10 ways to organically increase your click-through rates

In the online world, your click-through rates can be likened to the playmaker in a football team — they create opportunities for you to score a goal. But is your digital playmaker as potent as you think? Are you really scoring those hits (aka conversions)? Sometimes, you may be doing so. If this is the case, pat yourself on the back. After all, you deserve it.

To cut to the chase, your links are capable of attracting more clicks than they currently do. Potential is a boundless ocean in this digital era, which you should strive to explore. You’re merely operating at a fraction of your true potential. Sure, competitive website analysis can help you figure out what your competitors are doing. However, you also need a game plan that caters to your unique selling points. Sit tight and kick back as we unbox ten solid hacks for upping your click-through rate.

Why Click-Through Rates Are Important

The ‘click-through rate’ refers to the number of clicks a specific link records, divided by the number of times it appears online. Website managers use this metric to assess the popularity of a link among a site’s visitors.

Every industry has distinct click-through rates. For example, the average click-through rate for e-commerce via email is a mere 2.07%.

If your link or advertisement pops up two hundred times but receives only one click, it has a click-through rate of 0.5%. Here, no one needs to tell you your digital ship is in an SOS situation.

Source: Wikimedia

You should care about the click-through rate of whatever you are promoting on your website. That’s because a high average rate indicates your link or advertisement is generating traffic.

When this is the case, you also receive insight on effective keywords to target. This insight is particularly important when you have to create more advertising copy for your website.

Organic Ways to Boost Your Click-Through Rate

Putting the below into practice will come with a commensurate increase in your click-through rates:

1. Identify and Assess Your Weakest Links. Literally

This is a good starting point, and effective task manager software can help to ease things along. Before achieving your greatest web hits, start by running through your greatest misses!

Many of your links will currently be swirling in search engine obscurity, but not to worry. In a way, they sunk to the depths to enable your future links to rise through the ranks. Simply take notes to help you do what you must.

Start by visiting your Google Search console. Download your traffic analysis, scroll to Performance, select Queries, and check your average click-through rates.

Just the way vendor SKU helps vendors track inventory movement, this information can help you track page conversion. With this, you will be able to see the pages with the lowest click-through rates. This way, you have a gameplan highlighting the pages in need of the most tweaking.

2. Take Out The Excess Fluff

Hot on the heels of the identification of weak links is the elimination of fluff.

Slotting in the right keywords definitely goes a long way in search engine optimization. At the same time, you should do away with keyword-focused or keyword-heavy title tags. These tags do not inspire high click-through rates.

Alternatively put, you should refrain from being too on the nose with every keyword. Sometimes targeting the same keyword too often can actually negatively affect your page conversions. A team calendar that keeps you on schedule can help when multiple links need to be tweaked.

The best apps for productivity can also make this process simpler. To hasten this along, you may need to hop on the best free texting app.

3. Spark Graphic Life Into Your Links

In the digital sphere, as in the case of the offline sphere, pictures are critical. Like the smarter use of keywords, pictures can go a long way toward boosting link clicks.

Data from over 5,000 campaigns was recently analyzed. According to the analysis, campaigns with images had a 42% higher click-through rate than campaigns without.

Across every social media platform in existence, images consistently elicit a spike in engagement. The mass affinity for visual content should not come as a surprise to anybody. Words can only go so far before pictures and videos take the baton and paint a lucid picture.

So, incorporate even more visual content. Beyond what was recommended above, you can also explore the compelling subset of UX design strategy.

Source: Makeameme

4. Use Straightforward URLs

The use of straightforward URLs naturally follows the removal of excess fluff. Since there are many pages online for your audience to comb through, send a clear message with yours. If you fail to impress a user at first instance, you’ll likely never get the chance again.

To organically increase your click-through rate, you must ensure your content can be deduced from your slug. Do not just stick in randomly arranged words and symbols.

Ensure your URL clearly displays the brand. If it also hints at the nature of the web content, it’s likely to attract more clicks.

5. Throw In A Little Sentiment

At the end of the day, you are dealing with humans. Appealing to human psychology, dispositions, and emotions may just seal the click-through deal you want for your web pages.

SEO-focused titles are also effective, but emotional hooks are irresistible and dramatically increase the click-through rate.

There may still be the need to strike a balance between SEO keywords and the use of emotional adjectives. You should take this into consideration during the optimized web design stage. You can resort to task manager software to aid your strategy.

All for the win!

6. Carry Your Immediate Neighbours Along

While it’s okay to seek global reach, you must not lose sight of home. If anything, it has always been much easier and more comfortable to emerge as a local champion - especially online.

Even if you remain unconvinced, there’s a need to adjust your approach in response to crucial trends. Given the spike in mobile searches from 2011, Google is shifting its attention to mobile.

Source: Unsplash

Essentially, our Google search engine result pages are now more tailored to and dependent on our immediate location.

Striving to specify your immediate location via your content can be daunting. A team calendar that keeps you on schedule can help you balance your web pages for a global and local outlook. This way, you can modify/create content for both sets of audiences.

7. String In Structured Data

This can also be referred to as schema markup. This is the website strategy designed to elicit more detailed search results for users.

When small businesses are the clients, website hosts should ensure a close working relationship. Sometimes, this might involve scouring for the top productivity tools or the best free texting app.

Persons, local businesses, products and offers, articles, and local events are common schema types. They make websites more visible on the SERP, which increases the likelihood of more clicks.

Eventually, websites with detailed and carefully curated structured data will become regarded as contextual authorities. Until then, keep on improving your data presentation.

8. Break It Down In Numbers

Another effective organic means by which your click-through fortunes can change is numbered lists.

A link may have the perfect title geared towards SEO. However, the preference of users for numbered articles has been clearly demonstrated by numerous reports.

A Moz report shows adding headlines with numbers to articles and pages is capable of boosting click-through rates by 36%. This was considerably more than articles with titles addressing readers, which came in at 21%.

There is a perceived user preference for precision and a range of options to explore. As a result, headlines without numbered lists are possibly perceived as vague and less appealing.

Feel free to hop on this bandwagon!

9. Adopt Multiple Headline Styles

There’s nothing stopping you from putting your all in in this hard-hitting digital warzone. Feel free to adopt multiple winning formulas to get your desired results, and in earnest.

Here, you are pooling the best approaches for maximum effect. While consistency is essential for building and maintaining a digital identity, flexibility remains a virtue.

This logic applies to trying out the best apps for productivity. It also applies to searching for the best free texting app in order to arrive at a preference.

Try out different headline styles to appeal to different audiences. This is a crucial tip for boosting copy conversion rates. This approach sees to the coverage of the widest range of site visitors possible. The more visitors you get, the higher the likelihood of an increased click-through rate.

Source: Coschedule

10. Screen Prospective Headlines Using Google AdWords

Finally, the Google AdWords service can be used to screen or filter prospective link headlines. It assesses your ideas and then offers alternative and more effective expressions.

It is also an ideal tool to gauge as many solid headline alternatives as possible before take-off. This process is void of any intrusion into your schema whatsoever.

A team calendar that keeps you on schedule can come in handy in this instance. This is majorly the case where a team of professionals is involved in the screening. For solo and team efforts alike, a task manager software can be relied upon to ease the task of screening headlines.

Pull Out All The Stops to Boost Your Click-Through Rates

There is also the concept of domain authority, which probably comes closest to click-through rate assessment. However, it takes a step back from clicks and focuses more on search engine ranking.

While this process may not be accurately likened to vendor SKU, the services of any of the 50 leading saas companies and your personal efforts possess immense value.

All in all, the 10 tips above will help you shoot your click-through rates through the charts. Good luck!

Victorio Duran III - RingCentral US

Victorio is the Associate SEO Director at RingCentral, a global leader in cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions. He has over 13 years of extensive involvement on web and digital operations with diverse experience as web engineer, product manager, and digital marketing strategist.