We get it, SEO can mean that businesses have to follow so many metrics, things can get, well over-whelming.

After all, there’s organic traffic, backlink analysis, bounce rates, then CTR to monitor. However, to get a well performing website, you need to monitor all of these.

What does click through rate (CTR) even mean?

 

Quite simply put, in a nutshell, the “click through rate (CTR) is simply how many times a page or blog post on your website get clicked compared to how many impressions, that times it appears in Google’s results.

In essence, in laymen’s terms, how often does your website pop up for a query, compared to how many times it obtains a click from a shopper.

 

Why should we be paying attention the CTR?

The click through rate can indicate how well optimised your businesses meta titles and meta descriptions are. If you successfully implement schema mark-up, then this can help to greatly increase your businesses chances of appearing in Google’s SERP’s as a “rich snippet”.

 

What exactly is a rich snippet?

A rich snippet is simply when your businesses SERP result looks different to all the other companies. The reason being, for example, a product may have schema mark-up directly applied to the customer review rating.

If the product, lets say has 5 star reviews, your web designer has added schema, then this product rating may appear in the SERP’s. Now, when someone is searching for a product, and there’s say 10 organic business results in Google’s SERP’s, the business which has schema mark-up applied, will stand out in the SERP’s. The star rating will appear, which means it will attract more clicks from shoppers.

 

Tell me how is the CTR calculated?

How CTR or click through rate is calculated is a piece of cake, let us explain:

CTR simply means = number of clicks / number of impressions then x 100

What does number of clicks mean?

Number of clicks is not all the clicks that you receive once a shopper is on the website browsing the products or services.

No the number of clicks is just simply the number of times shoppers in Bristol click on websites SERP result in Google’s SERPs. Therefore, the number of times they click the websites meta title.

 

What does number of impressions even mean?

The number of impressions, is a statistic that you can obtain from your businesses Google Search Console account. It simply the total number of times your websites pages or blog posts appear in Google’s or another search engines results.

 

How important is the CTR in terms of Search Engine Optimisation?

CTR is often an overlooked metric many agencies. Often agencies report on keyword rankings, organic traffic and backlinks, which are of course important. However, Google has a very clever algorithm which always working out engagement, how many shoppers are clicking that on that website?

For example, you might have a business in Bristol, lets say a really good SEO consultant, now they might be ranked let’s say 6th in Google’s organic results in the SERPs. However, that business might be hoovering up all of the clicks, because of schema, or because that consultant is becoming more and more popular in the fantastic city of Bristol.

Now Google will notice this, it will know that the business is say ranked 6th in Google’s organic results. However, because it keeps hoovering up the majority of the clicks, of the shoppers who are searching a local SEO consultant, Google will know of time that this business should move up.

 

Relevant

Now what Google always wants to do, is supply the most useful and also the most relevant answer to any question.

That could range from, where’s the best place to buy a rugby ball, through to where’s the best place to have a relaxing get away just outside of Bath.

So, therefore what Google is doing is using “ranking factors” to determine where a business should rank in Google’s results. However, then something called Google’s Rank Brain is also being actively used to monitor how effective that business is that gaining clicks, plus also retaining interest of the shopper, through dwell times, and how high the bounce rate is.

 

What is Google Rank Brain

Well simply put, Google’s Rank Brain is thought to be the 3 most significant and important ranking factor there is. So, most top marketing agencies, such as Digital Tailors, believe backlinks are number one, then content marketing quality, such as Google E-EAT score is next, then there’s also RankBrain.

Now, Rank Brain is powered by AI, that is its like a eyeball, that is constantly working out which businesses are getting clicks, which ones are not. Then its reshuffling the results, based on engagement.

Relevance and also retaining interest
An essential part of the SEO process, is gaining more clicks, so improving the CTR. However, this just one aspect of good agencies work, the agency then has to work hard to retain the shopper’s interest. If they don’t, the dwell time will be low, which means that shoppers, and visitors to the website, don’t really want to spend long reading the article or browsing the products.

This shows that they are not interested in the business, however, they could then go to a competitor’s website and spend say 10 minutes or longer on there. Showing that they are more interested in a competitor website than they are yours, if for example they are spending less than 60 seconds on your website.

 

Dwell time

If the dwell time is very low on the website, it shows that shoppers don’t want to spend long on the website.

Therefore this could be because of the quality of the businesses content marketing.
The work might not offer a solution to the question, it might be “content thin” meaning that the content marketing doesn’t offer much in the way of useful information.

Therefore, the work doesn’t satisfy what SEO companies call “user intent”.

For example, if there looking for say a pair of running trainers, made by a certain brand, yet its clear after a minute, that the company doesn’t stock that brand, well that’s going to lead to a lot of customers angry, because they will see that they have clicked on a meta title and description which says that they stock that brand. However, if they clearly do not, the dwell time will decrease which damage the businesses organic search engine optimisation.

 

Optimise your meta titles and descriptions

The meta descriptions and meta titles are key to improving the businesses CTR. Therefore, you want your business to be clicked more in Google’s SERP’s, you have to carefully consider how these descriptions and titles are written, in order to draw in more clicks.

 

Schema mark-up and rich snippets

When you are looking across a bunch of apples to pick and buy, the juicy apple that looks the biggest, more fresh, has nice colour will be the apple your eye in drawn to.

Now, think about this logic, when you are optimising your meta titles and meta descriptions.

What you want to do, is to rewrite the meta titles and descriptions, so that in the SERP’s they stand out like a bright light.

For example, mention things that you know your customers in Bristol want to hear, such as you a long-established business. Perhaps your plumber that offers free call our charges? Perhaps you’re a company that can offer free next day delivery. What ever it is, make sure that you write it into the meta title and the meta description, so that you can stand out from the crowd.

 

What can I use Schema mark up to mark up?

Schema mark-up can be added by yoru web developers, it can be used for multiple different reason to enhance a business’s CTR.

For example, you might want to schema mark-up in the following ways:

 

Product reviews

If you sell products / services in South West England, then you might be up against a lot of competition. For example, let’s say you a specialist insurance broker, well, to stand out you may want to add schema-up to your businesses TrustPilot business reviews. This way, when Googlebot indexes the schema mark-up, say applied to the homepage, then what will happen is that your business could be mentioned as a rich snippet.

This going to help your business to stand out in Google’s organic SERPs.

 

Make sure that you use split testing and Google Analytics

Log in from time to time and check your businesses Google Analytics. Which pages, have a high bounce rate? Which ones have a low dwell time? Which pages have a low CTR?

Then start using something called split testing, or A/B testing, you might notice that with some simple improvements that are made to the meta description, plus also the meta title, that you start to gain more customers, by obtaining more clicks. This simply because more shoppers are clicking on your business in Google’s organic results.

 

CTR and content relevancy

It is all too simple, to draw in thousands if not millions of shoppers with an unbelievably cheap deal.

Let’s say for example, your SEO agency writes into the meta description that you have a huge number of say e-bikes for under £500.00.

Now that sounds like a Fabolous deal, that when that meta description appears in Google’s SERP’s it going to gain a lot of attention, plus also clicks. The SEO agency will feal that they have done an amazing job, because the CTR rate might go through the roof.

However, there’s just one big problem!
All of your e-bikes start from a whopping 2k, not the below £500 that you mentioned. This simply means that shoppers will sort the items by price, see that they have been falsely drawn to your website, under a promise, of cheap e-bikes, then they leave. This increases the bounce rate, Google RankBrain will notice that your bounce rate is high.

Now when Google’s algorithms, as well as Google RankBrain spot that the bounce rate for your e-commerce bike store is high, it will compare it with your direct competitors.

Because your bounce rate is through the roof, compared to your direct competitors, what this means is that then, when Google’s algorithm reshuffles the business results, in Google’s SERP’s, your business may move down.

Sometimes say if your bounce rate is through the roof, the dwell time is low, then Google’s algorithm, during a major Google algorithm update, may place your business off page 1 and say place it on page two of Google which will massively negatively impact your businesses organic traffic, that you see in Google Analytics, if that is and important keyword.

 

The key is high quality content marketing

When hiring any agency in Bristol, you have to ensure that as part of your monthly search engine optimisation work, that the business is writing quality content marketing. This work should have a high Google E-EAT score, which will mean that it can earn more backlinks, plus have higher dwell time, as well as lower bounce rates.

 

Come to one of the best agencies in glorious Bristol

Regardless of the size of business that you run in South West England, we want to have a chat with you. With SEO packages starting from

£500 PCM we have priced our monthly organic SEO packages very competitively.

Digital Tailors is one of the best SEO agencies that you will find in the whole Bristol and the whole of Bath, give us a call today.