How to optimize your CTR using Google Search Console data

In this guide, we will show you how to improve your click-through-rate using Google Search Console data.

If your website ranks well for multiple keywords but they still don’t bring enough traffic to your website, it’s time to optimize and improve your CTR a little further.

What is CTR?

Click through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures how often people, who viewed your website in the search results, click on a link. It compares the number of clicks a search result receives, to the number of impressions the link gets (how many times the link was viewed).

You can calculate this metric using the following formula:

CTR = (clicks / impressions) * 100

TIP: CTRs are expressed as a percentage, that’s why it’s important to not forget to multiply the result by 100.

For example, if your site had 50 impressions and 10 users decided to click on its link, your CTR would be 20%.

Try Marketing Miner now: 

What is a good CTR?

From the formula above, you can see that higher CTR is good. Branded keywords usually generate ridiculously high CTRs and this number is often very close to 100%.

Meanwhile, non-branded keywords typically have much lower CTR. Based on previous keyword research data, we now know what is the click through rate for top of SERP organic rankings.

Average ranking CTR data from 2019: 

If your CTR is lower than numbers from the table above, you should continue reading our guide to find out how to optimize your CTR.

Where do I find the CTR of keywords on my website?

The CTR for keywords, your website shows up for in the search results, can be found in Google Search Console’s Performance report (in the left sidebar menu).

HINT: To see click-through-rate data, click the CTR checkbox at the top of the graph.

Now you can view the CTR for all queries.

When you finally know how to find the CTR of keywords on your website, it’s time to explain how you can optimize your CTR using Marketing Miner and Google Search Console.

1. Preparing your GSC data

1.1. Exporting data with Extractors

Even though Google Search Console provides a wealth of data on your website, it only samples the data set within the 1 000 rows limit. For this reason, we will use Marketing Miner’s Extractors to export an unlimited number of rows from GSC.

After logging into Marketing Miner, click on the Extractors button at the right top corner.

Then select Google Search Console and connect it with your Marketing Miner account.

When you connect your GSC account with Marketing Miner, the first thing you need to do is choosing what website you want to get data for. In the Data Filter tab, select All keywords and Landing pages (keyword + URL).

Next, select a date range of data you would like to export and click on the Export button. This will download your data in Excel format.

Once your data is exported, open the file in Excel.

1.2. Editing data in Excel

Select column A in your document and go to the Data -> From Text/CSV section and load your downloaded spreadsheet. Select File Origin: 65001 (Unicode UTF-8) and click Next to continue.

In the next step, set the comma as the delimiter and click Load.

Now, your data is divided into more columns and also containing diacritical marks (for example when analyzing czech websites). Now your spreadsheet should look something like this:

Remember: Columns with Position and CTR data use dots as decimal separators. You will have to change it to commas as decimal points to continue working with your spreadsheet.

Select column C and D and then go to the Home -> Find and Select -> Replace section.

In the Find field, type in a dot and in the Replace with field, type in a comma. Then click Replace All to replace every dot in these columns with a comma.

Now, you have numbers with commas as a decimal separator (not dots) and you can continue working with them in Excel.

1.3. Keyword priority score metric

If your website is ranking for a lot of keywords, it’s important to determine a high priority for those keywords (or landing pages) that you need to optimize first.

For this reason we will look at the Keyword priority score metric that identifies keyword optimization potential.

Select column G, rename it as “Score” and insert the following formula:

=D2*C2*100

Then drag the fill handle down to copy a formula to other cells in that column.

TIP: You can also double click the fill handle to automatically fill the data for other cells.

Score: the lower score number, the higher keyword potential is (the more you can get from optimizing keywords with lower score in terms of website traffic and CTR).

Select all columns and go to the Data -> Filter section so the filter drop down menus appear for columns you chose.

Then click the drop-down arrow in column C to filter out all keyword positions Greater than 5. As you only want to view those keywords that you rank well for but also don’t have the highest CTR.

In column E (Impressions), you can also filter out keywords with impressions lower than 50 (to view only those that were seen more than 50 times).

In the last step, sort column G (Score) from Smallest to largest.

Now, you should see something like this:

2. Working with Excel data

You can increase your CTR by optimizing the following 3 attributes:

• meta title
• meta description
• structured data

These attributes are displayed in search results and have the most impact on your CTR.

Focus on keywords with the highest potential to drive results, and check the following:

• Is your target keyword in the title?
• Is your target keyword in meta description?
• Is your title or meta description too long and not fully visible in SERPs? You can use our Content Analysis miner to find out.
• Is your structured data properly configured? I recommend adding star ratings, FAQ or Q&A schema. You can check schema.org to find out more information.
• Try to earn a featured snippet spot.
• Add CTAs in titles/meta description (use numbers, emojis and other ways to catch attention)

2.1. Measuring your success

It takes time for Google to recognize and index the changes you made to see them in the search results.

We all know that SEO results grow over time and we have to be patient to measure their effectiveness. It takes time to get enough data in Google Search Console to report on your SEO efforts.

Once you have enough data in GSC, click Performance and in the Date section, click on the Compare tab to analyze different date ranges at once.

Select and compare date ranges that have the same length (so if you ran a test between 01.06.2020-01.07.2020, then compare it to the date range 01.05.2020-01.06.2020).

Next, tick Average CTR above the chart to see its value for the chosen date range and compare the difference between data.

If you can see values higher than 0, it means that you succeeded and your implemented changes increased click through rates.

If there is a number lower than zero, it means that your changes had a negative impact and you will have to try something different to make users click on your website.

You can make recommendations for your client and copywriter after carrying out keyword analysis.

3. Recommendations

Once you decide what to do next, you can create a task for your client or copywriters to improve your click-through-rate:

3.1.1. Recommendations for your client - template

Hi [client’s name],

After analyzing CTR (the percentage of people that click on an organic result) data for [website name], we found some opportunities to increase your website traffic.

We can improve CTR by following website changes:

• Optimizing titles
• Optimizing meta description 
• Implementing structured data
• ... 

These suggested tactics will increase your click-through-rate (and improve your website traffic) from search results pages.

Here’s a list of keywords that will improve your visibility and CTR for the following pages:  

Could you please let us know if you would like us to change titles/meta description for the landing pages mentioned above or to implement review structured data?

Many thanks,
[your name]
[your website]

3.1.2 Recommendations for your client - example

Hi Filip,

After analyzing CTR (the percentage of people that click on an organic result) data for www.taggy.cz, we found some opportunities to increase your website traffic.

We can improve CTR by following website changes:

• Optimizing titles (adding the number and keyword to the title)
• Optimizing meta description (adding an emoji that matches the keyword for the landing page)  
• Implementing review structured data
• Adding a number of products to the title of category pages. For example: Cheap laptops | Taggy.cz to Cheap laptops - 3 546 models to choose from | Taggy.cz
• ...

These suggested tactics will increase your click-through-rate (and improve your website traffic) from search results pages.

Here’s a list of keywords that will improve your visibility and CTR for the following pages:  

Could you please let us know if you would like us to change titles for the landing pages mentioned above?

Many thanks,
Tomáš Novák
www.tnovak.sk

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3.2.1  Recommendations for your copywriter - template

Hi [copywriter’s name],

I talked to our client from [website name] and we both agreed to change a title and meta description for this page [landing page URL]. Based on competitor research, I recommend to include to the title and meta description the following:

• Adding the keyword to the title tag and meta description [keyword name]
• Adding CTA
• Emoji - [emoji example] 

Here’s the link to their competitor’s landing page to have more ideas (for the title and description): 

• [a link to competitor’s landing page from SERPs]

Please let me know when it’s ready so I can add notes and suggestions. 

Many thanks,
[your name]
[your website]

3.2.2 Recommendations for your copywriter - example

Hi Raul,

I talked to our client from www.taggy.cz and we both agreed to change a title and meta description for this page https://www.taggy.cz/blog/what-is-a-hashtag-and-how-to-use-it-on-instagram. Based on competitor research, I recommend to include to the title and meta description the following:

• Adding the keyword to the title tag and meta description - hashtag keyboard shortcut
• Adding CTA
• Emoji - #️⃣

Here’s the link to their competitor’s landing page to have more ideas (for the title and description): 

• https://znakynaklavesnici.cz/how-to-type-hashtag/

Please let me know when it’s ready so I can add notes and suggestions. 

Many thanks,
Tomáš Novák
www.tnovak.sk