“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
As much as it sounds true, only a few believe it and bother to read an entire chapter before purchasing the book. Most users judge a book by its cover and then only decide to buy it. The same goes for your website and its content. Perhaps, you do have high-quality content, but if you are not getting higher click-through rates, your cover (presentation of your website and content) is not offering what users are expecting.
Let me explain this through an example.
Suppose I am struggling with weight loss. My mind is full of desire to get a slim body. It states that I want quick weight loss tips. When I go to Google, blogs are having titles like “loss 200 pounds in 7 days” will catch my instant attention. I will click them while leaving behind blogs with titles like “weight loss strategies” or “weight loss plan.” Maybe all these blogs have similar content, but users will click only those titles matching best to their queries or answers they are looking for.
In short, to increase your click-through rates, you have to present your content the way users want it. Or not the way you want it.
Fortunately, that’s not tough to implement. All you need is a few effortless tricks that will skyrocket your click through rates. We are going to discuss them soon.
Table of Contents
5 Straightforward Ways to Improve Your CTR Rate
We’ve selected five tactics to share with you and bring your better CTR almost immediately. Read on to learn small, simple changes that you need to make to increase the clicks on your website and content.
1. Titles
The first glance of users always travels to titles. If the title is good enough, there won’t be much difficulty in getting clicks. If not, your entire content efforts may go in vain. Nobody will click it, and as a result, Google will throw your article on the last number of the first page. Or worst, the second page.
Impressive titles tend to get more clicks, and if the content is worthy, rankings will follow as well.
Here are a few tips for writing click-worthy titles:
1. Question titles
According to Brian Dean’s analysis of organic CTRs, titles with questions receive 14.1% higher CTRs than others.
It makes sense, though. Users come online to find something. Most of the time, they are looking for the answer to a particular question.
For proof that question titles are worth it, look at Google’s “People Also Ask” box.
Since its release in 2015, People Ask Box’s growth has increased by 1,723%.
Only because it reveals various questions and answers to what searchers are looking for.
2. Write titles within 15-40 Characters Limit.
Etsy experimented with numerous title tags to find out what works best. The study shows that shorter titles perform well as compared to longer ones. Brian Dean’s reports say something alike. His data points towards titles between 15-40 characters winning the highest click-through rates. Around 8.6% is better than average.
To prove the point, I searched for the most popular articles of 2019. Newyorker’s top articles were the ones with shorter titles:
3. Insert Emotions in Titles
It’s a timeless strategy. Create emotional titles to trigger feelings in users.
Bingo!
Users won’t deny themselves reading the entire content supported by their emotions. Brian Dean supports the fact stating emotional titles have a 7.3% higher CTR than non-emotional titles.
I checked out Copyblogger’s post on Emotional Headlines to notice their effect. Read them yourself and see if you can feel something:
The titles are appealing because of their emotional infusion.
2. URLs
After headlines, users’ eyes travel to the URL. The fact that URLs with keywords earn a 45% higher click-through rate is enough to think seriously about the URL of web pages or blog posts.
Let’s take an example of a Keto Diet on Google search.
The top two results on Google for “Keto Diet” are with keyword URL
I checked the engagement level of the first article on Buzzsumo. The result is hilarious.
The lesson is: to include your primary keyword in the URL to give search engines and users an idea on what your content holds. And to increase your CTRs.
3. Meta description
Users are lazy these days. They want a quick solution to their problem. Reading those long-form articles, without any reason, turn them off. That’s why you need to give them a reason to read further. The meta description is your opportunity to persuade users to learn more.
As Google doesn’t consider meta description as one of the ranking factors, marketers are avoiding writing it at all. But search anything on Google, and you will find small descriptions lingering around each content. If you don’t write meta-descriptions, Google auto-takes any lines from the content and displays it in SERPs.
So, it’s much better to craft a thoughtful description instead of letting Google take it by default.
Besides, this graph from Search Engine Watch represents the importance of meta titles and descriptions.
4. Structured data
Type “best movies of all time” in Google, and you won’t see the blog post on best movies but the carousel of movies that are best according to Google’s data.
Try Google search with “how to pray,” and you will get the answer without clicking any link:
These are featured snippets that Google catches from your content.
Nowadays, Google is not looking only for high-quality content but also content with schema markup (that set those snippets) so that it can answer users’ queries at one go. That is without bothering them to click. If users find the answer interesting, they will surely click the link to know more.
If you don’t set schema markup for your content, start doing it from now on to push your way through Google CTR by ranking position.
5. Leverage visuals
Last but not least, visuals have the power to raise CTRs by 47%. They make sure that users don’t get bored with word-only content and make them stay for a more extended period. Users’ longer stay gives a boost to your rankings and in turn, CTRs.
Wrap Up
You know all the secrets of quality content. With this article, you now well aware of how to show the worth of your content. It’s time to make a few changes and get a gift of CTRs followed by conversion. Don’t forget to come back and share your results.
