Improving Search Click through Rate
-
We are having a problem on our website with click through rates. We are getting between 100-150k impressions through search but we are only getting between 500-1000 clicks to the site. What strategies have you used in the past to help improve your click through rates? Thanks!
-
The number of suggestions from EGOL and a look through a headline-writing post like this or this or this will quickly show that there are a whole vast array of different ways to write headlines. And after all, what is a <title>element but a headline on a search listing? So the big question is how do you find out which of these different ways of approaching things will work the best to increase CTRs?</p> <p>Answer: you will never know unless you test.</p> <p>Unfortunately you can't test <title> element and META description content directly. But you can test it indirectly using PPC. Here's how:</p> <ol> <li>Set up a number of low-budget PPC campaigns for the keywords you are targeting organically</li> <li>Test a few ad variations that push different buttons for your audience</li> <li>Adapt the one with the best CTR to fit your <title> tag and META description.</li> </ol> <p>Do this a few times and you should start seeing some commonality in your best performers, at which point you will know what works best for your audience. But keep testing, because you never know when something will surprise you (and because PPC is a perfectly viable medium for any online marketing effort).</p> <p>At the same time:</p> <ul> <li>Make sure all your authorship tagging is in place</li> <li>Use microdata as outlined on schema.org to get any rich snippets that you can</li> <li>Use Moz Analytics or a combination of Screaming Frog and Excel to make sure your <title> tags and META descriptions are unique.</li> </ul> <p>Between <title> elements optimised for CTR, META descriptions working hard, and rich snippets you should have all your bases covered.</p></title>
-
There's a lot of factors that can affect click-through rates from the search results. The first and most obvious is your visibility or rank.
The impression numbers alone don't tell the whole story. If you're being included in the search results, but are ranking on page 2 (or worse) then you're only going to get crumbs instead of a nice big slice of search traffic pie. So, the first thing to do is to work on getting your snippet high-enough in the search results to be seen!
It can be very tempting to look at your Webmaster Tools data (or data in a third party tools) and respond by tinkering with your title and meta-description without ever look at the search result pages (SERPS) you're appearing on.
Just looking at the SERPS can often explain why you're not getting the clicks you think you deserve. Reasons include:
- Well known brand(s) dominating the search results
- Competition from Adwords on the page. (remember to turn off your ad-blocker if you use one!)
- As Ken said, are competitors using Rich Snippets to draw those visitors eye-balls.
- Is Google displaying the Title and Description you want/expect it to show?
When you look at the SERPS you should also look at the type of pages that are appearing there. What does Google think are the best pages for the searchers query. Does this help you understand the searchers intent? What is it they were looking for? What is it that the other pages in the SERPS are providing?
Look at the words/language that other pages are using. Is your snippet the most compelling compared to them? How can you differentiate yourself from these other results. It sounds like management/marketing BS, but what's your unique value proposition? Can you get that across in a few words?
Ignore the fact that your page is obviously the best one for a minute, and try to put yourself in the head of the searcher. Think, "Am I going to find what I'm looking for?", "What's in it for me if I click on this result?" Is it obvious that the searcher will find what they are looking for if they click on your snippet?
Is the right page on your site ranking, with a less compelling snippet? I've seen blog posts out-rank the service landing page that the site would really like to appear in the search results, completely undermining the lovingly crafted title and meta-description created on the service page.
Lots of nice Title tips from EGOL there - try some!
-
EGOL has some great title suggestions.
I would add authorship and rich snippets as well. We have seen increased CTR with those. The rich snippets have been really good because they show the product ratings from our reviews.That really makes the listing stand out in the results.
Ken
-
<title><strong>Secrets</strong> xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxx</title> Everybody wants to be in on the secret. Mystery, controversy gets lots of clicks.
<title>xxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxx <strong>Only $XX.XX</strong></title> If you can't outrank the manufacturer who charges MSRP, then offer a fantastic discount. You can rank and #2 and take ALL of their sales.
<title>xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx <strong>Ships Immediately</strong></title> Everybody wants their stuff yesterday. Lots of people are in a hurry.
<title><strong>Free Beer</strong> xxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xxx</title> Everybody clicks just to see if its true.
<title>xxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx<strong>?</strong></title> (questions elicit more clicks than statements)
<title><strong>OMG!</strong> xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx</title> Every dumbass will click this.
<title><strong>Who says that</strong> xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx<strong>?</strong></title> Dumbasses are suckers for this too.
<title>xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx <strong>Free Shipping</strong></title> People hate shipping charges more than sales tax.
<title><strong>My Sorryass Brand:</strong> xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx</title> Unless you are so famous that your brand name alone will elicit clicks, don't put your sorryass brand on the front of the title tag. Nobody cares. Instead tell them you go what they are looking for.
<title>xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx - <strong>My Sorryass Brand</strong></title> This is a waste of title tag real estate too.
<title><strong>Grass Skirts</strong></title> Sometimes your keyword is all that you need. Don't stink it up with your ego or a bunch of SEO crap. These short title tags can rank really well and pull in the clicks.
Before you write your title tag, ask yourself what the searcher is really looking for. Then if you offer that get it in the title tag. If you don't offer that you better get it.
Go out and look at your competitors title tags. If they are offering <title>Haircuts - Only $5.00</title> then maybe you want to say <title>We fix bad haircuts $25.00</title>
Learn more here http://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does the new Google Analytics Search Console Beta tool use API to pull more data?
So my client has been asking for definitive proof of why the search query data provided on Google Search Console does not exactly match up the data presented directly in the Search Console itself. The simple answer is that the Google Search Console is limited to 1000 rows of data. However our client is requesting a Google article/documentation of why the new Search Console beta tool has no row limit (hence much more data for a big website). I know that the Google Search Console API was available before Google announced the new Search Console Beta tool in Google Analytics. I also know this API could pull in more data than the 1000 row limit. However is there any article available (preferably from Google) that Google Analytics is pulling this Search Console data via API? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
Search and Replace filter on Google Analytics?
Hello! On our GA account for one of our clients, we'd like to add a search and replace filter to the Views section of the account. The URL is www.askergoworks.com (it redirects to askergoworks.com), and Google has flagged us to have redundant hostnames. This is why we'd like to add the filter. Would the regular expression be askergoworks.com|www.askergoworks.com ? Any help would be great - I'm not a regex expert, so I really don't how to go about this. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | AGILITY0 -
Last click conversions (Assisted conversions report vs. Channels report)
Hi Mozzers, Does anyone know why the last click / direct conversions (by channel) in the 'assisted conversion report in Google Analytics do not match the conversions in the Channels report. I thought conversion data in the channels report was last click / direct conversions? Thanks for your help!
Reporting & Analytics | | A_Q0 -
How to check bounce rate of mobile or ipad checkout steps? How to check Funnel for mobile or ipad?
Hello Guys, Is there any way to check bounce rate of mobile or ipad checkout steps till thankyou page? Also separate Funnel visualization for mobile or ipad? John
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Exact Match in Google Search (Not Adwords)
I was going throught the list of keywords that have sent traffic to my site over the last 7 years and cam across one "A516 grade 70" that had hundreds of variants. Now in a lot of cases search volumes were different as were SERPS. We've tested a few variants with reworked pages (70% similar to original but optimised for variant keyword) and see good SERPS and traffic results. Theres obviously some diminishing returns here for us but the interesting question is when to these variants become an exact match and when not? In some cases the variants are unique because of the spacig, periods and hyphens used. there isn't a clear correlation with exact matc though. Insight appreciated. (Sorry for spelling errors. Form doesn't play nicely with iPad)
Reporting & Analytics | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Rank #1 for a 110,000/month query search, but barely any traffic?
Hi guys, As it says in the title, we've recently reached the absolute #1 position for a certain key phrase in the travel industry which the Google Keyword Tool tells me averages 110,000 local (165,000 global) searches a month... however we have received barely any traffic at all over the past TWO months for it and I'm trying my best to determine why. We've checked on multiple different devices with all forms of personalisation off, different browsers, 3G connections as opposed to office Wi-FI etc. and it still returns us as the #1 rank. Meta descriptions and title tags are pretty much pristine if I don't say so myself, however what should be a very lucrative key phrase is currently returning little to no traffic results. Has anyone had experience in a similar situation to this? Any possible causes that I might be missing? Would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | ExperienceOz0 -
Strange bounce rate trending
what would make it jump up/down so suddenly like that? bouncerate.png
Reporting & Analytics | | adriandg0 -
Search within search? Weird google URLs
Good morning afternoon, how are you guys doing today? I'm experiencing a few Panda issues I'm trying to fix, and I was hoping I could get some help here about one of my problems. I used Google analytics to extract pages people land on after a Google search. I'm trying to identify thin pages that potentially harm my website as a whole. It turns out I have a bunch of pages in the likes of the following: /search?cd=15&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&source=www.google .co.uk, and so on for a bunch of countries (.fi, .com, .sg, .pk, and so on, maybe 50 of them) My question is: what are those pages? their stats are awful, usually 1 visitor, 100% bounce rate, and 0 links. Do you think they can explain my dramatic drop in traffic following Panda? If so, what should I do with them? NOINDEX? Deletion? What would you suggest? I also have a lot of links in the likes of the following: /google-search?cx=partner-pub-6553421918056260:armz8yts3ql&cof=FORID:10&ie=ISO-8859-1&sa=Search&siteurl=www.mysite.com/content/article They lead to custom search pages. What should I do with them? Almost two weeks ago, Dr. Pete posted an article untitled Fat Panda and Thin Content in which he deals with "search within search" and how they might be targeted by Panda. Do you think this is the issue I'm facing? Any suggestion/help would be much appreciated! Thanks a lot and have a great day 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | Ericc220