Tips to Improve Organic Click Through Rate (CTR) in WordPress
May 28. 2021
For quite some time now, search engines are one of the most important sources of traffic for websites. So, if you want to improve organic click through rate in WordPress, you’ll need to learn how to take advantage of these. And at this moment, most site owners will think about SEO. They think that if they manage to get on the first page of Google, traffic will sort itself out. However, that’s not how things work.
High rank won’t help you much if no one clicks on what you share. If this happens, it’s nothing more than a statistic that means nothing. On top of that, CTR and rankings are connected. So, even if you manage to rank high but don’t get as many clicks as Google thinks you should, they’ll demote you.
On the other hand, by improving your click through rate and incorporating on-page SEO techniques, you will improve your rank. Using these, you can increase your traffic without creating new content. Sounds good? Let’s learn more.
What is Organic Click Through Rate?
Before we dive into the tips, let’s look at what the click-through rate actually is. And in essence, it’s the percentage of users who see your site in the search results and click on them. For instance, your site might appear 100 times for a certain keyword and it gets clicked 5 times in that period. In this case, you have a 5% click-through rate.
As we already mentioned, search engines use this data to make changes to your rank. Obviously, the better your score is, the better you’ll rank. So, it’s a good idea to look into which of your pages are getting the most attention. When you have that information, you can replicate the techniques you used to create these on other pages.
How to See Your Current Click-Through Rate?
Before you try improving things, you should check how they are right now. This will allow you to track your results. And the easiest way to do it is by using Google Search Console.
Login to your dashboard and navigate to the Performance tab. On it, you’ll see your site’s average CTR. From here, you can do whatever you want. However, we’d suggest adding it as a metric to your report. While you’re there, you can also add the average position into the mix, as it should improve as well.
Now, you know how to track your progress. So, let’s talk about the ways to make it.
Improve Your Titles and Headlines
When people look at the search results, the most noticeable thing to them is the headline. If you want them to click, it needs to be catchy, relevant, and engaging. That’s not the easiest thing to achieve, but it’s more than possible.
Additionally, you can’t forget about the site title either. Although it’s not as important, if it looks bad, it may put people off. So, it may be a good idea to change your site title as well.
And now, onto the headlines. It may sound like a hard task to determine which kind of it will help you improve the organic click through rate in WordPress. But, there are plenty of headline analyzers that can make it easy. You’ll get the best results with paid versions, but the free ones will also do the job.
In general, you should focus on emotions, use list posts, and properly format all of your headlines. Of course, if something works, for one thing, that doesn’t mean it will work for the other. Therefore, don’t be afraid to experiment, and you’ll find what works the best for you.
Spend Some Time on Your Meta Descriptions
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, meta descriptions are text that appears under the result title. You can write whatever you like there. But if you want the best results, there are a few rules you should follow.
The first thing you should focus on is actually writing it. Interestingly, lots of people leave this field blank. In this instance, Google will pull any sentence containing the keyword from your article and use it as meta. This rarely makes sense. And since it’s so easy to add meta descriptions in WordPress, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do it.
You can make these more effective by using powerful words. These are the words and phrases that connect with the emotional part of our brains. Your text will appear more exciting to read, so more people will click on it.
Use Schema.org Structured Data
There’s a special format called Schema.org markup. It allows you to include structured data besides your content. So, if you’re posting recipes, for example, you can include their ratings, preparation times, and images on the SERPs.
These are a relatively new thing, but they’re powerful. In fact, they can increase your organic CTR by as much as 30%. And as things are standing right now, the development of these will continue. Hence, it’s a good idea to jump on board as soon as possible.
Improve Site Speed
Site speed is another thing that you shouldn’t overlook. There are many reasons why it’s so important. Firstly, a click will count only if a visitor lands on your page. And if it takes too long for it to load, there’s a good chance they’ll leave. This is especially true for mobile devices. These have a slower internet connection, so you always have to be one step ahead.
Many things can influence the speed of your website. And luckily for you, experts at WP Full Care know all of them. So, if your website is slow and you don’t know what to focus on, be sure to give us a call. We’ll be glad to take the stress out of the equation and fix it for you.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are plenty of tips you can follow to improve organic click through rate (CTR) in WordPress. Some of them will give you more for your effort than the others, but none of them are irrelevant. Give them all a chance and find out what works the best for your website.