3 Tips to Increase Organic CTR (Part 1)

/by

Previously, I talked about The Link Between Organic Click Through Rate and SEO. In the blog post, I stressed the importance of having a high click-through rate because Google uses it as measure whether a search result is useful or not. Today, I will share to some CTR tips in order to help you boost your site rankings in Google.

Page Title

Let’s start with the page title because it is, after all, the first thing the users see. Upon reaching the search results page, they will obviously look for the best title that is relevant to their query. To create an effective title, you need to know your users. You need to put yourself in their shoes. If I am the user, what will make me click?

SEO is NOT just able technical details and industry jargons. To achieve success, you need to understand your audience. What do they want? What do they search? Knowing their purpose of searching is one important factor. How can you serve them well if you don’t know their goal?

As much as possible, you would want to include the keyword you are ranking for in the title. At the same time, you need the title to be captivating.  You need to achieve 2 things here:

  • grab the attention of your audience,
  • and convince them to click your website.

person discussing printed research near laptop computer

According to John Caples’ book, there 4 essential qualities of a good headline. He shared on Tested Advertising Methods the following:

  1. Self-interest: add words that pique the interest of people like a testimonial headline, a free offer, a list of benefits, and anything that offers informational value.
  2. News: feature words like, “New,”  “Finally,”  “Announcing,”  “At Last,” and anything that suggest a date and time.
  3. Curiosity: feed their curious minds by sharing a story, or asking a rhetorical question.
  4. Quick tips: provide easy to digest information such as giving an infographic of important facts and figures, or sharing easy ways to do daily tasks. You can even share travel tips for people on a budget.

Once you get the attention of your audience, it’s easy to make them click. Don’t forget that search engines now support symbols and emojis. If you target the younger audience, adding these timely icons will lure them to your website.

Meta Description

Aside from the title, what else do the user see in the search results? Just below the title is the description section. Of course, an intriguing title won’t suffice you need to provide a short explanation on what the page is about.

Like the title, the meta description has to grab the attention of the people reading it. It will be like your ad placement on the newspaper. You won’t have a huge space to say everything you need so carefully think about the word choices and the length of your explanation.

What can you do here?

  1. Explain the benefits without divulging everything.
  2. Provide an overview and product details.
  3. Manage the expectations of the users.
  4. Ask a question.
  5. Give an excerpt or a snippet.

Lastly, I want to stress the importance of keyword research. Before you go into the technical SEO, do your research first and study websites that are similar with yours. Know what the people are searching, and use keyword tools. There are a lot of free tools online; just refer to SEO Keyword Tools That Are Free to Use.