6 proven hacks to increase your organic CTRs
Type your favourite search term into Google and you will see thousands, lakhs and even millions of results. To find what you are looking for, however, you would only click on the first few results. Naturally then, every business would want to rank among the top 3 or 5 results. While paid marketing campaigns work, organic or unsolicited traffic – a.k.a organic CTR (Click Through Rate) – is better in the long term. The question that marketers ask is how to improve your organic CTR?
Here are some proven ways to do this –
Firm up your Copy
On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
– David Ogilvy on the art of copywriting
And it’s 100% true so tighten your belt and firm up your marketing copy. Some of the elements that you need to consider include –
Emotion: Content that evokes a strong emotion – positive or negative – is more likely to be clicked than neutral content. This applies particularly to the title and excerpt with which you bait the hook.
Question: Asking a question forces your reader to think and consider your perspective. Also, most people use search engines to answer questions they have.
Subtlety: Entice but never force. For instance, using strong adjectives like amazing or dashing may count as overkill or flashy. State your stance firmly but sedately.
- Add the current year to your title
When marketers ask how to increase CTR in SEO we tell them that if you want more people to read your headline, one simple way to ensure this is to add the current year in the title. The current year is a naturally high ranking keyword so not only will it feature at the top – or at least on the first result page, it will also reassure the reader that your content is the most current. Singlegrain cites ClickFlow, stating that, blogs have the current year in their title are 50 to 150% more likely to be clicked. This is particularly true of rapidly changing industries such as marketing and technology.
If you are thinking you can simply go and update the titles of your earlier blogs be warned that the content within must be current as well. After all, you cannot have dated information on a current blog. That said, this hack is guaranteed to improve your organic CTR.
- Woo your audience
Changes in the SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page) algorithm can potentially harm your CTR. On-page SEO can help improve your rank but to ensure that your result gets a click, the excerpt – or first look – of your content should be exciting enough to attract attention yet short enough to quickly let the reader know what you are talking about. Some marketers include the first point or two of their content in the excerpt, preceded by a short sentence so that the reader can get a quick peek and are tempted to click “More Items…” below it.
The idea is to make the first look at your content compelling enough to make the internet surfer curious and keen enough to click on your link.
- Keep it Short
In the current technology-driven era, no one wants to take the time to read lengthy text. Most millennial and GenZ want everything instantaneously. If your content is long and spiralling, your visitor will not read it to the end – even if he does click on it – which is not likely if he gets wind that he is about to read long prose.
So if you are wondering how to increase your organic CTR one way to do this is keep everything from your title to the rest of your content short. This gives the reader the freedom to skim through and quickly grasp the idea you are presenting. Besides, short crisp titles are more likely to grab the attention of the reader than longer ones.
- Keyword in your Title
Another thing that we tell clients who ask how to increase CTR in SEO is that including the highest-ranking keyword for your niche in your title will help improve your SERP. This is because titles are the first thing that most search engine crawlers look at. Moreover, the title of your web page or blog will likely be a part of the URL which means your URL will also contain your most significant keyword and help you rank higher. Research has proven that including keywords in your URL can improve your rank by more than 40%.
- FAQ Markup
FAQs do more than answer commonly asked questions. An SEO agency India will tell you that FAQs are a wonderful opportunity for keyword ranking and if your FAQ schema mirrors Google Q&A so much the better. The reason is Google – and other search engines – will pull answers from your site more than other sites. Neil Patel says that you are likely to see an increase from rank 10 to 3 simply by adding – or updating – an FAQ schema. But he simultaneously warns that if you are already ranking high, this hack may backfire.
- Meta Descriptions
This is a hotly debated subject in the field of SEO and digital marketing. Google rewrites your meta-description – more than 60% according to Ahrefs – so many believe that does not serve any useful purpose. Meta description incidentally is a snippet that summarizes your content so it is an opportunity to add your highest ranking keywords to your content. Moreover, research by Backlinko has shown that effective meta-descriptions can generate nearly 6% more CTR. So think about it.
On a closing note, don’t forget that it is an ongoing process. There are numerous tools to test and monitor your strategy. Use these and make adjustments as you go. Organic CTR is among the most significant yet underutilized strategies despite being the easiest to implement. Among other things, Litmus branding is also an SEO agency in India and as such, we can be of assistance in increasing your organic CTR.
