Our SEO team spend a lot of their time researching best practices, Google announcements and reading articles about the latest SEO trends. Many of our clients are familiar with SEO, and often come to us with a brief of ‘Being at the top of Google’ – but what’s the difference between the lucrative top spot and the other organic page one positions?
In this blog, we discuss why position one is so lucrative, and the importance of appearing on page one of the search engine results page to get real results and boost your click-through rate (CTR).
Is position one really the be-all and end-all?
Well, yes. There has been tons of specialist research into SEO, and figures have shown that the organic position one gets around 32% of all clicks, and that organic results in positions one to five benefit from 68% of all click-throughs. Positions six to ten on page one tend to gain only 3.73% of all clicks – so your position makes a substantial difference to the number of clicks you can expect to gather from your SEO efforts.
Studies have also shown that 94-95% of users won’t visit page two of the search results and beyond, and will either give up or try a different search term if they aren’t satisfied with the results on page one.
This shows the importance of not only ranking well, but using keyword research and competitor insights to get you as far up as possible on page one.
The SEO and CTR cycle
In simple terms, the stronger your click-through rate, the better your SEO. The more clicks and popularity that your website earns, the better your domain authority and this will create a snowball effect – leading to more clicks, more popularity and an improvement to your organic rank on an ongoing basis.
How do I boost my CTR?
Although there are over 200 factors when Google calculate organic ranks, there are some tips we can impart based on critical research and widely-accepted best practices. With organic search, it’s important to remember that all your users will see is your Title Tag, URL and Meta Description when deciding whether or not to click on your website, so it’s crucial to write these with SEO in mind.
Here are some research-backed tips to boost your organic CTR:
- Use numbers in your title or headline (shown to boost CTR by up to 36%)
- Use emotive words to create emotion (discover, explore, mind-blowing, secret, amazing, life-changing etc)
- Use a descriptive URL that reflects your keywords and/or headline. For example, for blogs, rather than using: mywebsite.com/blog/blog92828727, try www.mywebsite.com/blog/use-keywords-here-to-show-your-topic
- Create a meta description which covers the topic of your page, blog or news item which will encourage them to click to find out more.
Ready to give your organic rankings a boost? Get in touch with the SEO experts at Blue Bee, or claim your free SEO Audit to get started.
