All posts by : Amanda Walls

When it comes to driving traffic to your website, increasing your organic click-through rate is essential. If your website is ranking highly on the SERPs, that’s great, but if users aren’t clicking through then your SEO efforts may be wasted. In this blog, we will be discussing five ways to increase your organic click-through rate (CTR) so that users will click through and you can increase your traffic. 

What Is Click-Through Rate? 

Organic click-through rate (CTR) is the number of users who click on your website in the SERPs. You can calculate your organic click-through rate by dividing the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. 

Organic click-through rate is extremely important for SEO because the higher your CTR is, the more traffic you will receive. Boosting your CTR will mean more visitors, more engagement, and ultimately, more conversions. 

5 Steps To Increase Your Click-Through Rate:

1. Optimise Your Title Tags With Descriptive Keywords 

The title of your webpage will be the first thing users see in the SERPs and it can play a significant role for users deciding whether they’ll click through to your site or not. A well optimised title tag can grab attention and communicate relevance at the same time, both of which are essential for increasing CTR. 

When creating title tags you should focus on your most important keywords. For example, if you’re targeting “wooden garden furniture”, your title tag should reflect that phrase. Using your target keywords within your title helps you to match the search intent closely and show users that the content and products on your page is relevant to what they are searching for. 

Your title tag will obviously very much depend on what your web page is, if it is a product/ category page, it should clearly state what those products are, if it is blog style content it may be more of a longer title such as, “How To…” or “The Ultimate Guide to…”. When optimising title tags, as a general rule you should use between 50 and 60 characters for your title – as long as it tells the user exactly what is on your page, and it matches the user intent, users will be more likely to click through. 

2. Optimise Your Meta Description 

Meta descriptions can play a significant role in driving clicks. A meta description is the short description of text that appears below the title in the SERPs, it gives users a brief overview of what they can expect if they click through to your site.

Like title tags, meta descriptions should also contain your target keywords that are relevant to search intent to confirm to users that this page is going to provide them with what they are looking for. 

Your meta description should be between 50 and 160 characters and it should describe exactly how your website is going to provide the user with valuable information that they are looking for to solve their problem. Make it clear to users why they should click onto your webpage rather than a competitor’s page by highlighting your unique selling points (USPs) within the description, this could be free next day delivery, expert advice or 5 star review – whatever makes you stand out from your competition should be included here alongside what the page is offering. 

3. Optimise Your URLs

Although it may seem obvious, your web page’s URL can play a significant role in increasing click-through rates. When creating and optimising our URLs, keep it short and descriptive. Avoid long, complicated URLs. 

Again, you should use your target keywords within our URL to give users and search engines a clear understanding of what your content is about.  

You should also ensure to utilise subdomains within your URL structure to device your site into logical sections. For example, if you are targeting wine glasses, it is likely that they will sit underneath the main glassware category, so your URL will read as follows: www.example.com/glassware/wine-glasses.com.  

A logical, easily readable URL that contains keywords relating to the search intent reassures users that they are clicking on the correct page. 

4. Use Structured Data 

Adding structured data, also known as schema markup, to your website can help search engines better understand your content. It allows search engines, such as Google to display rich results and enhance your SERP listings with reviews, prices and more information to make them more interactive for users. 

Structured data is coded using in-page markup on the page that the information applies to. The structured data should describe the content of that page and this will help Google to further understand what the page is about. 

As previously mentioned, implementing structured data can help to display rich results in the SERPs and this can attract more clicks for your web page because your site is more likely to appear at the top of the SERPs, particularly if you have the featured snippet, it is more interactive than a plain URL and it gives the user more information when they see your site in the URL so they can clearly see that the content on your page is going to match their search intent. 

Types of structured data you can implement can include: 

• ➡️ Product markup – for e-commerce sites, including product markup including price, availability and ratings can attract shoppers more effectively. 
• ➡️ Review schema – displaying user reviews and ratings directly in the search results can showcase credibility and attract more users to click through. 
• ➡️ FAQ schema – answering commonly asked questions and including FAQ schema can help your content appear as featured snippets or people also asked and can help to attract more traffic to your site.

Implementing structured data can be extremely beneficial to increase your organic click-through rate – to have a look at what structured data you currently have implemented on your site, you can use the Rich Results Test tool to see what is currently found on the page as well as any errors or suggestions for your structured data. 

5. Create Fast Loading Pages 

Site speed is a very important part of click-through rate – if a user clicks on your site and the web page doesn’t load quick enough, the chances are that they will click off and go to a competitor site and your bounce rate will increase a lot. Page speed is also one of Google’s ranking factors so if your page is too slow, it can have an impact on rankings.  

There are many different ways you can optimise your site speed including: 

• ➡️ Optimising your images – reduce your image size without compromising the quality 
• ➡️ Reduce any unused JavaScript 
• ➡️ Make sure all images have an explicit height and width set 
• ➡️ Eliminate render-blocking resources 

How you can optimise your site speed will vary depending on your website, in order to find ways of making your site speed faster, use PageSpeed Insights. This tool will allow you to enter your URL and it will provide you with diagnostics and opportunities on how to improve the overall site speed for your website. You can also do this on a page by page basis if there are particular pages which you would like to improve. 

Summary 

Increasing your organic click-through rate is a combination of many different strategies. By optimising and following these five steps, you can increase your click-through rate bringing in more traffic, better engagement and potentially higher conversion rates. 

It is important to consistently refine all of the above elements to ensure your website is always targeting and meeting the needs of your users – make sure to stay up to date and constantly optimise your website for SEO purposes and you can make sure your website brings in relevant traffic through the SERPs. 

If you need help increasing your organic click-through rate and aren’t sure where to start, get in touch with our team of SEO experts today and we can help you maximise the traffic coming to your website by optimising your website to increase organic click-through rate. 

If you have experienced a loss in organic traffic, it can be a worrying and frustrating challenge. Whether your website is for a personal blog or a large e-commerce site, a drop in organic traffic can potentially mean a drop in rankings and can affect your visibility, engagement, conversions and ultimately your revenue. If you have noticed a drop in your organic traffic, don’t panic as there are steps you can take to find out what has happened and how you can recover your rankings and traffic in order to increase conversions. 

In this blog, we will discuss why your organic traffic could have taken a drop, how to identify the cause and actions you can take to regain your traffic.  

Initial Analysis 

Understanding the causes behind your drop in traffic is essential in order to know how to address these causes, so the first step if you have noticed a drop in organic traffic is to conduct an initial analysis. 

Use tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Analytics and Google Search Console to review traffic decreases – you can identify which pages of your website have been affected and look at specific dates to see if you can find any information about a potential cause. 

There can be many potential reasons as to why you’re organic traffic has dropped including: 

• ➡️ Google algorithm updates – Google releases hundreds of search algorithm updates every year. While some are minor, some core updates can significantly affect search rankings. These updates can impact how Google evaluates website content and ranks pages and if your website is not providing the most helpful and relevant content, you may experience a loss in traffic. 

• ➡️ Technical SEO problems – technical issues can prevent Google and other search engines from properly crawling and indexing your pages which can in turn affect your rankings, visibility and traffic. If Google cannot effectively crawl your website, it may not be able to index it and it therefore won’t appear in the SERPs. 

• ➡️ Content issues – personally, I would say that content is the backbone of SEO and it is a huge part of SEO overall. If your content is outdated, irrelevant or thin, it is likely that it won’t rank highly and you can lose out on a lot of potential organic traffic. 

• ➡️ Competition – another reason you may lose traffic is simply because your competitors are actively improving their SEO strategies. If a competitor has updated their content, built backlinks and are providing optimised content, they may increase their rankings and could push your content further down the page, potentially reducing clicks and traffic.

• ➡️ SERP intent change – SERP intent is vital when it comes to optimising your website – it is so important that your website is giving the users what they want. This means that if the user intent changes, and your website is not providing users with the information they are looking for, you’ll probably lose rankings so that Google can provide users with the most helpful and relevant content. 

How To Figure Out The Cause Of Your Traffic Loss 

There are many ways in which you can figure out the causes of your traffic loss: 

Google Search Console

• ➡️ Analyse the performance report to understand which pages have experienced traffic drops. 
• ➡️ Review the search results report to analyse which search queries are bringing in traffic and which queries have dropped off.
• ➡️ Analyse the page indexing report to look through any crawl errors and any technical issues that could be preventing Google from crawling and indexing your site. 
• ➡️ Utilise the page experience report to ensure your website is providing a good page experience. 

Google Analytics

• ➡️ Identify which pages have seen the biggest traffic drop off in the user acquisition report – comparing current data to historical data is a good idea to see what has dropped off. If it is applicable, make sure to factor in seasonality.  
• ➡️ Look at the highest revenue driving pages to uncover which pages are having the biggest impact due to the loss in organic traffic. 
• ➡️ Analyse user behaviour metrics such as engaged sessions, engagement rate, engagement time and bounce rate to see if there are engagement issues on particular landing pages.

Ahrefs 

• ➡️ Review which pages have seen decreases in rankings for specific keywords. 
• ➡️ Check keyword volumes to analyse any trends or decreases.
• ➡️ Look into search intent for target keywords and review whether or not your landing pages are matching the intent. 
• ➡️ Analyse your backlink profile against competitors. 
• ➡️ Review how competitors are ranking for target keywords and if they have seen similar decreases or increases. 

Algorithm Updates 

• ➡️ Research whether there have been any algorithm updates – check what these updates were regarding and align the dates of the update with your loss to see if you have been impacted. 

Review Website Changes 

• ➡️ Identify any recent website changes; content, design, or technical to see if there are any issues with these changes or if these could have negatively impacted your SEO performance. 
• ➡️ Check your robots.txt file and sitemap to ensure there are no issues.

Conduct A Competitor Analysis 

• ➡️ Analyse your competitors’ sites to see if they have made any significant changes that could be impacting your rankings.
• ➡️ Check their content, backlink and on-page efforts to see if they are actively updating and refreshing their website for SEO purposes. 

Ways To Increase Organic Traffic 

Once you have identified the cause of your traffic drop, you can now start to take actionable steps to improve your rankings and traffic so that you can increase conversions and revenue. 

Technical SEO 

Start by addressing any technical issues that could be preventing your site from being crawled and indexing. There are many different technical fixes but below are some of the key areas to ensure they are working correctly and are optimised for SEO. 

• ➡️ Crawl Errors 

Use Google Search Console to identify crawl errors and ensure you fix all issues that are preventing Google from crawling your site. Errors such as 404, page not found or any other 4xx issues should be resolved to ensure Google can crawl your website correctly. 

• ➡️ Indexing Errors

It is important to make sure that Google is indexing all of the important pages from your site so firstly, review your sitemap to ensure that there are no errors and all necessary pages are included. Secondly, review your robots.txt file and make sure there are only pages that shouldn’t be indexed in there. If there are urls in your robot.txt file that you want to be indexed, make sure to remove these and optimise them for search engines. 

• ➡️ Site Speed 

Site speed is important for user experience and search engines so optimising it is highly recommended. Using PageSpeed insights, you can assess your site speed and look for areas for improvement. Consider compressing images and minimising JavaScript to improve page loading times. 

• ➡️ Mobile Friendliness

Google uses mobile-first indexing, and with the majority of users using their mobile device to conduct searches, it is extremely important that your website is mobile friendly. Make sure to check that your site is responsive on all devices and make sure to make any necessary improvements – you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check your website’s mobile usability and from there, you can see if you need to make any changes to your site. 

Content 

Once you have identified areas of your website that have seen a decrease in traffic, you can update your content accordingly. Outdated and thin content can cause traffic losses over time as they are not providing users with helpful information, so it is important that you are regularly updating your content to ensure it is satisfying the user intent by staying relevant and providing informative content. 

To update your content, you should conduct a content audit to evaluate the quality of your content and identify which pages are a priority to update. When updating your content, ensure to carry out the following steps:

• ➡️ Keyword research 
• ➡️ Content updates 
• ➡️ Internal Linking 

It is important to make sure your content is relevant, unique and helpful to users. By improving your content you can increase rankings and engagement and recover lost traffic. 

Backlinks 

Backlinks are an essential part of any SEO strategy and a high quality backlink profile can have a large impact on your website’s organic rankings. A drop in the quality of backlinks to your site can therefore have a large impact on your organic traffic. Focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites to improve the quality of your backlink profile. Continuously work on strengthening your backlinks by creating high quality Digital PR campaigns and by creating high quality content that can naturally attract links. Gaining high quality backlinks can increase the authority of your site and can have great impacts on your SEO performance.

User Experience 

User experience is highly important when it comes to engagement, so make sure you are optimising your site for your users first. Google’s primary goal is to help users, so optimising your site for your users is therefore essential. When improving user experience, make sure to optimise the following: 

• ➡️ Meta title and description 
• ➡️ Readability 
• ➡️ Design elements 
• ➡️ Navigation 
• ➡️ Engagement 
• ➡️ CRO analysis 

By creating a good user experience throughout your site, you can improve engagement and conversion rates. 

Optimising Your Site For SEO

The above information can be extremely helpful if you have experienced a drop in organic traffic. However, the main thing to remember is to make sure your SEO strategy is ongoing. Focus on creating high quality content, ensuring your website is in good technical stance, conducting regular audits and keeping up to date with industry news and updates. This will allow you to proactively stop your traffic from decreasing in the first place.

By staying informed, you can make sure your website is optimised at all times and adapt your SEO strategy accordingly. 

Experiencing a drop in  traffic can be difficult but by navigating it carefully and carefully analysing what has happened and how you can fix it, you can work to regain any lost traffic. 

If you have noticed a loss in your organic traffic and you need help understanding what has happened and how to regain this traffic, make sure to get in touch with our team of SEO experts. We can help you create a targeted SEO strategy and increase your organic traffic in order to meet the goals of your business, whether that be engagement, conversions, or revenue – we can help.

In September 2023, Google ran its helpful content update, focused on improving the ranking of high-quality content. In preparation for the update we undertook an audit of our clients’ websites to ensure they were all meeting the mark. We analysed just how helpful the content was and where improvements could be made. So what were we looking for? And how can you make sure your content adheres to the ‘helpful content’ guidelines?

What is ‘helpful content?’

Helpful content can be summed up as content that is created for the user, not for the search engine. Humans are typing queries into search engines,  so the answers should be written for humans. If the answers have been written to serve an algorithm or a search engine, then the average user isn’t going to find that helpful or enjoyable. When done correctly, helpful content will boost your SEO because the information you provide will demonstrate that your pages put people first, not crawlers.

What did the 2023 helpful content update add?

A year after the helpful content update was launched, Google made some further changes. It’s important to have a clear understanding of what was added, to inform your SEO strategies. Whilst nothing too dramatic was introduced, there are a few things to be aware of:

• ➡️ The 2023 update demonstrated more of an openness to AI-written content, as long as it’s still providing value. Google specifically removed the words “written by people” and just wrote “helpful content created for people in search results.”
  
  So, no more is AI-generated content an absolute no-go. Go ahead and use it to support your content strategy, but proceed with caution and ensure the writing remains well-written and informative.
  
• ➡️ The update had an emphasis on User Experience, placing more focus on things like mobile-friendliness and website design. For Google to deem your site helpful, it might therefore be a good idea to give it a quick technical audit.

• ➡️ We saw a crackdown on third-party hosted content with Google warning against placing low-quality content on subdomains to try and improve search ranking. They said: 
  
  “if that content is largely independent of the main site’s purpose or produced without close supervision or the involvement of the primary site, we recommend that it should be blocked from being indexed by Google.”
  
• ➡️ And finally, the update targeted the popular practice of updating content with minor changes and a recent date to appear fresh in search results. No shortcuts allowed I’m afraid guys.

Why is Google bothered?

Search has come a long way since the simple days of keyword stuffing. 45% of people using their mobiles online now use voice search and it’s no wonder. A whole generation has grown up with search engines as an everyday tool and we are now moving towards using search much more naturally than ever before. Google wants to make searching and finding what we want even easier, and is striving to understand meaning, context and intent far beyond a few keywords. 

The helpful content update is part of Google’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) masterplan. Essentially, Google wants to give users what they want rather than users having to guess which words to type to get the best results. The helpful content update ensures that websites and pages are providing the best, most informative content possible.

How to write helpful content

The easiest way to target this mammoth subject is to break it down into key areas:

• ➡️ The User
• ➡️ E-E-A-T
• ➡️ Semantics
• ➡️ Copy

1. The user (you, me, them, us)

No matter what you are writing about, always (I repeat always) remember who you are writing for. Understanding your audience is key to writing content that will be helpful to them. There is no use writing about the quality and composition of a leather dog lead if your client’s target market is price focused. To make that point clearer, here is how I would approach user intent when setting out writing content:

Industry/product/service: what does your client sell and what are the typical pain points when selling that product? Our client in the gardening industry sells high end garden furniture. People searching for garden furniture are likely to be concerned with quality, price and maintenance. So I would structure my content around these pillars:

Demographic: Our gardening client has an affluent target market and wants to hone in on the quality of their product rather than the final price. Therefore, their customer is less likely to be typing price related queries and more likely to be considering longevity and overall value. 

Possible queries: Now that you’ve broken down your user you can consider what they might actually be searching for. Tools like alsoasked or answerthepublic are great for researching real queries that real users are regularly typing into search engines. Even a basic Google search on something like ‘garden furniture sets’ can give you some direction.

This approach can be applied to all clients. Understanding the nuances of the end user enables you to write content that helps them find answers even if they don’t not know exactly what they are searching for.

2. E-E-A-T (aka friends don’t lie)

Much is made of E-E-A-T, or experience, expertise, authority and trust, not being a ranking factor. Not that I’d argue with Google, but the concept of E-E-A-T is intrinsic to helpful content so, for me, it follows that if you are creating expertly written, authoritative and trustworthy content you are being more helpful and, ergo, you will likely rank higher. 

When I set about integrating E-E-A-T into copy, I think about three key areas:

Bullet points and numbering 

This helps you to clearly set out your content and improve the user experience. The information held in these lists can be some of the most valuable on the page, allowing for featured snippet opportunities and, on a more basic level, setting the content apart so the user can easily identify it (remember what we said about writing for the user). It can be something as simple as a list of Do’s and Don’ts, but having these distinct sections of information demonstrates that you know what you are talking about and aren’t afraid to show it. 

Linking 

Linking is the pat on the back of the digital world. It shows search engines that you have mates vouching for you and it helps users to understand and trust what you are saying. Adding internal links to your content can direct traffic through a clear marketing funnel and allows you to utilise content pillaring effectively. Linking related articles together will form one big picture on your pillar topic and signal that you have plenty of expertise and authority in your subject.

And what about external linking? This is when you point to a website outside of your organisation and say ‘look they can back me up.’ It shows that you aren’t pulling information from thin air and can corroborate your points. In some instances, for example, Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) industries, external linking can be especially helpful because the subject matter requires an extra degree of expertise and trust. When researching your content, keep a list of any useful links and weave them into your final piece where relevant and appropriate.

But remember, with the 2023 update’s emphasis on user experience, it’s super important that these links are all working correctly. Tools like Google’s Lighthouse will assess the mobile-friendliness of your links, while Screaming Frog or Ahrefs will quickly identify any broken links.

Hard facts and figures 

Firstly, don’t make stuff up! This might be obvious but we’ve all been there – convinced we remember something only to find out it wasn’t quite right. For instance, if I’m writing an About Us page, I make sure to have an in-depth list of facts on the client to hand, so that my content has gravitas. 

Second to this, I always look to see where I can add value into my content with social proof, like reviews, featured articles or any accreditations. This might be a simple banner at the footer of a blog but it shows users and SERPs that the page, and therefore the site, can be trusted. Author profiling is another great way to double down on the information you provide so, where possible, include an author bio.

3. Semantic SEO (hey Bert)

Semantic SEO goes back to meeting your users needs. In short, it’s the use of keywords and phrases that relate to your chosen topic. Think of it as a natural way of speaking. If you were talking about your morning routine, you would naturally mention breakfast, showering and leaving the house. You wouldn’t veer off on a tangent and start talking about putting your pyjamas on. This is what Google refers to as salience.

In 2019 Google launched BERT, an algorithm which impacted 10% of all search queries straight away. BERT is an AI demo that will tell you how salient, and therefore relevant, your content is to your intended topic. So, as we touched on in the morning routine example, you should be using lexis that is relevant to your subject matter and shows your audience that what they have landed on is exactly what they’re looking for. Start off with some keyword research to identify your core keywords for your topic and don’t be afraid to use common sense as well! 

For example, if I was writing category copy for a piano retailer, I would use the top tier keywords around that specific piano brand but also talk about keys, pedals and soundboards to effectively demonstrate what the content was about. This is useful for content pillaring too, and those all-important linking opportunities. You can then run your content through BERT and get a salience score to see how it stacks up against other similar content.

BERT will also show you if it is a positive, negative or neutral piece of content. This doesn’t refer to its state of mind but rather its relevance to other similar articles. If you were writing content about the best apps for 2024, BERT should give you a neutral score as it isn’t an emotive subject. Or, if you were writing about how to be more motivated in the mornings, your copy may need to have a more positive sentiment score. Carefully consider the value your content offers, who it is targeted at and what needs they are trying to meet in searching for that content. This will help you achieve the right level of sentiment.

4. Copywriting (your English teacher would be proud)

Given half the chance, I’d talk about the virtues of good grammar and syntax all day long. Don’t underestimate the importance of simply writing well when it comes to helpful content. Readers don’t want to read overly long sentences with no clear end point. Think of every piece of content as a conversation. If you were asking someone for directions and they digress into how they used to live nearby, you would quickly forget the valuable information. So stick to the point and set out a clear beginning, middle and end before writing anything. I never start any article without drafting a brief first. Then, when I do come to actually crafting the content here are some of the basic rules I live by:

• H2 & H3 headings – long blocks of content are off putting and make it harder to find the info you are looking for so always separate with headings.

• Short simple sentences – ideally a sentence should be no longer than 20 words. If it is then commas are your friend.

• Follow questions with an answer – even if the answer is ‘it depends’ – give a definite answer first and then follow up with any variables.
  
• Use simple language – the average reading age for the UK is 9 years old. Of course, this can change depending on the topic and who you’re writing for (a professional audience might require more jargon). But the golden rule is to keep your content clear and understandable. Simple synonyms are a copywriter’s best friend.

In summary

Google will definitely thank you for setting your content out clearly and using good English. They will high five you if you have some good E-E-A-T signals and they will get down on one knee if you are meeting the needs of your users (sorry I got carried away).

Writing helpful content is mainly about matching user intent, and the 2023 helpful content update is just part of making search engines as effective as possible for the people using them – us. So perhaps the biggest takeaway when writing for humans is to be human. Don’t try to trick an algorithm into trusting you, just be trustworthy. There are SEO specialists and data analysts who can take care of the technical aspects of SEO, but as a content writer you should be focused on creating content that is enjoyable, valuable and genuine. So, to summarise, as a content writer, here are  the basic steps to get you started with writing helpful content: 

– Define your user and their needs

– Find opportunities for bullet or number lists

– Include internal and external links

– Fact check your content and ideally include evidence or social proof

– Research keywords and optimise for salience and sentiment 

– Use good English and grammar

– Write for your audience not a search engine (you should have figured that out by now)

If you need a hand writing SEO optimised helpful content, get in touch with us.