8 Hacks to Increase Click-Through Rates

 

When it comes to SEO, click-through rates are probably something you’ve never thought about before as most of your marketing efforts will be aimed towards other SEO metrics, and as long as you rank highly for your chosen keywords you’ll probably think you’re guaranteed the traffic.

However, there are many reasons why you should improve your click-through rates such as the impact it can have on your rankings as well as conversion rates.

Here’s how to boost your click-through rates in Google:

1) Identify low click-through rate content

You can use Google’s Search Console (Webmaster tools) to view clicks, impressions, click-through rates and positions.

Use this information to identify what content and keywords fall below average and work on improving them.

2) Get personal

Getting emotional with your content makes your content irresistible to the user. Your titles should play with your audience’s emotions and you can do this in many ways. For example, you could write your headlines from one of these perspectives – funny, friendly, the bearer of bad news.

3) Use powerful words

Words can trigger emotions, grab people’s attention and attract clicks so ensure you use them. Here are some examples of emotional words – Discover, Secret, Proven, Instant, Amazing

4) Avoid keyword heavy titles

Titles that are heavily focused on keywords don’t usually read well or inspire clicks. Make sure your titles are written for the user and not the search engine.

5) Use numbers

People love lists so by using a number in your title (like I have with this article) can boost click-through rates by up to 36%.

6) Use descriptive URLs

The URL appears in Google’s search engine results and has been proven to drive 25% more clicks than those random/generic URLs. For example, use URLs like:

www.example.com/Increase-Click-Throughs

Instead of

www.example.com/23a4a5  

7) Try out different titles

For important pages, test out several titles with completely different emotional hooks and personas. Monitor the results and see which ones work the best.

8) Test on Social Media

The same goes for social media. Test your titles on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter and use the ones that get the most clicks on Google.