
FAQ as you may know stands for Frequently Asked Questions. These questions, when naturally included in an existing article, improve the content’s visibility on Search Engines.
Where is the best place to get a subject’s FAQ? Well, Google’s PAA – People Also Ask section – is the best place to get FAQs about a given subject or query.
Next, add an FAQ block to your content. To add an SEO-friendly FAQ block to your website, read my detailed guide.
When this is done properly, your content would qualify for more snippets on the SERP. Hence, a higher CTR.
5. Write Resourceful Content that can be linked to
There is no secret that links have the highest impact on SEO.
While doing an outreach for your content to get linked is rewarding, it can also be very exhaustive.
Therefore, I recommend that you write articles that are worthy of being linked to naturally.
Read my in-depth guide on how to write high quality content.
If 90% of all your content is top-quality content and has unique value, there are high chances that other websites would naturally link to your content.
When you get natural links from other websites, your organic search traffic would continue to increase. Also, the higher your content is on the search engine ranking would definitely improve your CTR.
Alternatively, read my ultimate internal linking tutorial, and you’ll understand the key strategies to build a powerful internal linking structure. Furthermore, you’ll understand how to build backlinks too since a similar approach works.
Conclusion
Improving your CTR is one important aspect of any SEO campaign and should be done routinely.
I strongly recommend that you take actionable steps in this post to improve your CTR and your overall SEO campaign.
It is important to mention that CTR is one of the most important SEO metrics to track.
If you found this article useful, you should also find out if you should follow SEO experts, learn image SEO, and how to write top quality blog post.
