Ranking Isn’t Enough: 4 Tips to Get Clicks

Most marketers and bloggers emphasize the importance of ranking high in the search engines. Although it’s important to rank your web pages, that’s not the most important part of SEO.

The most important part of search engine optimization is optimizing your page titles, URLs, and descriptions in order to generate clicks. Ranking your web page in the number one spot for a popular search term doesn’t mean anything if people don’t click.

Have you noticed your web pages ranking in the search results, but you’re not getting as many clicks as you’d like? Here’s some advice for getting more people to click on your website after a search.

1. Optimize your page titles/headlines

Page titles show up in search results as the actual link to your web page. Page titles are pretty much the first thing people read when scanning search results to decide what link to click. Sometimes they read the page description, but not always. If your page titles are plain, boring, or common, they won’t catch much attention.

Optimize your page titles to be as specific as possible to describe the content. Get clever, but don’t be too creative. Page titles should be interesting, but still remain an accurate description of your content.

Optimized headlines will get more clicks

Optimizing your content headlines, including your subheadings, is also important because your headlines can show up in Google’s Featured Snippets. Getting featured here is an excellent way to generate more clicks. If you want your content to show up in this section, your headlines and subheadings need to be written in a way that would be a good match for searches related to your content.

One way to optimize your headlines to get your content into the Featured Snippets section is to phrase them as questions. For example, instead of writing “The best SEO strategy,” write, “What is the best SEO strategy?” Google tends to favor questions for this section.

2. Optimize your URLs

How do you determine the structure of your URLs? Do you allow your CMS to create your URLs automatically based on the title of your page, or do you create them individually?

Ideally, you should be creating your URLs intentionally using as few words as possible. For example, if your page title is “Our Available Products,” don’t use the automatically generated URL of ‘/our-available-products/’. Instead, shorten the URL to ‘/products/’. This will give you several advantages, including more clicks from search results that display page URLs.

Sometimes page URLs are ideally a bit longer. It depends on your content. Short URLs are best because they quickly tell visitors exactly what your page is about. However, don’t cut your descriptions short when more words are necessary.

3. Optimize your page descriptions

In search results, search engines display page descriptions right below the page title. When users scan search results, after finding an interesting title, they’ll start reading the page description to further confirm (or deny) that a search result is worth clicking.

If you want to get more clicks from search results, you need highly optimized page descriptions. You need to tell people exactly why they need to click on your page in a sea of options. This is easier said than done. You’ll need to put your marketing hat on and come up with some persuasive copy that gets the point across in a short space.

Don’t forget to use relevant keywords in your page descriptions so that people know your content is related to their search.

4. Use a call-to-action in your page description

Try using a call-to-action (CTA) in your page description. It doesn’t need to be long. For instance, you can write a sentence about the content on your page to make sure people know what it’s about, and then add a CTA at the end.

For example, “A comprehensive guide to socks made of different materials, including what socks are best for sports, recreation, and comfort. Click to learn more.”

This is just a basic example of a description with a CTA at the end. You can use it as a starting point for your own page descriptions and get creative with your CTAs. You may even want to hire a professional copywriter to come up with some persuasive copy for your page descriptions.

Ranking is great, but clicks are the goal

Ranking in the search engines is great, but you need clicks to get conversions. If you’re stuck ranking in Google, but you’re not getting many clicks, the tips in this article will help you generate the traffic you deserve from your SEO campaign.