How to Improve Organic Click-Through Rates

19 December 2021

In a world of organic search, certain metrics are fundamental in improving the performance and success of your website. One of the most important metrics used to quantify the success of your website is the organic click-through rate CTR.

What Is Organic CTR?

Organic click-through rate refers to the ratio of users who click on an organic result in the search engine results pages to the total number of searches for the same keywords. The organic CTR is used to determine the performance of your website in search engine results.

What Is a Good Organic Click-Through Rate?

A good organic CTR depends on a number of factors. Usually, CTR depends on the industry and the nature of search queries. Often, the best way to identify if you have a good CTR is to see where you fall on the average data scale.

Why Does Organic CTR Matter?

The algorithms used by Google determine the SERP quality based on clicks and queries. All pages ranking have an expected CTR. If a page is in an SEO-ranked position yet its CTR is higher, Google is likely to rank the page higher because more people seem interested in the site.

Organic CTR is crucial in bringing visitors to your website.

How to Track and Measure CTR

There are various tools that can help track and measure your site's organic click-through rate. One of the best is the Google Search Console. This is the most commonly used free tool used by website owners to track their search results.

First, you need to add your website to Google Search Console, then log in. Once logged in, go to the dashboard of the site and switch to the Performance tab. At the top, you will see your website's CTR. If you want to add it to your report, click on it then on the average position box. Now, scroll down for a more detailed report.

8 Ways to Boost Your Organic Click-Through Rate

Write effective meta descriptions

Most search engines prompt sites to auto-generate the most relevant content as your description on search results. However, if the website owner provides one, this is what will often show in the results. You can edit your posts and craft an SEO-friendly description. This description should show users an overview of what they will see on your site and include targeted keywords.

The main goal is to encourage users to click on your content.

Adopt descriptive URLs

Create meaningful SEO-friendly URLs based on your post. Descriptive URLs also generally tend to make much more sense to the reader. When creating new pages, always ensure you optimize the URL.

Create better headlines using dynamic SEO Titles

A dynamic title is the best way to attract attention to your content and site. It's the primary item a searcher will first see in order to decide whether or not they will click on your site. Some great tips on how best to improve your title are by:

  • Utilizing brackets: It would interest you to know that HubSpot discovered that headlines with brackets received 40% more clicks compared to other titles.
  • Avoid heavy title tags: Heavy tile tags tend to be boring, and engine bots tend to assume that since they do not receive a lot of clicks, it could be because they aren't written for readers.
  • Use a numbered list: Include a number in your title to help boost your organic CTR—for example, 10 Tips For Improving Your Organic Click-Through Rates.
  • Incorporate the current calendar year: Details such as the current calendar year immediately draws the reader's attention and signifies that your content is relevant.

Adjust any keyword cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization refers to the practice of optimizing the same keyword as in most other landing pages. This only helps spread out the organic clicks, which doesn't improve your website CTR. Scan your content for any keyword cannibalization, then consider differentiating or consolidating them.

Use structured mark-up

Schema mark-up is the code embedded in your website that helps the search engine provide more information to users. Common types of schema include person, local business, organization, article, and video, among many. These variations make your site more visible on the search engine result page.

We offer a suite of free SEO training tools to help you learn how to optimize your CTR, better optimize your images for search, and ensure your robots.txt file is working right for your website.

View our full agency capabilities at Search Engine Optimization Oregon Portland.