How To Improve CTR For E-Commerce? - Semalt Tips
Google has recently released an instructional video aimed at the e-commerce industry. In it, it shares 6 tips on how to make your business stand out from the crowd in search results. See how to use them to attract more customers to your online store!
Why is CTR important for e-commerce?
In its last video, Google gave 6 helpful tips for any online store owner. If you choose to follow these tips, you can count on your products to be properly highlighted in search results. This, in turn, will translate into a higher CTR or Click Through Rate. This is extremely important in the positioning process. In order for the SEO process to generate more and more traffic on the website, we need to take care not only of the position of key phrases but also of how our website looks in search results. CTR optimization is a very profitable endeavour.
Assuming the store generates 10,000 impressions per month, of which only 100 are clicks, we get a CTR of 1%. Increasing this metric by a modest percentage point is effectively doubling the organic traffic! It's worth the effort, so it's useful to know how to increase the CTR in organic results and translate it into specific actions on the website. In the case of e-commerce, CTR optimization is an even more important topic. Search results for product phrases contain additional elements that drive users away from organic results.
What should the CTR for e-commerce be?
It is impossible to say what the right CTR level will be for e-commerce. When analyzing, there are several variables to consider:
- CTR is position dependent. 1st place in the search results can count on a CTR of 20% - 30%. The lower the position, the lower the CTR, and the relationship is not linear.
- The overall CTR of a page will therefore depend on how many phrases it has in each position.
- The specifics of the industry. Most of the analyzes in this regard concern CTR for paid campaigns, however, we have every reason to believe that there is also such differentiation in the organic results.
- Phrase type. Brand phrases have a much higher CTR. The click-through rate also depends on the phrase length, with the highest CTR for phrases between 6 and 9 words and the lowest for phrases of 3 or fewer words in length.
6 Tips for E-Сommerce: How to Improve CTR in Organic Results
As always, the key elements in determining whether your product pages are eligible for exposure are images, stars, price, and availability information. Now let's go over the e-commerce tips provided:
1. Check your links with titles
As has long been known, Google will create the title tag itself if it notices that it does not adequately describe the content on a given page. Of course, it is definitely a better solution to prevent this from happening - it is better to make sure that the title tags are spelt correctly.
Google emphasizes that good title links increase valuable traffic to your website. The feature of automatically generated titles is that they often result in duplicate content, and sometimes they lack essential information.
The same thing happens when you use information that can change quickly in your titles, such as price and availability. - Please note that it may take up to several days for the update to show up in search results! You certainly don't want to mislead your customers, so always make sure your titles are up-to-date.
Test different titles to determine their effectiveness. Before you reach your final conclusions, make sure Google has indexed your pages. Otherwise, the information you will get will not be correct.
2. Add high-quality photos
It has been known for a long time that when shopping, people are mainly guided by what they see. Therefore, always use high-quality photos that show the actual condition of your products. If possible, add additional photos that show the details of your goods.
There is a good chance that Google will show these images directly in search results, increasing your chance of attracting more buyers. Therefore, think about replacing all blurry, low-quality photos with ones that look better for your merchandise.
Taking into account the guidelines from Google, main product photos should be at least 1200 pixels wide.
What else can you improve?
- Check the Max Image Preview meta tag - this parameter tells Google how you want it to display photos in the SERP.
- Add structured data on product pages - this way, your photos will be displayed in the SERP.
3. Add detailed information about the product
Use structured data to help Google find out more about what's on your pages. And when Google has no problem understanding the content of the page, it will highlight your products in the search results.
Content to organize:
- regulations;
- how-to instructions;
- articles;
- product descriptions.
And these are the elements that should be included in the structured data:
- title;
- description;
- paintings;
- grades;
- availability.
If all the information is already assigned to its categories, but your website is not exposed in the SERPs as expected, check two things: is it already indexed and if it contains elements that allow it to be displayed as a so-called rich result (results for extended items). You can do this by using the Rich Results Test Tool.
Using the Google Merchant Center is another way to let Google know about your products.
4. Add information about price reductions
By adding product prices to your structured data, you increase the chance that Google will highlight your discounts in search results.
Google will analyze the prices in your store and let users know about promotions. For obvious reasons, this can increase the number of buyers in your store!
Importantly, set the so-called specific price value, i.e. a specific price, instead of its price range. When you add this information to your structured data, Google will know to highlight the discounted price for your product.
Unfortunately, this feature is not yet available in all countries.
5. Provide specific identification numbers for the products you sell
If you want your products to appear in the carousel at the top of the page, you need to accurately describe and identify them. You can do this with the GTIN identifiers attribute.
According to information provided by Google, the best results are achieved by combining the Google Merchant Center of the product feed with structured data on the pages.
6. Create your company profile on Google
Consider creating your company profile - the so-called Google My Business - as a mandatory step, but only if your business has a physical address. Thanks to this, your store will be displayed together with the products that your customers are looking for.
This step does not apply to online stores that do not have their own physical addresses.
How do you know if your products are showing as featured?
To check if your effort has been wasted and if your products are displayed together with the detailed elements, use the site command - search for your website on Google, prefixing the domain with the word 'site:'
Analyze a few of your pages with the Dedicated SEO Dashboard tool to make sure everything works as expected.
If something seems to be wrong, check if your pages are indexed and use the Dedicated SEO Dashboard Tool. This will help you identify any possible structured data errors. The Dedicated SEO Dashboard (DSD) is comprehensive web analytics and SEO audit platform that can be run on your domain at zero cost. It will enable you to provide your clients with advanced analytics services under your brand.
- Increasing the number of your loyal clients by providing them with effective SEO analytics tools at no charge.
- Selling more of your services by implementing Semalt analytics data.
- Increasing customer loyalty to your brand by using our white-label reports.
Why should you implement these tips?
No matter what products you offer in your store, you will always have competition. In some cases, the number of businesses selling similar or exactly the same items is overwhelmingly large. It is impossible to hide, standing out from such companies can be really breakneck.
This is why taking advantage of every opportunity to draw customers' attention to your store is so important. And you can do it if your store is featured in search results.
If you need help optimizing your online store, let us know! We will help you reach more customers.