These days, it seems somewhat passé to discuss ways to improve your website or campaign’s click through rate. Often, the understanding is that all companies, whether large or small, have identified and are incorporating leading practice activities to improve CTR.
It may come as a surprise that some of the largest organizations sometimes struggle with CTR and there could be a variety of reasons for this. Perhaps the marketing or content team needs improved leadership, maybe staff is incorporating practices that worked 10 years ago but are ineffective today or maybe some companies simply don’t know how.
Not to worry, as I’ve listed the top 5 web analytics practices every organization should be practicing and any business can incorporate.
1. Develop a robust google analytics account
This may seem a bit rudimentary. Doesn’t every business that has a website or runs a campaign use Google Analytics?
The quick answer might be yes, but the real answer might be closer to the fact that many companies have still not taken full advantage of their Google Analytics account. The platform is straightforward enough to set up in order to check a variety of CTR scores.
It’s also worth noting that there is a free version of Google Analytics as well as a paid version that’s designated as Google Analytics 360. The free version may be fine for a number of businesses, but Analytics 360 offers much more for those that need it, such as:
- 1 billion + hits per month, where standard Analytics is limited to 10 million per month.
- There are 200 Custom Dimensions/metrics for each account, compared to only 20 in standard Analytics.
- Data is refreshed every 4 hours in Analytics 360, guaranteed, while standard has no timeframe guarantee.
- There is a variety of other advertising data that can be imported into 360, but standard is somewhat limited in this area.
- Custom funnel reports are available in 360 but are not in standard.
The list is much longer than what can be included here, but it’s worth checking out what those differences are between standard Analytics and Analytics 360 to determine if they are important to you or your organization.
To get to your CTR score, simply go to Acquisition, Search Console then Queries. Once there, you will be able to see which search queries were responsible for bringing visitors to your website.
In addition, you’ll see the queries’ clicks, impressions, CTR and the average search position. You can then compare which pages performed better than others and drill down deeper with additional analysis.
2. Determine performance of keywords and headlines
It’s one thing to have a relatively high ranking in Google or a large database that receives regular communication from your company. It’s a completely different thing to have search engine visitors or campaign recipients clicking on your keywords or headlines.
Among the most important drivers of having high volume flow through your keywords or campaigns is the use of an exceptional headline. Although Google Analytics won’t necessarily tell you which headline you should use per se, you can test several different headlines and see how each performs in Analytics.
In addition, there are tools such as CoSchedule Headline Analyzer and Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer that will help you find the best headline. Starting with better headlines and keywords before a comparative analysis in Analytics will get you that much closer to maximizing them and ultimately improving your CTR.
3. Leverage social media analytics
While Google Analytics is a very powerful tool when used properly, marketers must also remember that most social media platforms offer their own analytics tools. Using analytics tools offered by Facebook and LinkedIn, just to name two, can and should be used in conjunction with Google Analytics.
Facebook, for example, will provide cost data associated with your campaigns. Not only can this be viewed in Facebook, that data can be imported into Analytics to derive greater insight around site visitor behavior and CTR for certain campaigns.
Even without the Facebook campaign data import, Analytics still offers fairly insightful social media data. The additional data import simply makes it that much more robust and meaningful, and provides a 360 degree analysis of your true CTR.
4. Use Google AdWords to enhance organic SEO and CTR
Getting high rankings on Google, along with high CTR, is the holy grail of any SEO strategy. While marketers have been leveraging Google AdWords to enhance organic SEO, the same can be done to help improve CTR.
Testing different keywords, titles and metadata via Google Ads campaigns – and analyzing the data in Google Analytics – can help you configure a more effective organic SEO strategy. Testing how headline and keyword combinations work in Google Ads can, in essence, speed up your analytics timetable.
This can be incorporated for blogs, lead generation campaigns such as eBook landing pages, eNewsletters, promotions and special offers. There are no real limits here, with the exception of your marketing budget.
5. Identify lagging pages and campaigns to make them top performing
All websites feature pages that are top performing in terms of traffic draw, click through and length of engagement. Some digital marketing campaigns perform better than others.
Alternatively, there are also those pages and campaigns that are the bottom performers. Those poorly performing efforts should be transformed by incorporating those elements that make top-performing endeavors more popular. The culprits that contribute to poor performing pages and campaigns include underwhelming content, unimaginative headlines and poor keywords.
Analyzing the performance data and replacing poor information with more effective information is critically important. When it comes to Google Analytics and analytics from other channels such as social media, numbers don’t lie.
Takeaway
Increasing your website and campaign CTR is a necessary component to having a high ranking site that leads to warmer leads, generates more sales and enhances the overall customer journey. The logic is relatively simple; if no one is clicking on your content then no one is interested in the content being offered. Incorporating web analytics best practices and following the data can help change that.
