Ranking higher on Google search engine is invaluable if you failed to draw your target audience’s attention towards your website. Being popular with Google search results is ok but above that, getting your target audience to click on your ranked website is much needed But, how one can better the click-ability of his SERP results? Simple, by optimizing Meta tags as the connection between them is inseparable.
Following is an in-depth look at the connection along with useful and proven ways on how you can get more searchers to click on the link of your website or the content.
Meaning of Organic Click-Through Rate
Organic click through rate refers to a percentage of people who has clicked on your site or link being promoted on the Google’s search engine results page 9or any other search engine page). The formula to get the click-through rate of your site is –
Click-through Rate = Number of clicks / Number of impressions
A higher percentage means more number of people have clicked on the link of your site as they found the relevant or exact content which they were looking for.
Kinds of Meta Tags Affecting Click-Through Rate
A Meta tag means the content or a link that a searcher sees to determine on what they are going to click. In other words, Meta tag is the Google’s language. The four kinds of click-through rates are as follows-
Title Tags: The title tag or page title refers to the description of the content on the page. It can be seen as a blue, clickable hyperlink on the search engine result page.
Meta Description: A Meta description appears below the title tag and generally gives more detail about the content which the searcher will be seeing after clicking on the link.
URL Paths: Although, URL paths are not as affected as both title tags and Meta descriptions but they usually appear above the title tag as a link of the content that the searcher wants to access.
Schema Markup: With the help of Schema markup, your page can be seen in Google’s featured knowledge panel, snippets, etc. which otherwise is known as Google’s rich results. This usually attracts more searchers to click on the link of the content of your site.
TIP: When the Google finds out that the existing Meta title and description are not providing enough results then ‘rewrite page titles and descriptions’ can be used.
Connection between Click-through Rate and Ranking Position
Click-through rate and ranking position shares an exponential connection. To put in simple terms, the higher a page will rank, the more organic clicks will come. Organic search results ranking higher will get more number of clicks as compared to search results at the end of the page or lower in ranks.
Understanding your Click-Through Rate Performance
‘Google Search Console’ is a free platform provided by Google itself that enables the site owners to track their data of SEO along with repeating their strategy. Talking about click-through rates, the platform will provide you with –
- Average click-through rates across all keywords along with web pages.
- Average click-through rates across all keywords for individual pages.
- Click-through rates for specific keyword queries.
Improving Click-Through Rate via Meta Tags
So far you must be familiar with the strong connection between click-through rate, Meta data – title and description, and ranking position. Now, your focus should be on optimizing Meta tags for boosting click-through rates on pages with low performance. Continue reading to know how you can do it –
Ensure Using Best Practices for Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
- Keep in mind the maximum characters needed for both Meta title and Meta description i.e., 60 characters for Meta title and 160 for Meta description.
- Always mention your target keywords in the Meta data i.e., Meta title and Meta description for giving an indication to Google and searchers.
- Always mention the needful properties in schema markup. You can check if the content is visible there or not by simply inserting your page’s link in Google’s rich results tool.
Include Call-To-Actions and Questions
Remember, your target audience will appreciate and get more engaged in the content that instantly arouses an interest in them. For this, you must include call-to-action as well as questions in your Meta title and Meta description. Upload relevant and interesting questions so that it automatically draws viewers’ attention to click on the question to see the answer. Obviously, Google will rewrite the Meta description but, with only 20% chance. However, the more relevant your Meta description will be at first time, less chances will be there for Google to rewrite it.
Prioritize Pages where Improved Click-Through-Rate means Exponential Traffic
Focus on optimizing the Meta tags for the pages that rank on the first page of Google’s search result along with ranking of the keywords with a higher rate of searches. As we are familiar with the exponential connection between click-through rate and ranking position, the improvements that you will make can do wonders to bring in the organic traffic to your website.
Monitor Performance
To see how the amendments made to Meta tag affects click-through rate as well as organic traffic; track all the changes made to Meta tags. For this, you can use Google Search Console or any other relevant ranking tools to evaluate the impact. Make sure that he end goal of any strategy of SEO should be to generate real traffic to your website. After the content you needed to be ranked on Google is finally showing up on the first page of the search result, you can experience better and wider audience been drawn towards your site.
The aforesaid proven ways will help you to ace up your click-through rate game and bring in organic traffic to your site.