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We could write dozens of posts talking about SEO and not even get through everything there is to do to improve your site on a first pass. In fact, we make the topic of SEO a big part of our Grow Your Blog series for that very reason.
Some things are simple, such as including target keywords in your title and body of an article (purely because you can't rank for terms you don't use). Others are a bit more complicated, like getting back links, giving off strong social signals, and optimizing page speed (we can't explain those in a single sentence).
One thing we think most bloggers forget to do is go after the low hanging fruit, and is something we're always on the lookout for. One we recently kicked ourselves for ignoring for far too long was optimizing our click through rate (CTR) on articles already receiving a decent number of search impressions.
The SEO was there to get us ranked well, the clicks were not, and that is a problem because it amounts to a lot of missed viewers!
Why CTR is an Important Metric
CTR is a simple metric that essentially measures your clicks divided by your impressions. So on a search engine like Google, a page with 100,000 search impressions and 5,000 clicks per month would have a 5% CTR. (5,000 / 100,000 = 5%)
Google gives a fantastic breakdown of your search impressions, clicks, CTR, average position, and more for every single article on your site under Acquisition -> Search Console -> Landing Pages. In fact, we think understanding how each page performs on this particular tab is critical for your success in SEO.
So how should you interpret all the data you see here? Well, we take a fairly simple point of view on this topic. Namely:
- If you have an article that ranks on the first page (or two) of Google, receives thousands or tens of thousands of impressions per month, but has a low CTR, it may indicate there is a problem with your title and meta description.
- You likely have good rank, but aren't enticing the reader to open your page.
- If you have an article that ranks on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th page of Google, still receives a good deal of impressions, and has a good CTR, you are likely ranking low for a highly competitive term and can get way more traffic if you rank higher.
- You have the right copy and target keywords, but you can improve other SEO points to get you ranked higher.
Today we want to focus on that first case as those who have strong rankings and low click through rates may be able to find a quick improvement with an easy to implement change.
But Wait, Isn't Rank the Biggest Factor in CTR?
From a global view, yes, rank is a big factor for any given keyword. From a "local" level as displayed in Google Analytics for where your article actually ranks, not so much.
I'm going to pose an argument here that would be a bit counter intuitive to conventional thinking: displayed CTR on Google Analytics is independent of rank.
It'd be about this time that most traditional SEO articles will bust out the curve here that says rank #1 receives 33% of all clicks, #2 receives 17.5%, #3 receives 12%, #4 receives 7.5%, etc. and will imply that your biggest goal for getting more clicks will simply be to rank higher. Those who rank on page 2, 3, and further out will only receive 1% or less of all available clicks, if that.
I'm going to state outright that this is probably true overall. Posts on page 2, 3, and so on in Google receive a fraction of total clicks for any given term.
But where our thought diverges is that Google Analytics, on the other hand, displays your impressions, clicks, and CTR based on what your link actually receives. Not what you could receive overall for the keyword. What you do receive right now.
That is a huge difference when looking at any given page's CTR, and is completely independent of what page you fall on.
Google Analytics is entirely based on the impressions and clicks your links actually receive (see hover description above), which gives you far more flexibility in controlling your CTR even when you do not rank on page #1.
Say you're on page two for a term that receives 100,000 search impressions per month. Page one likely gets 100,000 impressions, naturally, and page two may only receive 5,000 impressions. Google Analytics is going to tell you that you receive 5,000 impressions, and your CTR will be based on that. By following conventional logic you should only get 1% of all clicks, which is true on a global scale, but based on how Google Analytics is displayed you could receive far more as it is all relative to the impressions you do receive.
That 1% of total impressions (1,000 clicks on 100,000 impressions) could amount to a 20% CTR if you're only getting 5% of available impressions (1,000 clicks on 5,000 impressions)!That "could" is what we want to exploit without changing our ranking factors in the slightest.
Change Your Meta Texts to Generate More Clicks
If you rank for a term and are getting high search impressions (5,000+ per month), but are not getting an appreciable click through rate (we benchmark at 5%), then there is likely a problem with your title or meta description.
So, what should you do? Change it of course!
Now, this is a very simple thought, but let's take a step back and think about it for a second.
Say you rank for a term "things to do in Singapore " and are on the first page and receive 25,000 impressions per month, but only have a 0.5% click through rate. Clearly something is wrong. You have eyeballs, but no clicks. Perhaps you are ranked #10 on the page and conventional wisdom holds true that it receives the lowest clicks of the bunch (~1-2% would hold true with conventional logic), but I believe something else is at play.
Your site rankings are clearly getting you to the first page for that term, and you'll most certainly want to keep them in your title and description if you have them for that added SEO boost. But everything else can be changed. And when it comes to getting clicks, the only two things you can control that may influence whether or not you get the coveted click is the title and the description.
So, if your article is ranking but not receiving clicks, why not change it for your top performing articles?
You may not change your rank (although getting a higher CTR may influence that down the road), but you may end up looking more appealing to those that do see your content. The fact is that this logic extends beyond the first page and can apply to any article as long as it is receiving a fair number of impressions and has a low CTR overall.
A Small Improvement Across Many Articles Adds Up
Okay, okay. I told you this would be simple, but I want to show you some math to show why that is.
We do fairly well in Google, and get about 800,000 to 1,000,000 search impressions per month on both of our sites. Our top 50 articles by search contribute about 80% of that, and receive about 17,000 to 28,000 monthly clicks from Google respectively.
That means on our two sites our top performing articles get anywhere from a 2% to 3% CTR on average. Not bad, but when you also consider that we also get articles that have 10-15% CTR with fairly high monthly search impressions, we clearly have room for improvement.
So what would happen if we got all of our Top 50 articles on our two sites up to our 5% CTR benchmark?
Well, we'd pull in an extra 50,000 page views a month if our 1.4 pages per visit metric held up. That would be an increase in total website traffic of 33%, and based on our current earnings with Mediavine and affiliate sales we'd earn an extra $1,000 a month!
And what do we have to do to achieve this? Do we have to go on an extreme SEO campaign to rank better? No, the articles already rank. Do we have to put on a social campaign to push up the numbers there? Nope. Really, and I'm 100% serious, all we have to do is change around our titles and meta descriptions to something that brought in the clicks from the people already seeing our content.
It is Easy Work, But a Long Process
Unfortunately, we have to come to the downside here, and like with everything SEO it is that time is not necessarily on your side. You can very easily go through your top posts that have > 5,000 monthly impressions and < 5% CTR and change titles and meta descriptions around (while keeping your target keyword!). If you can think like your target reader, coming up with a good piece of copy shouldn't be that hard.
What you have to wait on, however, is for Google and your potential readers to respond.
Google may update your title and descriptions within a day or two if you push manual recrawls through Webmaster Tools. It may be a week or even a month if you wait on your own. And then from there you have to wait a reasonable period of time to collect the data to see if potential readers pick up on the change. Throw in Google Analytics lag when sharing Search Console data, and you will have to plan for a long interval just to see if your changes had any effect.
Whether you wait one month, two, or three (the latter being a common metric for SEO changes), you'll need to plan on continually checking your numbers to ensure your CTRs are increasing. If you change 50 articles in the first go around, perhaps the second time you may only have to do 40. Then 20. Then 10. Maybe a few won't go up no matter what you do, and that is all part of the learning process.
But if you can make your CTR go up overall, more clicks and revenue will be your reward for what is, in all honestly, little effort every few months on your part. Even if it takes a few changes here or there for a year, the final outcome is more than worth it.
So why aren't you doing it?Upgrade Your Blog Today!
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