HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR CLICK THROUGH RATE (CTR) ON GOOGLE!

Your website pages are well referenced, but you generate very little traffic? It’s because your CTR (Click Through Rate) is too low! Let’s see how to remedy this!
You have worked for months to improve your SEO, and yet your traffic is not taking off?

If your SEO strategy is good and if it has been correctly applied, then you should see a good positioning of your pages on the queries you have targeted.

However, even with a very good ranking in the search results, not all users will click on your link. Your traffic potential then depends on your click rate.

Let’s see in more detail what the click-through rate is, why it is crucial to improve it and how to do it very simply!

Definition and calculation of the click-through rate
You can find the click-through rate under the acronym TDC or more often in its English version CTR for Click Through Rate.

The click-through rate when talking about SEO is the ratio between :

the number of times a page has been proposed in the search results (= number of impressions)
the number of times it has been clicked (= number of clicks).
This is independent of whether your page is displayed on page 1 or 250.

CTR = (number of clicks / number of impressions) x 100
Let’s take a concrete example:

You have a page that talks about the best folding electric bikes.

It generated 40,000 impressions last month, all queries combined (“folding electric bikes”, “folding bike reviews”, “best electric bikes”…)

In the same period of time, this page was clicked 800 times in total on these queries.

So your click-through rate is : (800 / 40 000) x 100 = 2%

You can also calculate a click rate per query to refine your performance indicators.

If we take the same example:

Last month on the query “folding bike reviews” your page generated 2,500 impressions for 80 clicks.

So your CTR on this query is (80 / 2 500) x 100 = 3.2%.

The click rate is used in many other cases and is calculated in the same way. You will have to replace the number of impressions in the search results by the variable that interests you.

For example, we can calculate the CTR of a Google Ads campaign by calculating the number of displays of the ad compared to the number of clicks generated.

On your website, the click rate of your call-to-actions will be the ratio between the number of views of the page and the number of clicks on the CTA.

That’s why you should never stop taking actions to improve your ranking, even once you are on the first page. If gaining places will boost your traffic, on the contrary, losing them to your competitors will make you lose many visitors!

The gains at the bottom of the page are relatively low, but once you’re past the 8th position, each progression becomes very interesting!

If it was still not the case, these figures should convince you to optimize your referencing well to trump the first places on the Google results!

These figures are still averages. Sometimes, even with an excellent positioning, your CTR will be lower than expected.

So let’s see how to solve this problem to get the most out of your ranking on Google by improving your click-through rate!

How to improve your click-through rate?
As I said, a good positioning does not always ensure an optimal click rate. Why not? Because your link is not highlighted enough in the search results. It does not encourage users to click.

We won’t talk about structured data here, which allows you to obtain enriched results that offer a better visibility to the results (stars, ratings, prices, etc.). This part will be covered in a separate article, as it requires more technical mastery.

We will focus here on the two major elements that impact your click-through rate: the title tag and the metadescription.

And moreover, it’s very easy to optimize!

What is the title tag?
The title tag is the title of your page as you want it to appear on Google.

Its content may or may not be different from the title of the H1 tag of the page. In any case, it is necessary to fill both.

Update: Google has evolved its way of dealing with Title tags and reserves the right to change it to make it more relevant to the user’s query.

It is also the content of the title tag that is displayed as a title in the active tabs of your browser.

On CMS like WordPress, the tag can be easily filled in with the classic page editor, or with plugins like All in One SEO or Yoast SEO.

What is the metadescription?
The metadescription is the short text that is displayed below the title tag. It is only displayed here.

It is modified in the same place as the title tag, whether you use the classic editor of your CMS or a plugin.

In some cases, Google can automatically change your meta description to better match certain queries typed by users. An excerpt of your article integrating the query will then be used temporarily as a metadescription.

In case you forgot to fill in the metadescription tag, Google will do the same and generate one for you.

5 tips to optimize the click-through rate of your title tag
Do not exceed 60 characters
Google displays about 60 characters for the title tag in its search results. Beyond this limit, your title is likely to be truncated!

According to the same study as in the previous section: titles between 15 and 40 characters have an 8.6% higher click-through rate than others.

Include numbers
Headlines containing numbers have better CTRs!

Examples:

5 tips for (…)
Top 10 best (…)
3 reasons to choose (…)
Add a date
If you offer content for which the release date is important, remember to specify it in the title tag.

Examples:

The 2021 guide to (…)
Study : The 2021 guide to (…)
Use action verbs
Your title tag should push web users to action. Using “power words” increases your click-through rate by an average of 13.9%.

Examples:

Discover the ranking of the most popular (…)
Download the guide on how to (…)
Improve your marketing (…)
Turn it into a question
Headlines in the form of questions generate 14.1% more clicks.

Examples:

Discover the ranking of (…)
Download the guide to (…)
Improve your website
Buy a new website (…)
Of course, you can combine these tips to create even more striking titles! And as we don’t forget SEO, don’t forget to include your main keyword in your title tag!

And what about optimizing the meta description in all this?
For the metadescription, there are far fewer rules.

The main thing to remember is that about 160 characters will be displayed on the results page. Beyond that, your text will be truncated and suspension points will appear.

In itself, exceeding this limit is not serious. The excess text will simply not be read by Internet users.

Contrary to a persistent SEO myth, it has been proven that the meta description has little or no weight in your SEO.

Its only interest is to help incite clicks.

For this, it is recommended to write it as a teaser with an action verb that encourages the click while reassuring the user on what he will find on the page.

Write it as you would write an advertising teaser or a post on social networks for example!