This is one of the topics that we never touched before and there is a huge need to highlight the importance of click through rates (CTR) of our blog posts in the search engine results pages (SERPS). We never realize the real potential of our blog posts, and their connection with the visitors they tend to attract via search engines.
Sometimes we put in our all efforts to build up a single comprehensive article, but at the end of the day, there is that another posts of less than 300 words that keep bringing you the most traffic. Pretty annoying sometimes. Though there can be so many factors behind the traffic that a particular posts pulls in. But CTR through search results page is one major factor that we often neglect.
This post will particularly highlight how exactly can monitor the click through rates of our previous blog posts and learn from them for the titles of our future articles. Unfortunately, the best we can do via this strategy is that we can only learn from our previously published posts and the impact of CTR on them, but after all learning is the major key that would keep us pushing towards the best that is set for us.
So What Is SERP CTR (Click Through Rate) ?
Did you ever realized that sometimes you tend to click the 5th or 6th link (or atleast not the top ones 1-3 positions) in search engine results page against any search that you would make? There is always something behind that particular posts that keeps on attracting readers even though though thats not among the first 1-3 positions.
The post that achieves first 3 or 4 positions in search results often gets most of the traffic for that search keywords. But its pretty normal to see few posts that keep pulling in visitors that sits at the bottom of search engine results page.
That is what we are going to monitor today. We'll see how many impressions your each blog posts gets via SERP and the average CTR that they achieve.
How To See Your Blog Posts Average CTR In SERP?
Navigate through your Google Analytics Dashboard >> Standard Reporting >> Traffic Sources >> Search Engine Optimization >> Queries.
Analyze Average CTR And Improve It
This is where the fun part begins. Average position refers to the value that your posts gets on average in SERP. Say, for a particular search term, your blog posts was placed 3rd while in the next it was at 7th position. So that average position that it would attain would be calculated by (3+7)/2 = 5.
So you could work on your blog posts that tend to attain an average position of less than 10. Thats the chance where you can improve the upcoming blog posts in the same category..
Say one of our Google Analytics posts tends to get average position 5. So as I know that these posts are performing well in SERP (Due to the content they have), so I would work on much harder on the next posts in the series and would try to optimize the titles of my very next posts in the series.
3 Points To Improve SERP CTR
Though the post linked above would give out a greater in look of Title optimization of blog articles, though there are few of the points below that you can always apply and get the best of the results.
1- Implement Google Authorship
Read the post below to show up your profile picture beside your blog articles in SERP. That makes a huge difference when it comes to clicks. People tend to click links that are accompanied with the authors profile picture.
2- Post Title Limit
Make sure that your post titles are not more than 66 characters. Use our Character Count Tool for the purpose.
3- NO Weird Characters
Just let the post titles be smooth and simple. Nothing out of the box in this case. Though you can always experiment with capital Letters for an example: " Top 5 BEST Selling Products". Such titles always grab attention of the readers.
Hope this strategy would help you out find the potential behind your top performing posts and would make them even better in the future.
Stay Safe guys.