Organic Search: 5 Hacks for More Click-Throughs

High SERPs and organic search can be everything for a business – especially when they earn you click-throughs. Here’s how to get more people to click your link.

If your business has been relying solely on paid ads to boost traffic to your website, you may be missing out on a large portion of your potential market.

According to a study by the data company GFK, between 70 percent and 80 percent of web surfers searching for information on Google and Bing ignored the paid advertisements and clicked on organic searches instead.

If you’ve only ever utilized paid ads, figuring out how to boost organic searches can seem overwhelming. But there are several hacks that you can use to get people to see and click through your links.

1. Determine which articles receive the fewest organic searches

The first step to boosting click-throughs to your site is by figuring out which articles and headlines are receiving the fewest number of organic searches.

There are a few ways you can do this, but the easiest way is to go to your Google Search Console. From there, you can download search analytics, including organic search CTR and organic rankings for keywords and pages on your site.

Compare the organic search CTR and the organic rank of each of your keywords and pages, and determine which are performing the worst.

Larry King, a columnist with Search Engine Land, recommends plotting them in Excel, which allows you to create a chart that makes it easy to determine which ones are falling below average. These will be the ones that you’ll want to focus on improving first.

2. Rethink your SEO strategy

Everyone knows that keywords are important for driving searches and boosting a site’s ranking. But if you’re simply guessing about which keywords to use and throwing in as many as possible, you may be missing out on the value of a good SEO strategy.

Before you can work on improving your SEO strategy, you’ll want to start by determining how your site ranks against others, and how the current keywords you’re using are performing.

To do this, use a free SEO audit, which will tell you important information about how well you are using keywords and which ones are performing better than others.

If you find that your keywords aren’t ranking well, you might consider bringing in an SEO expert. They can help you optimize your site by integrating keywords and relevant content, helping you to boost your search engine ranking, which will also help to boost click-throughs.

Once you’ve chosen a list of relevant keywords, you’ll want to start using them smarter as well.

A good rule to follow is to try to include a keyword two or three times in shorter pieces, and four to six times in longer pieces. Including a keyword within the first fifty words of a piece is also a good strategy.

3. Build a better headlines

While you’ll need great content to land sales and retain clients, generating click-throughs starts with creating knock-out headlines.

While including some of those keywords that we just talked about can help to boost your ranking, focusing only on those is a big mistake. You need to create headlines that do more than rank well; you also need them to be catchy so that web surfers will want to click on them.

In fact, according to research by Conductor, 80 percent of viewers never make it past the headline of an article.

In order to encourage viewers to click on your headlines in order to read further, you need to grab their attention. There are several ways to do this.

One way is by targeting a viewer’s emotions. Use words like “secret,” “amazing,” “huge,” or “powerful” builds excitement and generates interest.

Another great strategy is to use a standard template for creating your headlines.

Steve Raysum of Buzzsumo identifies the five necessary components of a headline as being an emotional element, as well as a word or two about the content, topic, and format of a piece, and a promise to your readers.

Always including all of these elements helps ensure that you are generating consistently-catchy headlines.

4. Mix up your format

Buzzfeed’s listicle-style has certainly proved that long-form content isn’t always the best way to generate attention on the internet. Businesses can cash in on the success of the listicle and other styles by rethinking the way they present their content.

We all know that when it comes to viewing content on the web, viewers have very short attention spans. In fact, a study conducted last year by Microsoft found that humans now have a shorter attention span than Goldfish, with most people losing focus after just eight seconds on average.

This can make it very difficult to generate clicks if you’re only offering long, text-heavy pieces to your viewers.

Creating content that features numbered lists, infographics, curated research, or even quizzes is a great way to break up the monotony of standard, long-form content.

5. Use social media to test your headline’s power

Once you’ve developed a plan for improving your SEO strategy, creating better headlines, and mixing up the way that you are presenting content to your viewers, it’s time to test out your new skills.

A great way to do this is by utilizing your business’ social media presence.

Social media platforms such as Facebook are the perfect place to test new headlines or content because your followers have the ability to instantly connect with you and let you know what they think.

Facebook allows you to track how many clicks a certain post is getting. If a headline generates a high number of clicks on Facebook, it’s likely that it will generate a high number of clicks on a search engine as well.

Don’t be afraid to generate multiple headlines for each article, and to then post each one on Facebook over a period of time, allowing you to compare the number of clicks each one generates.

Using only the number of clicks a post receives to determine the success of a headline may not always work. Keep in mind that there are a number of factors that affect your Facebook reach, including what’s popular or what’s going on at any given time.