2 SEO factors that will dramatically improve your CTR

The meta title is one of the the most important on-page ranking factors to consider alongside the content of your page. It serves as the starting point for most search engine results, and for that reason, most marketers should spend time on producing high performance titles that attract visits.

The piftalls

The concern comes when marketers get obsessed with keywords over human readability and create machine-looking titles that do not encourage click-throughs from search results pages. Even in the increasingly unlikely event that you’ll rank with a poor title, the fact is viewers will skip past content that doesn’t seem to match what they’re looking for or engage them in any meaningful way.

Another issue is when marketers tend to use the same keywords for multiple pages in order to get higher rankings for competitive terms. This often results in an adverse effect, with duplicate filters being triggered by smart search engines. Being unique pays dividends people!

What does it look like when you get it right?

A well written meta title will serve the needs of both machines and human beings. It will be relevant and enticing. From a technical perspective, a meta title should:

• Be 55-65 characters long
• Contain c.6 words
• Have a good balance of common, uncommon, power and emotional words
• Mention your keyword(s) in a natural way
• Avoid stop words where possible to reduce character count
• Reference a region where applicable for better local search results

If you’re unsure whether your meta title is up to scratch, why not test out some free tools like the headline analyzer from the Advanced Marketing Institute?

It’s well-known that the meta description has a massive impact on searches. For that reason marketing professionals usually put their most profitable keywords there and more than once whenever they can. But, is this what you should be doing?

The pitfalls

With keyword stuffing you might step up a few positions in the short term and if you’re lucky, even scaling few pages in Google, but soon your ranking will drop.

It’s worth noting that search algorithms now focus on intent of searches and semantic searching with more and more prominence over exact keyword matches. So, writing a meta description that truly reflects what the page or post is about is your best bet.

What does it look like when you get it right?

Great meta descriptions are easy-to-read and relevant to the search term and result page. They often include a clear call to action within the excerpt that encourages readers to click the search result and read more.

Technically, you can expect:

• 160 characters or less of a description
• A human readable, engaging exceprt
• A clear call to action such as ‘enquire now’, ‘sign up today’ or even a phone number to get in touch

When somebody is doing a search online, they tend to click on sites that provide natural and enticing descriptions and titles over machine-ready, keyword-stuffed excerpts.

Having a higher click through rate (CTR) for searches you are found on is what it’s all about. It’s one thing being found, but getting people to your online store-front is the main opportunity that they’ll have to experience your brand and offering.

There are a number of other factors that you can work on including having a solid inbound strategy that considers:

• content creation
• social posting
• link building
• plus much more

Finding the right agency to help you meet these can be difficult, but we’d be happy to walk through your search marketing needs here at Debunc. Give us a call today on 0203 733 6772.

So, there you go! It’s time to start creating quality titles and descriptions that will separate you from the competition in search results and increase your click through rates like you’d never expect.

We’d love to hear how you’ve applied the above tips to your own search strategy and some of success stories you’ve achieved – reach out in the comments section below.