Survey Findings: How To Increase CTR

As a website owner, what can you do to increase CTR (click-through rate)? Climbing your way to the first page of search results will, by all means, improve this ratio. However, getting a place there is just half of it. The other half is making people prefer your website over the other results and actually click on it.

The recent survey involving 500 respondents aged 25-60, provided the data on what impacts users’ decision to click on any given search result. The diagram below depicts the most influential factors determining the searchers’ choice.

Meta Descriptions

According to the survey, meta descriptions influence the decision of the majority (62,9%) of respondents which proves it to remain a crucial SEO element in 2020. As search engines self-learn continuously, they don’t pay as much attention to meta descriptions as they used to. However, these tags are extremely important in improving CTR as they summarize the page content helping to guide users towards your website.

Compose readable, meaningful, and keyword-rich meta descriptions and also keep their length under 160 characters for a proper displaying.

Page Title

Titles most impact the choice of 13% of respondents but they add up to the final decision of many more. Being the essence of what a page is about, the title can become a deal-breaker when it comes to picking a link to click on. The page title is more visible than a description meaning you need to put even more effort into creating click-worthy headlines.

Brand Name

The last but not least finding is that people subconsciously click on the results from companies that they are familiar with. A brand name that rings some bells will guide almost 25% of respondents towards clicking on it. Whether a user has already seen an online or offline ad or has been introduced to the company’s social page, or even received a LinkedIn connection request - this all will increase the chances of the page being preferred over the non-familiar ones.

Why Does This Matter?

These survey findings highlight the importance of doing SEO and increasing brand awareness for CTR improvement. Since the ultimate goal of most businesses with an online presence is increasing the website traffic, knowing what causes users to click on a page will become an actionable insight.

There are more or less obvious takeaways from titles and descriptions topping the list of key click-through influencers:

• Make sure every website page that you want visitors on has a meta title and a description
• Write unique titles and descriptions for every page, do not copy-paste the texts
• Include relevant, targeted keywords but don’t overuse them
• Write for people

As for increasing brand awareness, the following activities can be implemented:

By dedicating the needed resources and combining these activities into one strategy, any business can become more visible and discoverable to attract more visitors and significantly improve CTR. If you need any help with either search engine optimization or increasing brand awareness, contact our marketing team.