How to Get the Most SERP Clicks Without Ranking at the Top of the Page

What makes a search result click-worthy?

Or let me phrase it this way: What would make someone want to click on your content?

One answer that I tend to hear a lot relates to page rank.

“If I were higher up on Google’s SERPs I’d get more clicks!”

While this is partly true, it’s not the full picture.

Making sure that you rank number one isn’t the only factor that goes into your CTRs. It’s only part of the equation.

In fact, you don’t have to rank number one to get decent clicks on your content. Here’s why.


Here’s how to get higher CTR even if you don’t rank very high.

1. Benchmark your industry’s average CTRs

You won’t see success if you don’t know what success looks like.

So the first thing you need to do is benchmark the average CTR for your industry and then compare them against your current CTRs to see how you stack up.

Here’s a breakdown of the averages by industry:


While there are plenty of factors that can influence your CTR (and the above is just a guideline), this will give you a general idea of what you can expect.

If you run an e-commerce business (1.66% for organic search), for example, you shouldn’t expect to see the same CTRs as someone who runs a dating website (3.4%).

This should help you determine your target goals, too.

If you want to improve your CTR by 1%, is that realistic for your industry? Or should you be aiming for 0.5%?

You also need to consider how you stack up as a B2B or a B2C site.

According to one study by IMN, B2B sites saw higher CTRs than B2C sites when they ranked higher on the SERPs (top half of page one) but comparatively lower results when in the top positions of page two.

new ctr study 03
The study found that branded queries also see much higher CTR than non-branded queries.

What does that all mean for you? Well, it really boils down to one thing: Know your space.

Know what you should expect from your CTRs, keep those expectations in check when setting goals, and then work to improve them at a reasonable rate.

2. Create the most relevant content for clicks

Once you have a general idea of what you can expect from your CTRs, you can optimize your content for the most clicks.

According to Google, the best determining factor for rank and CTR is relevance to the searcher:

A search result will get more clicks (and, subsequently, a higher rank) if other people are clicking on it.

User behavior and intent matters when it comes to getting clicks.

So what makes one search result more click-worthy than another?

There are, generally speaking, three things to look for:

Is the content informative?
Is the content promising (will there be ROI for the user when clicking)?
Is the content visually or psychologically appealing?
Take a look at these SERP results for the search query, “PPC ad examples:”


3. Use high-converting link copy

As I mentioned above, when creating relevant content, you have to ensure that the user knows that it’s relevant.

This means creating titles that answer questions or grab attention.

Let’s look at search results for “How to grow your email list:”

organicresults2
The first one, aside from being ranked number one, stands out because it’s specific. It’s not just “how to grow a list” but how to add 1,000 new email subscribers.

That sounds totally doable to me, and since it’s also ranked number one, I know there’s probably a good payoff for clicking on it.

But if I jump down the results page, I see a couple of things:

A practical guide (I like guides. Guides tell me what I’m getting).
A beginner’s guide for a specific industry (e-commerce).
The last one might only apply to me if I were growing a list for an e-commerce brand, but there’s still a promise of a payout since it’s a beginner’s guide.

A lot of these results are well-known brands, too. So if I’m familiar with the website already, I’ll be more eager to click the link.

The key here for content creators or marketers is to create a high-converting link in your titles  (headlines) and descriptions.

According to ConversionXL, high-converting headline copy has five characteristics:

They include numbers (“1,000 new email subscribers in 30 days”).
They have between five to nine (or 16-18) words.
They have either positive or negative sentiment (“Don’t Make These X Mistakes”).
They have two parts (typically a headline and a sub-headline).
They have a clear value proposition (they answer the search query).
Here’s an example they give of a headline that includes most of the above characteristics:


Title tags are part of your header source code, and they look something like this:

<title>Title Tags: How to Improve CTR by 20%+ – Siege Media</title>

They will show up on Google looking like this:

Screen Shot 2016 03 10 at 9.09.45 PM
The goal here is to create title tags that are:

Branded with the name of your website
Have a compelling title that answers a question
Include important SEO keywords and competitor keywords
With these three ingredients combined, you can craft a compelling and relevant title that is more likely to improve your CTR, which, in turn, may improve your ranking.

You can also perform A/B tests of your titles using a tool like CoSchedule’s free headline analyzer to see which headlines would work best.


4. Improve the other elements of your links

Aside from the relevancy of your content and appeal of your headline, there are other tweaks you can make to improve your CTR.

1. Add publishing dates.

Adding a publishing date to your Google results snippet is not only good for your Google ranking. It is also good for user intent.

Here’s an example of SERP results with and without publishing dates:

datevsnodate
While the headline of the first one is relevant enough to warrant a click, I don’t know for sure how fresh the information will be.With the second result, I know it’s at least relevant within a year or so.
If I want, I can also search for results within the past year, which will give me the freshest results:


2. Republish old content with a newer date.

If you think your content is highly relevant and you want to show up for dated searches, you can republish older content with a new date.

Simply reset it by editing your post and clicking the “update button.” This will refresh the date.

If you have a WordPress site and are using the Yoast SEO plugin, make sure that you check the “show date in snippet preview” box.

settings

3. Add AMP Pages.

AMP (accelerated mobile pages) is a Google project that will make your mobile pages load faster.
It also adds a nice AMP stamp next to your SERP results on mobile devices:

amp demo
And you can place an AMP stamp on your site’s content if you desire:

ap resize
There are rumors that Google will be launching a Snapchat-like discover feature using AMP sites. So, while it’s not mandatory to have an AMP stamp, it might help in future searches.

You can demo what an AMP feature would look like on the SERP by navigating to g.co/ampdemo on your smartphone and searching for your content.If you’re ready to dive into using AMP, you can get started here.

4. Add rich snippets.

If you have content that answers questions, either in paragraph, list, or table format, Google might automatically give you a featured snippet, also known as a rich snippet.

Here’s an example of a rich snippet:

tomatoesrichsnippet
For some searches, Google will automatically pull answers from any of the first page results.
In the below example, you can see that the rich snippet isn’t from the number one organic search spot:

richsnippet21
This means that as long as you’re on page one of the SERPs, you have a shot at being featured in a rich snippet.You can influence your chances of getting a rich snippet by targeting “question keywords” and creating accurate, authoritative, and structured content.

A great tool to use for this is Moz’s Keyword Explorer.

KWE keyword
You can “filter by source,” which will allow you to filter by questions.

pasted image 0 389
The organization of your content is key here. Headings and subheadings will influence whether or not your site is snippet-friendly.

To add a rich snippet, you can do one of three things:

Use the WP Rich Snippets plugin (premium and robust).
Use the All In One Schema Rich Snippets plugin (free but minimal).
Use the data highlighter feature in the Google Search Console.
About 15% of queries have an answer box, so if you rank somewhere on page one, there are plenty of opportunities for you to get Google to feature your content.

5. Replace ugly permalinks.

Ugly permalinks are not SEO-friendly.

What is an ugly permalink, exactly? An “ugly” link is one that includes numbers instead of words or keyword, like so:

myblog.com/?p=123

A “pretty” permalink would look more like this:

myblog.com/how-to-get-pretty-permalinks

Pretty permalinks are generally better for SEO, and users searching on Google are more likely to trust them.

If you’re creating new posts, you should ensure that they have pretty permalinks.

But if you’re trying to get old content re-published and you find ugly permalinks, you’re most likely going to need to update them.

It can be a tedious process, but if you’re looking to improve your ranking and CTR, you should make sure that your permalinks are pretty.

You also want to include keywords from your title in your permalinks if at all possible.

This will give a significant boost to your SEO.

5. Add Paid Search

It’s true that most searchers lean toward organic search results rather than paid ads.
On the first page of the SERPs, the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks.


But that doesn’t mean that you should disregard paid ads.

If you dig a little deeper, you’ll notice that paid ads tend to work well when there’s a high level of brand affinity.

brand affinity graph
This works especially well if you’re retargeting searchers who may not have found the answer they were looking for organically.

But the trick is that you have to have a decent rank position, a budget for a decent bid, and enough of a “demand” for your PPC ad to be worth it.
If you’re curious about a potential CTR rate or your PPC ads, you can use WordStream’s tool here.

adwordsCTR
Getting a high PPC CTR isn’t easy, either. But I bring it up because it is still a viable alternative to organic traffic.

There are ways you can optimize your PPC ads so that they become a low-cost, high-CTR opportunity.While PPC might achieve lesser results than optimizing your organic CTR, you can promote a lot of content and create brand affinity with paid ads.

Another option is to use Facebook Ads or other forms of social media to promote your content.

17hats FB ad example 1
Again, this might not help with your organic search CTR directly. But it will drive traffic and increase your popularity, which may help with your rank (which may help with your organic CTRs and so on and so forth).

When your organic CTRs are failing you, consider opting for a few ads to see how your audience responds.










Source Link: https://neilpatel.com/blog/more-organic-traffic-with-lower-ranking/

Google announces AMP speed and viewability enhancements for ads

Google announces AMP speed and viewability enhancements for ads

Utilizing 'Fast Fetch' ad request and rendering, ads served on AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) will now be faster, and potentially will improve viewability rates.



Yesterday, Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) group announced enhancements to ads served in AMP. Specifically, the project has entered phase two of its three-phase plan for supporting comprehensive advertising functionality in AMP.

While phase one focused on basic support for ads within AMP, phase two focuses on speeding up AMP ad rendering, utilizing what they call “Fast Fetch” — separating the ad request from the ad rendering. Fast Fetch — vs. their previous method, “Delayed Fetch” — allows the ad request to happen while the page content is being rendered, and then only renders the ad before the ad slot is in view for the user.


From their announcement:

With Fast Fetch, ads are requested much earlier in the lifecycle of the page, allowing page rendering and creative selection in the ad server to happen in parallel. Fast Fetch is 850ms faster at the 50th percentile and 2.7s faster at the 90th percentile as compared to Delayed Fetch.

Ads that are created using the AMP ad spec get an extra performance boost with this new method. Publishers and advertisers using DoubleClick and AdSense are already going to see this benefit, as those platforms automatically convert eligble ads to the AMP Ads format. The AMP spec group is encouraging creatives to switch to developing AMP Ads, and ad tech platforms/networks to begin using Fast Fetch for their ad tags.

This new method not only improves overall content and ad rendering time, it assists in raising the viewability metric for ads, an area of signficant concern for advertisers (and a problem for publishers).

Features being planned (no dates specified) as part of the Fast Fetch rollout include:

competitive exclusions and roadblocks for AMP pages.
ability to refresh ads at a configurable frequency.
support for enhancing ad requests with targeting information to the ad server in real time.

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Reference Link: http://searchengineland.com/google-announces-amp-speed-viewability-enhancements-ads-281182

How to stop worrying about Google updates

As SEOs, we tend to obsess over changes to the organic results. It usually works like this:

You get to your computer in the morning. Ready to start work, you take a quick look at Facebook to check what you have missed. You run across someone asking if anyone saw changes last night. They’ll typically also note that there was “a lot of activity.”

“Activity” means that SEOs who follow changes to search rankings saw some fluctuations in a short period of time. If there is “a lot of activity,” that means there were large fluctuations in many websites’ rankings in a vertical or across verticals. Sometimes these results are positive, but mostly they are not. Big updates can often mean big drops in traffic.

So you quickly go check your Analytics and Search Console. Phew! The “activity” didn’t impact you — this time. But what about the next one?

This is what happens when Google rolls out large-scale changes to its search algorithms, and what is in these rollouts has been the topic of many articles, tweets and Facebook posts over the years.

What if I told you, though, that while it is very important to know what Google’s algorithms contain, you do not really need to know granular details about every update to keep your site in the black?

        Reference Site: http://searchengineland.com/stop-worrying-google-updates-276482

How To Accelerate ECommerce SEO Results?

Many Online Marketers thinks that E-commerce SEO and SEO for other websites are different process or have some similarity. There are many posts also available on these topics and many authors successfully cleared the confusion related to this topic. Its true that for E-Commerce SEO, more efforts are required and strategy is also more focused and slight different than the normal SEO processes. Today i am going to focus on main factors which can really play an important role in improving E-Commerce SEO results.

For better E-Commerce SEO results few practices are very effective which are as follows:

• Site Indexation

Proper site indexation is necessary so that crawler can crawl your website pages on regular basis. If website have crawl errors in large numbers, it shows that website has poor health and need improvement in this section. Proper site indexation become must when we talk about E-Commerce website or portal as E-Commerce website have numerous pages. Sitemap update is also necessary as sometime it happens that after removal of any product page from the website its URL remain in the existing sitemap which require updation so that crawler will crawl the useful links and existing urls without wasting time on removed urls. As eCommerce website have large number of urls hence chances of duplicate category urls is more which can be sorted out through search console URLs parameter where we can direct crawlers how and what to crawl. So this is useful and effective technique to have better crawling and Page indexation.

• Main Menu Navigation

Main menu navigation is a regular practice in SEO process and it becomes more important in case of E-Commerce websites as there are no. of categories and products urls or pages which can be navigated directly by having proper main menu navigation. So proper main menu navigation is quite effective for better E-Commerce SEO results.

• On-Page Copy For Category Pages

In-spite of having thousands product description for no. of products on an eCommerce website, having description of products category wise is a better, time saving, resource utilising in better and smart way practice. Big E-commerce brands like Walmart is using these smart practices and shown a way to marketers.

• Product Schema

It is one of the very effective technique to highlight your products with detailed and additional information. With images it is eye catchy, and allows to be in top search results with all the important information showing at the same platform including name, price, availability etc. This practice is really doing well and helped alot to the online marketers to showcase their products in more effective way.

• URL Structure

The best practice for URL structure is said that when you keep the products more close to the root folders. In longer URL, product name cant be seen clearly as google search results shows the results with limited characters hence by having proper URL structure we can show the product name to visitors through URL also. By using breadcrumb list schema, it can be done easily. It makes URLs more eye catching and give better appearance than normal long urls.

  


Reference Site: https://internetmarketingsection.blogspot.in/2017/06/how-to-accelerate-ecommerce-seo-results.html

Google launches new effort to flag upsetting or offensive content in search

Google is undertaking a new effort to better identify content that is potentially upsetting or offensive to searchers. It hopes this will prevent such content from crowding out factual, accurate and trustworthy information in the top search results.

“We’re explicitly avoiding the term ‘fake news,’ because we think it is too vague,” said Paul Haahr, one of Google’s senior engineers who is involved with search quality. “Demonstrably inaccurate information, however, we want to target.”
New role for Google’s army of ‘quality raters’

The effort revolves around Google’s quality raters, over 10,000 contractors that Google uses worldwide to evaluate search results. These raters are given actual searches to conduct, drawn from real searches that Google sees. They then rate pages that appear in the top results as to how good those seem as answers.

Quality raters do not have the power to alter Google’s results directly. A rater marking a particular result as low quality will not cause that page to plunge in rankings. Instead, the data produced by quality raters is used to improve Google’s search algorithms generally. In time, that data might have an impact on low-quality pages that are spotted by raters, as well as on others that weren’t reviewed.

Quality raters use a set of guidelines that are nearly 200 pages long, instructing them on how to assess website quality and whether the results they review meet the needs of those who might search for particular queries.
The new ‘Upsetting-Offensive’ content flag

Those guidelines have been updated with an entirely new section about “Upsetting-Offensive” content that covers a new flag that’s been added for raters to use. Until now, pages could not be flagged by raters with this designation.

The guidelines say that upsetting or offensive content typically includes the following things (the bullet points below are quoted directly from the guide):

    Content that promotes hate or violence against a group of people based on criteria including (but not limited to) race or ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality or citizenship, disability, age, sexual orientation, or veteran status.
    Content with racial slurs or extremely offensive terminology.
    Graphic violence, including animal cruelty or child abuse.
    Explicit how­ to information about harmful activities (e.g., how tos on human trafficking or violent assault).
    Other types of content which users in your locale would find extremely upsetting or offensive.



                       Reference: http://searchengineland.com/google-flag-upsetting-offensive-content-271119

Facebook Advertising - How It Can Benefit Businesses For Better ROI

In Online Marketing its always very important to know, how, where and when to advertise your business online as it is very important task which impacts the performance of the marketing efforts. With Google Adwords offering incredible, impressive and profitable search ad campaigns, many businesses ignores to consider the value of other advertising mediums.

In this post, I am going to highlight one of the widely used platform which is quite effective in creating brand awareness and driving traffic for the businesses i.e. Facebook where vast majority of businesses absolutely must be advertising. In support of my words, i am providing few points which are below:

• Mass users spend most of there spare Time on Social Media
• It is the reach of Facebook among mass which shows that its so huge for any business to ignore. To utilise it as branding and marketing platform, you first need a business page on Facebook. Many businesses are aware about its benefits and data says that no. of such businesses are approx 40 million. It gives you future customers.
• As per data we have the figure for average person spends who spends his or her time online on social networks is 28% and 1.72 hours per day worldwide.

Figure for every minute, users like more than 4.1 million posts, posting comments, status updates, and photos on Facebook. They spend large amount of time on Facebook every single day of every month.

• Over 1 Billion Users Served

If you are new to this platform then you might have not aware about the fact that Facebook is a big deal. 1.55 billion people log onto Facebook every month and 1.39 billion visit via mobile (data released by Facebook).
It is not limited to desktop only, it has reached another level for mobile users as Half a billion people only access Facebook via a mobile device.

So you can imagine what a broad market is on Facebook for your business. You just need to connect with them. Even Facebook ads helps you in reaching the right audience. Your audience.

• Massive Platform for Content Promotion

For businesses who are creating great content for their website, they get deep reach among users as informative content is always liked by the relevant users.

It also create brand awareness for your business through your information sharing contents having all the details, new product or services, events etc. Here your content will become exposed to an even larger audience.

• Amazing Targeting

On Facebook, you get much more than your expectation as far as targeting is concerned. With this platform Businesses can target users through Facebook Ads by location, demographics, age, gender, interests, behaviour, and connections.

• Incredibly Powerful Remarketing

Remarketing allows you to target the audience who were there on your website in past, they visited your website, used your mobile app, or given you their email address. Through Facebook Adverts you can show ads to them when they visit or shop on other websites, use social media, watch videos, use other mobile apps, or search on Google.

Remarketing is the most powerful way to grow your business. It boost engagement rates by three times and increase conversion rates by two times.

• With Facebook Adverts, Turn Visitors Into Leads and Customers

Facebook Ads brings new traffic to your website, which will later with proper efforts and follow ups leads into leads, new customers and ultimately sales. By using all features of Facebook Adverts you will be able to get maximum benefits of this wide platform. It helps you more frequently capture qualified leads or make sales.

• Key Player Call Buttons

Having large no. of users on Facebook you have the opportunity to capture leads from mobile Facebook users as it is a huge opportunity. For better conversion calls to businesses are more result oriented clicks on websites. That's why Buttons are key players.

• Manage Facebook Ads easily through tools

Many users have misconception about Facebook ads as they think its "too complicated." But nothing is like that, with ad tools you can easily run the Facebook ad campaign for your business website.

Facebook Ads can have huge benefits for all types of businesses. The ROI on Facebook ads is quite amazing and leads to a hugely successful year for your business.

Reference site: https://internetmarketingsection.blogspot.in/2017/04/facebook-advertising-how-it-can-benefit.html

What Is Mobilegeddon & The Google Mobile Friendly Update

Google released a significant new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that’s designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results.

The change is so significant that the date it happened is being referred to by a variety of names. Here at Search Engine Land, we’re calling it mobilegeddon, but sometimes it’s also referred to as mobilepocalyse, mopocalypse or mobocalypse.

One of the best ways to prepare is to test that Google considers your web pages to be mobile-friendly by using its Mobile-Friendly Test tool. More about the algorithm, including ways to bring improve the mobile-friendliness of your pages, is below.


Source link: http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-mobile-friendly-update