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/

SEO in 2018: Optimizing for voice search | SEO Techniques 2018

SEO in 2018: Optimizing for voice search

Columnist Bryson Meunier argues that by understanding the nuances of voice search, marketers can do a better job of helping searchers find exactly what they're looking for when they're asking for it by voice.

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller recently asked for feedback on why webmasters are looking for Google to separate voice search queries in Search Console. If you, like me, want to see voice searches in Google Search Console, definitely submit your feedback on Twitter as John requested.


 Twitter Ads info and privacy:
I lived through the very beginnings of mobile SEO, where many people thought mobile search behavior would be completely different from desktop search behavior only to find that much of it is the same. So I see why Mueller and others don’t necessarily understand why Search Console users would want to see voice queries separately. Some queries are the same whether they’re typed into a computer at a desktop or spoken across the room to a Google Home.

That being said, there are some very good reasons to want voice search data. Optimizing for voice search requires some slightly different tactics from those for traditional SEO, and having insight into these queries could help you provide a better experience for those searching by voice.

Not convinced you should care about voice search? Here are three reasons I think you should:

1. More visibility on featured snippets
One of the interesting things about Google Home is that when it answers a question with information from the web, it will cite the source of the information by saying the website’s name, and it will often send a link to the searcher’s Google Home app.

Currently, Google Home and Google Assistant read snippets from sites that are ranked in “position zero” and have been granted a featured snippet. This is why more people than ever are talking about how to optimize for featured snippets. If you look at the articles published on the topic (according to what Google has indexed), you’ll see that the number of articles about how to optimize for featured snippets has grown 178 percent in the past year:

Understanding voice search queries could help us better understand the types of queries that surface featured snippets. As marketers, we could then devote time and resources to providing the best answer for the most common featured snippets in hopes of getting promoted to position zero.

This helps marketers drive credibility to their brand when Google reads their best answer to the searcher, potentially driving traffic to the site from the Google Home app.

And this helps Google because they benefit when featured snippets provide good answers and the searcher is satisfied with the Google Home results. The better the service, the more consumers will use it — and potentially buy more Google Home units or Android phones because they think the service is worthwhile.

If bad featured snippets are found because no one is trying to optimize for those queries, or no featured snippets are found and the Google Home unit must apologize for not being able to help with that query yet, Google potentially loses market share to Amazon in the smart speaker race and Apple in the personal assistant race.

So this one is a win-win, Google. You need more great responses competing for position zero, and we want to help. But first, we need to know what types of queries commonly trigger featured snippets from voice search, and that’s why we need this data in Search Console today.

2. Better way to meet consumer demand and query intent based on context
We saw two major things happen in the early days of mobile SEO when we compared desktop and mobile queries:
Searchers often used the same keywords in mobile search that they did in desktop search; however, certain keywords were used much more often on mobile search than desktop search (and vice versa).

Whole new categories of queries emerged as searchers realized that GPS and other features of mobile search could allow them to use queries that just didn’t work in desktop search.
An example of the first point is a query like “store hours,” which peaks in volume when shoppers are headed to stores:

An example of the second is “near me” queries, which have grown dramatically with mobile search and mostly occur on mobile phones:

The mode of search therefore changes search behavior as searchers understand what types of searches work well on mobile but not on desktop.

Consider this in the context of voice search. There are certain types of queries that only work on Google Home and Google Assistant. “Tell me about my day” is one. We can guess some of the others, but if we had voice search data labeled, we wouldn’t have to.

How would this be useful to marketers and site owners? Well, it’s hard to say exactly without looking at the data, but consider the context in which someone might use voice search: driving to the mall to get a present for the holidays or asking Google Home if a store down the street is still open. Does the searcher still say, “Holiday Hut store hours?” Or do they say something like, “OK Google, give me the store hours for the Holiday hut at the local mall?” Or even, “How late is Holiday Hut open?”

Google should consider all these queries synonymous in this case, but in some cases, there could be significant differences between voice search behavior and typed search behavior that will affect how a site owner optimizes a page.

Google has told us that voice searches are different, in that they’re 30 times more likely to be action queries than typed searches. In many cases, these won’t be actionable to marketers — but in some cases, they will be. And in order to properly alter our content to connect with searchers, we’ll first need to understand the differences.

In my initial look at how my own family searched on Google Home, I found significant differences between what my family asked Home and what I ask my smartphone, so there’s reason to believe that there are new query categories in voice search that would be relevant to marketers. We know that there are queries — like “Hey Google, talk to Dustin from Stranger Things” and “Buy Lacroix Sparkling Water from Target” — that are going to give completely different results in voice search on Google Home and Assistant from the results in traditional search. And these queries, like “store hours” queries, are likely to be searched much more on voice search than in traditional search.

The problem is, how do we find that “near me” of voice search if we don’t have the data?

3. Understanding extent of advertising and optimization potential for new voice-based media
The last reason to pay attention to voice search queries is probably the most important — for both marketers and Google.

Let me illustrate it in very direct terms, as it’s not just an issue that I believe marketers have in general, but one that affects me personally as well.

Recently, one of my company’s competitors released survey information that suggested people really want to buy tickets through smart speakers.

As a marketer and SEO who sells tickets, I can take this information and invest in Actions on Google Development and marketing so that our customers can say, “OK Google, talk to Vivid Seats about buying Super Bowl tickets,” and get something from Google Home other than, “I’m sorry but I don’t know how to help with that yet.” (Disclosure: Vivid Seats is my employer.)

Or maybe I could convince my company to invest resources in custom content, as Disney and Netflix have done with Google. But am I really going to do it based on this one data point? Probably not.

As with mobile search in 2005, we don’t know how many people are using voice search in Google Home and Google Assistant yet, so we can’t yet know how big the opportunity is or how fast it’s growing. Voice search is in the “innovators and early adopters” stage of the technology adoption life cycle, and any optimizations done for it are not likely to reach a mainstream audience just yet. Since we don’t have data to the contrary from Google or Amazon, we’ll have to stay with this assumption and invest at a later date, when the impact of this technology on the market will likely mean a significant return on our investment.

If we had that data from Google, I would be able to use it to make a stronger case for early adoption and investment than just using survey data alone. For example, I would be able to say to the executives, “Look how many people are searching for branded queries in voice search and getting zero results! By investing resources in creating a prototype for Google Home and Assistant search, we can satisfy navigational queries that are currently going nowhere and recoup our investment.” Instead, because we don’t have that data from Google, the business case isn’t nearly as strong.

Google has yet to monetize voice search in any meaningful way, but when advertising appears on Google Home, this type of analysis will become even more essential.
                                                   
                                                   
                             Best SEO Company India






Source link: https://searchengineland.com/seo-2018-optimizing-voice-search-288078