It may seem that your position in Google’s organic results determines how high your CTR is. In fact, the first places garner the most clicks. However, if you care about getting more hits to your site and are willing to fight for it – it is possible to increase CTR with SEO. There are several measures that can be implemented to attract more interested users. In today’s article you will read about how to increase CTR from organic results.

The importance of CTR in SEO

Let’s start with a reminder – the CTR – or Click Through Rate, tells us how many search engine users clicked on our website link, relative to all the people who saw it.

It is most strongly observed and analyzed in the context of paid Google Ads campaigns, but I encourage you to also consider it when dealing with traffic from organic results. Why is CTR in organic search results important? For several important business reasons – it allows you to increase traffic to your site, which you can convert into sales. For Google, those websites that are frequently visited by users are more valuable, better ranked and can expect better positions in the SERPs. Not all users distinguish between paid ads and organic results, so if you don’t invest in the former, you should take care of the latter.

What kind of CTR is good? It is reported that pages with the highest positions in the search results achieve a CTR of more than 5%. It is worth striving for the best, but a result of 2% should be satisfactory. And one more important point – how to check the CTR of the site? You can check it, among other things. In Google Search Console under the Effectiveness tab. And CTR for specific keywords can be found in Acquisition -> Search Console -> Queries.

6 ways to increase CTR

It’s time to act – read about some proven ways to improve click-through rates.

1. Optimize the meta data. These are the elements that search engine users see as soon as they get results for their query on Google. Therefore, it is in your best interest to make sure that the meta title and meta description are catchy, informative of the benefits, and pertinent to the content of the underlying page. Each subpage should have unique meta data, this involves a fair amount of work, but it is worth using this optimization to properly embed keywords and CTAs. The result will be benefits for your site and for the level of conversions.

Example of meta title and meta description

2. A user-friendly website is determined by friendly URLs. This is another of the elements displayed in the SERPs, so it’s a good idea to use it to show the user what your subpage is about. It is worth getting rid of special characters and numbers from the URL, it is better to enter a keyword here, for example.
   
3. Use structured data. In addition to affecting your CTR, they will help you rank more in search engine results, and more space for your business means less space for your competitors. What is structured data? Google’s algorithm decides whether, for a given query, it shows results with a list of questions and answers on the searched topic or an opinion piece.

Example of structured data

4. Significant to user satisfaction is the speed of your site. The idea is to make sure that the customer actually goes to your site and reads the content, rather than leaving bored waiting for the site to load. Remember to adjust the loading speed of the page for both desktop computers, laptops and mobile devices.

5. Be sure to have content that will be valuable to users and, by the way, to search engine robots as well. Only unique product descriptions, engaging blog posts or other substantive content will give you the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your field, credible to customers.
   
6. Invest in long tail keywords. Not only do they characterize users with more specific needs – those looking for a product or service. This you are able to pull your site faster to high positions in search results, which will significantly increase the chance of getting valuable hits to your website.

CTR in organic results – summary

Because the search engine is an external environment, independent of our intentions, the best results are achieved by testing different solutions. That’s why even after implementing the ways I’ve recommended to increase CTR in organic results, you can’t rest on your laurels. The site and its performance require constant observation, analysis and re-optimization. If you do not want to do it yourself use my professional help – I look forward to contacting you.