One of the most common myths about digital marketing is that top ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs) is the key to profitability. While rankings are important, they’re not necessarily going to fatten your bank account all by themselves. Top rankings will only get your site in front of potential visitors; your goal is to get those potential customers to click on your offer.

Your click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of search engine users viewing the results returned for your keywords who are clicking through to your website. Whatever method you are using to drive traffic – organic (free, algorithm-based) or pay-per-click (PPC) – you can improve your CTR and boost your profits by analyzing and tweaking your website’s performance.

How to Troubleshoot Low CTR Problems

A great and totally free starting point for improving website CTR is provided by Google Webmaster Tools. You’ll first need to get your site added and verified; a search for ‘adding your site to Google webmaster tools’ will get you access to an excellent tutorial on setting your site up.

To perform an analysis of your site’s impressions and clicks for each of your targeted keywords:

• Log in to your Webmaster Tools account.
• Click on the website that you are analyzing.
• Hover over the ‘Your Site on the Web’ link and click on the ‘Search Queries’ tab.
• You’ll be able to see the total number of times your site was presented in the results as well as how many time it was clicked on, broken down by keyword.
• Focus on the priority keywords that account for most of the impressions.
• Make sure that your title tag matches the search query and that your snippet information matches the keyword phrase.

More Techniques for Improving Your CTR in Organic Search

• Brand recognition is an important factor in increasing your CTR. Make sure that your brand is prominently featured in title tags and snippets.
• Include your best buyer-intent keywords in all titles.
• Test different calls-to-action and feature the best-pulling CTAs in your snippet text.
• Use Schema.org markup on your website to improve your search results presentation.

Improving Your CTR in PPC Campaigns

If you’re running PPC campaigns, improving your CTR will not only get your offer in front of more prospects, it’ll earn you a lower per-click rate; Google rewards better performing ads with proven higher quality scores. Additional methods of improving the CTR of your PPC campaigns include

• Making sure that your call-to-action is aligned with your conversion goal. Use targeted action verbs that will attract the type of conversions you’re seeking. Place your CTA on the third line of text for optimum results.
• Creating a separate campaign for each of the major product groups you’re advertising. This gives you better control over your keywords which will boost your CTR for each campaign.
• If you sell products online, consider having Product Listing Ads (PLA) linked to your Adwords campaign. While Google has the final say on which products will be displayed for your keywords, PLA can definitely improve your overall CTR.
• Displaying your location in local campaigns will get your ad in front of more targeted searchers as well as boost your CTR rate.
• Targeting keyword phrases that are at least three words long. This tactic will get you more targeted results and a higher CTR.