7 Best Ways to Optimize CTR in SEO
How to stand out in the search results page to win the click
Organic click through rate (CTR) is at an all time low. Mobile CTR is now down by 41.4% since 2015. With all these changes happening to organic CTRs, how can you, as an individual or a business, take a shot at being ranked on top and win a click?
Brian Dean, together with the support of data provided by Semrush, analyzed CTR data across 1,312,881 pages and 12,166,560 search queries (that’s a lot!), where they looked into factors like title tag length, sentiment and meta descriptions affect organic CTR.
Here are some of the key findings of the research:
So here are some detailed analysis from the above research:
1) Write your title tags between 40–60 characters
What’s the ideal title tag length? Should you keep your titles short and sweet? Or use long titles that contain lots of info about your content?
Titles in the range of 40–60 characters have shown an 8.9% better average CTR than tiles that shorter or longer.
2) Write your title tag in title case and not sentence case
The recent research by Semrush found that titles written in sentence case get 2.4% fewer organic clicks compared to a title case 🤯
You can take a look at the SEO split test here.
3) Use positive power words
Positive titles holds the power improve your CTR. Research shows that titles with a positive sentiment improved CTR by approximately 4%.
Key takeaway: Remember to use keywords like “best, Amazing, Proven, New, Updated” when ever possible and revelent!
4) Use brackets to draw the eye
In the Google CTR stats report, brackets have been shown to increase link clicks by nearly 38%
Where possible, make sure to use brackets in your title tags to clarify the content behind the title. Here’s an example:
5) Use numbers in your title tag
We keep going on and on about title tags, but its worth it! Afterall, this will be the forst impression your user gets when they search for something on the search bar. Numbers in titles have shown an increase in CTR by as much as 36%
But here are some tips :
#1 Don’t go overboard
No one’s going to click if your title is “58 best ways to boost your Click Through Rate in 5 minutes”
(No one will read 58 ways in 5 minutes!! So be realistic)
#2 Use odd numbers
Odd numbers seem to have a better CTR than even numbers (7 is the best performing)
6) Keyword-Rich URLs Are Correlated With a Higher CTR
Take for example, that you are someone that’s searching searching for “hiking locations”. A URL like travel.com/best-hiking-locations have a higher CTR than travel.com/travel-page because of its relevance.
Just like that, keyword-rich URLs have been found to get 45% more clicks compared to URLs that don’t match the users search.
Google’s Search Engine Optimization guide reminds webmasters that your page’s URL shows up in the SERPs. And they recommend that you use “URLs with words that are relevant to your site’s content…”.
7) Optimize for rich snippets and sitelinks
Structured markup has been found to increase the CTR by 30%
Hubspot also found that for high-traffic keywords, featured snippets saw a whooping increase of CTR by 114%
Here are some tips to score a featured snippet:
#1 Table of contents
Categorizing your blog article into sections (having a tables of content for ease of reading) can be helpful.
#2 Implement relevant schema
One of the latest evolutions in SEO is called schema markup. This new form of optimization is one of the most powerful but least-utilized forms of SEO available today. Once you grasp the concept and method of schema markup, you can boost your website in the search engine result pages (SERPs).
Some tools you can add, test and preview your schema are:
Recap
To sum up, utilize these 7 ways to generate better SEO-effective content
- Write your title tags between 40–60 characters or 9 words at best
- Write your title tag in title case and not sentence case
- Use brackets to draw the eye
- Use numbers in your title tag
- Use positive power words
- Keyword-Rich URLs Are Correlated With a Higher CTR
- Optimize for rich snippets and sitelinks
References:
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