Nowadays, there are a lot of factors that influence your click-through rate, but one of the easiest ways to improve it is through click-through rate SEO. If you have a really good offer and a low CTR, then your business can struggle.
If your page is not clicked, there is little chance your potential customer will see your products. CTR is a critical metric to track since it shows you whether or not your marketing is working. The higher the CTR, the more effective your search engine marketing campaigns are since people are clicking on your URL and landing on your site more frequently.
What Is Click-through Rate?
- Click-through rate (CTR), or just click rate, refers to the number of times users click on your specific search snippet on SERPs, divided by the total number of impressions that your site receives.
The click-through rate of search snippets is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on that particular URL by the total number of times your site was seen (impressions), respectively, and multiplying by 100. The calculation is a percentage.
This metric can be used with other key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the performance and improve your marketing campaigns.
What Is a Good Organic CTR for Ecommerce?
It is important for marketers to know their organic CTR by position because it is one of the factors that make websites rank higher or lower on Google. There is a symbiotic relationship between CTR and organic ranking. CTR ecommerce can not only show how successful your SEO efforts are but can also be used as one of the data signals for Google’s algorithm. A relatively high ecommerce CTR for organic Google search results provides a clear signal to the search engine algorithm, namely that your website is attracting viewers. This increases the likelihood that the search engine will display your pages higher in the SERP. Furthermore, a higher page rank in the SERP almost invariably means more clicks for your website, eventually leading to more sales on your ecommerce site.
Due to the fact that your ranking position has a high impact on CTR, it is very important to understand what your ranking position on SERPs is in relation to your competitors and what you can do to manipulate your rankings and boost your click-through rate effectively. Using the SE Ranking keyword tracker, you can track ranking changes for a given keyword and find out which keywords bring the most traffic to your site. You can also check which SERP features you have to evaluate how attractive your snippets will be in the search results.
CTR depends on the industry you’re in and its targeting. For example, you will get more clicks if you are in the ecommerce industry than if you are in the home and home improvement industry.
It’s important to understand the industry you’re in so that you can assess what your marketing spend is going toward and the kind of results you’re getting. The clientele of each industry is unique, so a good customer retention strategy for one industry may not work well for another. The best way to optimise a site’s sales funnel and achieve a high volume of conversions is by knowing your consumers and their purchasing needs, motivations, wants, and desires.
Ways to Improve Your CTR in SEO
1. Analysis of SERP and competitors
If you want to be clicked on by search engine users, you first need your target audience to notice you. Hence, it is essential that you familiarise yourself with the search results for your most important keywords, find out what snippets your competitive websites get and surpass them, and discover what type of content is the most appropriate to match user intent. When creating title tags and meta descriptions, you need to think like a potential customer and try to come up with something that catches your attention and makes you want to click on the link. By analysing your competitors on SERPs, you can see for yourself which text, titles, meta descriptions, and rich snippets draw your attention and make you want to go to the website. Doing this will help you experiment with your own snippets to improve their CTR.
2. Attractive meta titles and meta descriptions
The first words a potential customer sees when a search query leads to your website are the meta title and description. These appear on most browsers directly below the URL, may be displayed in bold text, and contain special characters, so they frequently attract attention. They are the first points of contact with the searcher when they decide to follow through to your page. It’s a way to tell the user if an article or webpage is worth reading before they even click on it. Meta titles and descriptions can earn you more clicks when it comes to organic search, and they boost click-through rates with their attention-grabbing abilities.
Optimising them for relevant keywords will give you a better chance of appearing higher in the SERPs — if you do it right. How do you know what keywords to focus on? That’s where keyword research comes in. Keyword research is the process of finding out what people are searching for online. It’s also a way for companies to figure out what their customers want so they can create content and products that are relevant to their needs. However, it’s important to remember that good keyword optimisation doesn’t stop with matching search volume — you also need to optimise for user intent. This means that keywords should be relevant to what your website provides.
Optimised meta titles include a relevant keyword and no more than 75 characters. This is to make sure you have enough room to explain the benefits of your products or services in fewer words. Also, it gives you more control over what is displayed on SERPs because it is written by you and not a machine. Emojis and special characters that go well with the brand image can liven up your meta descriptions.
3. Adding structured data to get rich snippets
Structured data, also known as semantic markup, helps search engines better understand and categorise web pages. It is a kind of validation that verifies and displays semantic information about the content of your website. It may not seem like a big deal at first, but there are clear advantages to implementing it. The primary benefit of structured data is the rich snippets that you can display on your search engine results page (SERP). Rich snippets are in-depth results that help your listing stand out from the pack. They can improve click-through-rates, and seem to aid in conversion rates.
Most ecommerce websites implement structured data markup using schema.org terms. There are some frequently used ecommerce structured data types that tend to yield positive results for ecommerce businesses. They are:
- Local Business structured data — displays information related to Local Businesses’ locations, opening hours, and maps.
- Product structured data — shows what products you have available in your store, along with their descriptions. Google uses this data when generating shopping results.
- Review structured data — used when you’re listing products on your commercial website and you’d like Google to show rich snippets under the product title where users rate and review the item.
- FAQ structured data — used to answer the most commonly asked questions and support users making the purchase decision.
4. Optimizing content for featured snippets
When people do a Google search, they’re looking for answers to their questions. Sometimes they find the answer on your website. Other times, Google shows them an excerpt of text and links directly below the search box. This is called a featured snippet. If you have relevant and valuable featured snippets, users will be more likely to visit your website and choose you over the competition. So, they can be great for your SEO. The use of descriptive HTML, schema.org markup, a clear image, and concise but useful copy can help your content be seen as a featured snippet.
Featured snippets typically respond to informational queries, for example, a question or how-to query that you can answer with your topic-specific content. To improve your chances of showing up for these types of queries, focus on creating high-quality, informative content that answers the most frequently asked questions in your niche.
5. Using Descriptive URLs
A good URL will also be user-friendly and can describe the content provided. You want to stay away from using URLs that are too long to describe something that could easily be expressed in fewer characters. Descriptive URLs usually include a relevant keyword in the URL, which allows search engines and users to understand better what the page is about. This may lead to higher click-through rates, as well as higher ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
For example, you run an organic dog food website and use organic pet food in London as your primary keyword. In the URL http://thebestorganicpetfood.co.uk/dog-food/, you used dog-food – this is a specific variant of keywords that have their own demand and thus search volume, which helps to increase traffic for your page.
Conclusion
CTR helps determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. The more attractive a search snippet, the more clicks it receives, and more traffic go to your website or landing page. For this reason, it’s crucial to monitor the click-through rate and improve it. A powerful CTR strategy includes determining pages with the biggest traffic potential, working on the title, description tags, and other elements that impact the snippet, and testing different formulas to see which ones work best.
