Getting organic traffic straight from the
search engines is one of the major goals of most websites. By ranking well in
Google’s search results, it’s possible to attract lots of visitors to your
site, and the best thing is, those clicks are free!
As many people know, though, it’s not as
simple as making your website and seeing it rise straight to the top of the
rankings. To rank on Google, you need to do a lot of things right, and it takes
time to get your site climbing up the rankings.
However, when you do start to rank, you
have all sorts of possibilities opened up to you. The question is, how do you
make the most of your new ranking ability and maximize your number of clicks?
Aim to Rank Higher
Seeing your page ranked on Google is a
great feeling. Whatever ranking you see next to your website, it’s proof that
what you’re doing is working to some extent. Unfortunately, if you’re not
ranking on the top page of results, though, it’s not going to translate into clicks.
Studies show that over 75% of clicks go to the pages that show on the first page, so everyone else is left to fight it out for scraps. What’s more, a
huge amount of these clicks go to the top 3 results. The first result position
gets 33.5% of the clicks, the second gets 17.6%, and the third gets 11.4% of
the clicks.
This shows that you always have to be
aiming to move up the rankings. Moving from 3rd to 1st
can triple the number of clicks you get, so don’t settle just because you’re in
the top 10. Every move you make up the rankings can make a big difference to
the traffic you see.
Win the Featured Snippet
You may have noticed that Google has made
changes to the way it presents its results in recent years. For many searches,
the first thing you see on the results page these days is what’s known as the
featured snippet.
The featured snippet is a short summary,
taken from one of the top results pages and presented right at the top of the
page. This summary is so prominent that it’s commonly referred to as position
zero and is highly sort after.
While the featured snippet might seem like
your golden ticket to the top of the rankings, you’ve still got to put in a lot
of work to win this position. 99.58% of featured snippets come from results pages that rank on page
one, so you’ve still got to be high up the
rankings to be in with a change of winning the snippet.
Nevertheless, optimizing for the featured
snippet gives you an excellent chance of boosting your click-through rate.
Work on Your Meta Descriptions
A meta description is the text that is
shown underneath your title and web address. The meta description is your
155-word opportunity to grab people’s attention and win their click.
These meta descriptions can often be
overlooked, but they can make a big difference. If you don’t make your own
description, then Google will simply take some text from your page that it
thinks is relevant, and you miss out on the chance to earn some extra clicks.
While the first position in the rankings
gets the most clicks, people do scan the meta description of the top few
results, and if you can use your meta description wisely, then you can really
increase the number of clicks you get.
Find the balance between a concise
description of your page and appealing to your audience, all while making sure
you’ve got your keyword in there. It’s not easy in such a small number of
words, but the perfect meta description can make a big difference.
Schema Mark-up
As mentioned earlier, Google has made lots
of changes to the way it presents results in recent years. Depending on what
type of query you type in, you’re likely to see a range of different features
presented to you, such as local packs, shopping, reviews, video and images.
Appearing in a feature like local packs can
have a huge impact on your CTR, but you’ve got to be able to optimize your
website to do this. This means effectively implementing schema mark-up to
communicate with the search engines to tell them important details about your
website.
This can be slightly difficult, so it’s
worth looking out for some local seo packages to help you ensure you’re featuring prominently in local packs.
There are lots of different features that
can be optimized for, but certainly, if you’re a bricks and mortar business,
you’re going to want to show up when people search for services in your area.
Just because the internet allows you to reach people all over the world doesn’t
necessarily mean you want to reach everyone. Google knows some websites need
visitors in a certain location, and this is their way of doing that.
Schema mark-up helps you show your website
how you want it to be shown, and this can make a big difference to your CTR.
