Quick win: Improving your organic CTR

Your organic what? We can hear you thinking. CTR stands for Click-Through Rate, which is the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions. In Dutch, this is also known as the ‘doorklikratio’. Organic search results consist of a URL, a title and a short description, such as:

If your website achieves high rankings, you can attract more visitors simply by making the meta tags more interesting. 

Making meta tags appealing

If you’re already achieving good rankings, it might seem as though you’re all set as an SEO specialist. Nothing could be further from the truth, because you should always aim for more. Increasing visitor numbers is a really good quick win. Run a search and compare your search result with those of the other websites in the top 10. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and then consider whether the search result would persuade you to click through. Could you make them even more appealing?

What requirements must meta tags meet?

The title of the search result is a ranking factor. Don’t change it too much. At the very least, make sure the most important keyword remains in it. End with your company name. Do bear in mind, however, that the total number of characters must not exceed 65. You want to avoid Google truncating your title. Although Google frequently experiments with different lengths to see what performs better. 

Incidentally, you can really let your imagination run wild with the meta description. Make sure you stick to a maximum of 160 characters. Bear in mind that the meta description is no longer a ranking factor. So, whatever you enter here won’t affect your rankings. This is where you can do whatever it takes to encourage visitors to click through. Include a call-to-action, emoticons, and so on. 

When do you notice this?

With SEO, there’s no point in monitoring changes on a weekly basis. You need to wait until Googlebot crawls your site. The effects are best assessed after a month. You can find the results in Google Search Console, and within that free tool you can compare the statistics. 

Where should you start?

The theory is all well and good, of course, but putting it into practice requires a certain approach. In Google Search Console, under ‘Performance’, you can sort search queries by ‘Impressions’. You’ll then see the search queries with a fair number of impressions, but with lower rankings and lower CTR scores. This is where the opportunities lie. Identify which keywords will deliver the best results and then get to work on them. 

Improving your CTR is one of the easiest areas for improvement. You already have good rankings, but with just a few minor tweaks you can achieve the maximum impact. Feel free to take a look at your competitors’ meta tags, but above all, keep your ideal customer in mind. After all, they’re the ones who bring in the money. If there’s anything we can help you with, Please feel free to give us a call!