Increasing Your Click Through Ratio

Top search engine ranking doesn't necessarily mean top traffic. If your listing in the search results pages looks spammy, a low click through ratio may follow.

In this tutorial, we will discuss several on-page elements which can be optimized for a higher CRT.

The Title Element

Your page title is the first thing most consumers will see in the search results. The page title should beckon the prospect to click through. In order to do this, set yourself apart from the competition.

Compare this:

Cheap Web Hosting, Website Hosting, Affordable Web Hosting

to this:

Affordable Hosting - 24/7 Support & 10Mbps Transfer

Or compare this:

Seattle Divorce Attorney - Free Initial Phone Consultation

to this:

Seattle Divorce Attorney, Washington Divorce Attorney, Tacoma Divorce..

In short, set yourself apart from the crowd.

The Domain

In research conducted by Internet Marketing Research - the only research of its kind - users were shown mock search results pages. In some of these, we maintained identical page titles and descriptions, and inserted various domain types and file name types.

The results indicated that users were preferring descriptive domains and file names.

Take this test and choose just one domain which is most likely to contain the most information about Las Vegas realty:

A.Las Vegas Realty
www.masonharvey.com [ ]

B.Las Vegas Realty
www.las-vegas-realty.com [ ]

C.Las Vegas Realty
www.lasvegasrealty.com [ ]

D.Las Vegas Realty
www.las-vegas-real-estate.org [ ]

E.Las Vegas Realty
www.vegas-vegas.com/real-estate.html [ ]

F.Las Vegas Realty
www.bobhendersen.com [ ]

G.Las Vegas Realty
www.vegas-realty.com/las-vegas-realty.php [ ]

H.Las Vegas Realty
www.adamstampnitzky.com [ ]

I.Las Vegas Realty
www.carl-anderson.com/vegas-real-estate.htm [ ]

J.Las Vegas Realty
www.lasvegasrealestate.biz [ ]

It should not come as a surprise that LasVegasRealty.com and Las-Vegas-Realty.com took the cake.

Now let's say that you are looking for a webmaster forum.

A.Webmaster Forums
www.johnworld.com [ ]

B.Webmaster Forums
www.webmasterworld.com [ ]

C.Webmaster Forums
www.foogle.com [ ]

D.Webmaster Forums
www.webmaster-forum.net [ ]

Who takes the cake? Webmaster-Forum.net and WebmasterWorld: The descriptive domains.

File Names

The same principle applies to file names. A.Suzuki Hayabusa
www.suzuki-bikes.com/bill_clinton.php [ ]

B.Suzuki Hayabusa
www.suzuki-bikes.com/oregon_used_bikes.php [ ]

C.Suzuki Hayabusa
www.suzuki-bikes.com/hayabusa.php [ ]

D.Suzuki Hayabusa
www.suzuki-bikes.com/page24.php [ ]

Listing "C" would appear to be the most relevant, and therefore achieves a higher CTR.

Increasing Your Click-Through Ratio - Part II