Have you earnestly tried or probably sat down so sad thinking of why your organic click through rate is very low and your search results usually overcrowded?
After lots of research, I finally discovered some ways you can raise your Click Through Rate (CTR) game and win or flow in with the competition in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Know Your Audience
Do you know who your blog readers are?
If yes, how well do you know them?
Do you just have them there without evaluating them?
One thing you should know is that if you present your content in front of the wrong audience, they will never click on your link in Google again.
Your audience should be the first thing to consider at the peak of your general marketing strategy and CTR optimization.
However, if you have an in-depth knowledge of your audience and their interest, you will be able to create interesting and relevant content.
Having a deep understanding of your audience is also important for business development.
Reaching out to your existing readers with a survey will help you get a better understanding of your audience.
Free tools such as SurveyMonkey and Google forms can help you craft your first survey.
And if you don’t have an audience yet, you can take your time to research more on your potential competitors, read business-related articles, and surf Google consistently.
Presently, it is expected that you already have a full picture of your target audience and their pain point.
The next step is to identify ways to meet their needs, and you can’t achieve this without understanding exactly how they are trying to fulfill these needs.
Use Unique Headlines and Meta Descriptions
Do you know you have less than a second to grab your visitor’s attention?
Having your topics show up in Google search results is just half of the battle you will need to fight.
The magic of making your audience curious and wanting to click to find out more lies in your headline.
Below are proven secrets to optimize your Google listing:
- Make use of numbers in your headline.
- Be emotional in your headlines. Use words that will compel your readers and get them emotional.
- Use AdWords ads as inspiration.
- Including brackets and special symbols in your headline has also proven to get the user’s attention.
- Compelling meta descriptions can also do a great job.
- Stand out from the crowd.
If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to make your search listing unique in order to earn more clicks.
Two ways of doing this are;
Make Use of Rich Snippets
Rich snippets, also called schema and structured data, are pieces of code that can be added to your content to promote how search results are shown on Google and its likes.
Luckily, it will be easier for search crawlers to understand your content when you are dealing with structured data.
Although, the schema website has detailed information on the different types of rich snippets you can use, casual users can be put off while reading it.
Ranking of featured snippets
Sometimes, Google pulls content that ranks on page one and displays it. They are often in the form of paragraphs, list, or a table.
The most powerful thing about this is that it can allow you to find your way down to effectively having two spots on page one.
Interesting right?
So how do you rank under the featured snippets?
Optimizing your content for rich snippets is something you will need to focus on.
Below are some tips to get awesome effects:
- Make your content more detailed and explanatory.
- Format and edit your content using the basic heading tools such as H1, H2, and H3 tags.
- Check if your target keyword has a featured snippet.
- Answer questions directly asked in your post.
- Be sure that your content has a logical flow.
- Don’t disappoint your readers.
Poorly written content with the wrong use of English can discourage your audience and will never rank high no matter the number of symbols and numbers you use in your title.
And the sad thing is that once a reader leaves your blog immediately after clicking it, Google regrets and drops the position of your resource.
Google smiles at articles that make users happy and this is the more reason why you should publish good quality content.
Your ranking depends on how much time users spend on your blog; that is the faster they leave your blog, the lower your spot on google search.
Make your content worth reading.
Some of the ways to achieve a good ranking from Google and dwell time from your readers is by doing the following-
- Become a storyteller. You might not know the amazing trick storytelling can do for you.
- Creating content with a clear purpose. Your content should be educating and informative with tangible value.
- Use short paragraphs of between 1 to 3 sentences. Most people just glance through instead of reading in-depth. Short paragraphs will make such readers spend more time on your blog just avoid using lengthy sentences.
- Ensure that what you promise in your headline is what you deliver in your content.
- Make your content valuable and readable.
- Avoid being repetitive and boring.
- Include images, videos, tables, etc. Just something to make your content look interesting.
- Finally, ensure you frequently test optimization tactics. This should be done in a controlled way. Have it in mind that about eighty percent of your article sinks without a trace.
Conclusion
Evaluate your target audience and learn all you can about them.
Use persuasive headlines to attract new aide.
Be unique with rich snippets and featured snippets.
Produce quality contents that are interesting and captivating.
If it doesn’t excite you, it isn’t interesting!
Don’t forget to test as many optimization tactics as possible but as earlier stated, in a controlled way.
There you have it! Enjoy watching your content garner massive clicks.