CTR Is As Important As SEO, Almost

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Updated 6 years ago

SEO is one thing, but another important thing is CTR (click-through rate), which seems to be less taken into consideration.

CTR, aka click-through rate is the percentage or rate of people who actually click to visit your website when they see it on search engine page.

It's possible to be on page 1 of Google for a certain keyword, yet very little people click to go to that webpage. In that case, one would have a poor CTR.

So you can see how SEO and CTR go hand-in-hand. They're inseparable, and it's almost pointless to have good SEO yet awful CTR.

Also, CTR is important to SEO because Google takes CTR into consideration when it comes to website getting higher ranking.

So how do you improve CTR?

The main way for improving CTR is with effective meta title and meta description, since this is what people see on SERP and can be enticed to click to go to your website.

Looking At Titles

Before discussing 2 ways for improving a post's meta title, keep in mind that the meta title and on-page title of the post may match exactly or else not match; however, the meta title should always be similar to on-page title, even if it's not a match.

Example:

How to Optimize Everything In Your Blog for SEO (meta title)
Optimize Everything! Applying SEO Best Practices Even When You're Not Keyword Obsessed (on-page title)

2 Ways To Optimize Meta Title For CTR:

One way is to include numbers. For example, "21 Actionable SEO Techniques" or "5 Fun Ways To Get Thin." Research has found that headlines with numbers get 36% more clicks.

Another way is to use parentheses or brackets for clarification. For example, "A Look Inside Mashable's Evolution [Interview]." Research has found that meta titles on SERP which have brackets get 38% more clicks.

Besides [interview], other bracketed words can be [photos], [video], [slideshow], and the like.

But brackets can also go around other kinds of words.

For example, here's one that includes both numbers and brackets:

12 Ways To Get Bigger Biceps [Workout Plan]
12 Ways To Get Bigger Biceps
Ways To Get Bigger Biceps

For comparison, note the first version above has both numbers and brackets and is most likely to be clicked on whereas the second version leaves out the brackets and the third version leaves out both brackets and numbers and is thus less effective.

Here's a few more examples of brackets or parentheses used:

"21 SEO Tips (That Actually Work)"
"SEO Strategy Case Study (#1 Ranking and 963% More Traffic)"

Summary

It's meaningless to have good SEO unless you also have decent CTR. The way to optimize CTR is to make sure meta title and meta description is alluring. To make the meta title more alluring, sprinkle numbers in and/or add some brackets or parentheses.

Credit: I got this information from Brian Dean video on YouTube.