Beats the expected CTR for a given position by 12%, then you are likely to appear in position 2. Falls below the expected CTR for a given position by 6%, then you are likely to appear in position 10. Etc. Here is a greatly simplified rule of thumb: The more your pages beat the expected organic CTR for a given position, the more likely you are to appear in prominent organic positions. If your pages fall below the expected Google organic search CTR, you will find your pages in lower organic positions on the SERP. Want to move up a position in Google's ranking? Increase your CTR by 3%. Do you want to ride another place? Increase your CTR by an additional 3%. If you can't beat the expected click-through rate for a given position, you're unlikely to appear in positions 1-5. Basically, you can think of this as Google giving bonus points to pages that have high click-through rates. The fact that it looks punitive is just a natural side effect.
Advertising Continue reading fax list below If Google awards high CTR bonus points to other websites, your relative performance will decrease. It's not that you were penalized; it's just that you didn't get the rewards. 4 essential ways to increase your Google CTRs Many expert SEOs will tell you not to waste time trying to maximize your CTRs because that is not a direct ranking signal. Let's build more links and create more infographics, they say. I couldn't disagree more. If you want to rank better, you need to attract more people to your website. (And getting people to your website is the whole point of ranking anyway!) and many other technologies look at user the quality and relevance of pages.
We've already seen evidence that CTR matters to Google. So how do you increase your Google CTRs - not just for a few days, but sustainably? You should focus your efforts on four key areas: Advertising Continue reading below Optimize pages with low organic quality scores: Download all your query data from Google Search Console. Sort your data, determine which of your pages have a lower than average CTR, and prioritize them. Don't risk turning one of your unicorn pages with an awesome CTR into a donkey with a terrible CTR! It's much less risky to turn a donkey into a unicorn! Combine your SEO keywords with emotional triggers to create compelling headlines: Emotions such as anger, disgust, affirmation, and fear are proven to increase click-through rates and conversion rates.