5 Tricks to Improve CTR and Get More Organic Traffic [FREE]

Anyone with a website becomes obsessed every day with SEO and the ranking of keywords related to their online business, ecommerce, or website. Appearing on the first page of Google is the goal, but what many don’t know is that once you’ve reached the Top 10, THERE’S MORE.

Once your result appears on the first page of the SERPs, it is necessary to make it shine to stand out among the rest of your competitors.

That is the only way to achieve a higher click-through rate and web traffic. Think that if no one clicks on your result, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the Top 1.

So, do you want to learn how to add clicks and improve CTR (Click Through Rate) to make the most of those top positions?

Well, don’t go too far because I’ll tell you next.

What is SEO CTR?

CTR stands for Click Through Rate or, in other words, the number of clicks an link receives compared to the number of impressions. It is one of the most important percentages in online marketing because it measures the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, for example, in Google Adwords.

CTR formula: How is it calculated?

And how is the result interpreted?

Well, imagine that your link or ad was shown 5000 times and received 10 clicks. The CTR for this campaign will be 10/5000 x 100 = 0.20%

What does a CTR of 0.20% mean?

It means that 0.20% of the times your ad was shown, it resulted in a click.

What should be done to increase CTR?

Well, show ads or results relevant to your audience. This is especially easy when we talk about organic CTR and ranking of keywords related to your business. After all, the user types what they need, at the moment they need it, and you can show them the relevant option to meet their need.

So far so good, right?

Where can I see my CTR?

It depends on the type of campaign you want to monitor, but the most common is to go to Google Search Console – Search Traffic – Search Analytics.

In the CTR column, you will see the already calculated percentage of this metric for each keyword or for each page.

Tricks to Improve It

A simple change in the title can shoot your CTR from 0.20% to 15%, so it’s worth keeping an eye on this metric and applying some of the tricks I’ll share below to improve that click percentage that will go directly to your website when your result is shown:

Long-tail Keywords

The SEO sector emphasizes the need to rank long-tail keywords which, although they have fewer searches, can lead to a significant increase in traffic, as they are easily rankable.

Let’s see, let’s compare three different searches for the same product:

• “Electric bike”
• “Folding electric bike”
• “Cheap folding electric bike”

Which of the three has the most searches on Google?

The first one.

Which of the three has the fewest searches, but with it, the user shows a greater interest in buying the product?

The last one.

With each search, the user demonstrates being at a different part of the sales funnel.

Note: Did you know that Amazon gets the vast majority of its sales thanks to long-tails?

So, is it important to rank long-tail keywords or not?

Of course it is.

If your result is in the top positions to sell your folding electric bike to the user who is specifically making that search, it is very likely that they will click on your result and your CTR for that search will be high.

All of this relates to search intents in SEO which, by the way, my friend Juan González wrote a great post about the topic in which it is quite clear (click the previous link to read it).

Title Tag

It is the phrase that appears at the top of the result in a larger font than the rest of the content.

The key to grabbing attention lies in finding that point where persuasive copywriting, SEO optimization, and the call to action come together.

Well, and also, you can use other visual tricks, such as placing arrows, parentheses, brackets, or even hashtags.

What’s the goal?

To attract eyes and clicks, which is what it’s all about if you’re looking to improve your SEO CTR.

Meta Description Tag

It is the paragraph that appears below the title and serves as an introduction or explanation for the user searching for specific information about what they will obtain within the URL once they click. You can “try to control this” with the Yoast SEO plugin and good copywriting that grabs more attention than that of your direct competitors.

Note: You can also use arrows and icons to make your result more visual. Check out this article by Víctor G. Bustamante. And, please, use these things sparingly, as SERPs have been too saturated in this regard lately.

Tips for writing the meta description:

• Include the keyword and other semantic terms.
• Place a call to action, especially if you are doing SEO for ecommerce. Words like “cheap” or “free shipping”, “2018” or similar usually work very well.
• Review periodically and adapt the meta to the time of year, holidays, Valentine’s Day, and other events related to your sector or product.
• Adjust your text to the limits (yes, those that keep changing every now and then. The norm was a text under 160 characters).

URL

It may seem trivial, but the preview of the URL is another factor that the user considers before clicking. Not in all cases, but in many of them.

So, use a short, concise URL that clearly indicates to the user what they will find within it.

NOTE: Pay special attention to categories and subcategories, if you have them.

If the user is looking for a product, it should be clear that you are not leading them to a catalog, but to the individual product page in question, and vice versa. It all depends on the phase of the buying funnel they are in.

You can change URLs in the Permalinks section of WordPress, but don’t forget to make the necessary redirects if the old URLs were already indexed, ranked, and receiving traffic.

Data Markers

I don’t have much to say here, and you have a lot to see for yourself in the search engine.

We increasingly see how results appear at the top of the Google page that directly respond to your search without even clicking and navigating through a website.

This happens with products, with phrases like “what to see in”, “what is...” and even these days it was mentioned on Twitter how Google was showing jobs on its own page:

Note: You can also use rich snippets like the famous stars we see so much in the SERPs for a while now, or the schema for recipes, for example.

Conclusion on structured data:

If you haven’t done it already, I recommend starting to read the Google guide on Structured data and implement it on your website.

Want more information on how to improve CTR?

You can watch this video where Bruno Vázquez-Dodero from Aula CM mentions 10 techniques to optimize CTR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCIHvxDbRuM

Conclusion

CTR is one of those metrics you should consider in your digital marketing plan because clicks and organic traffic to your website will depend (very much) on the rich snippet you show in the SERPs and the elements mentioned above.

Yes, it has become clear that learning how to rank on Google is important, but also that just being there isn’t enough. You have to stand out from the rest, and the best way to see if we are doing it right is by analyzing the CTR.

So, what are you waiting for to apply these keys to improve CTR in SEO and start seeing what works best for you and what doesn’t?

I hope that after doing so, you’ll come back to share your thoughts. We’ll be waiting for you in the comments section!