{"id":1949,"date":"2017-12-04T19:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T19:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reseller-hosting-themes.com\/wordpress\/?p=1949"},"modified":"2017-12-01T11:05:45","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T11:05:45","slug":"6-tricks-to-boost-the-ctr-of-your-wordpress-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reseller-hosting-themes.com\/wordpress\/6-tricks-to-boost-the-ctr-of-your-wordpress-site\/","title":{"rendered":"6 tricks to boost the WordPress CTR rate [2017]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"6Once your website is already ranking well in search engines, it means that you have built your engaging content and you already have the needed backlinks. Then it’s time to optimize the most important metric of all – your click-through rate.<\/p>\n

The click-through rate is the number of times people see your website in the search engine results and actually click on your link to see your content.<\/p>\n

You can have great content and tons of valuable backlinks, but if people don’t actually click on your site, you will never be able to fulfill your potential.<\/p>\n

In this article, we’ll share 6 tricks to organically boost the WordPress CTR rate.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, these tricks will not magically boost your website to new heights. You will have to have a strong foundation of good content in order for the visitors to actually spend some time on your website.<\/p>\n

To see how to boost your website rankings, check our list of\u00a09 WordPress SEO tips<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you already have good content, however, using even half of these tricks will most likely result in a positive uptick of website visitors.<\/p>\n

Writing reviews? Use shcema.org markup<\/h2>\n

If you have seen a review result in the search results with several stars to indicate the quality of the product, this is the schema.org markup in action.<\/p>\n

The schema.org is a collection of advanced markup tags, that can tell bots more information about the nature of each page. Using these tags, you can indicate that a given page is a review, provide a short review snippet and rate the product or service with 1 to 5 stars.<\/p>\n

There are multiple plugins that can help you integrate the schema markup into your pages and boost your WordPress CTR. Check our guide on the best free rich snippet plugins<\/a> for WordPress.<\/p>\n

Not a news portal? Remove post dates<\/h2>\n

Depending on the type of content you have, having dates can be both beneficial and negative.<\/p>\n

If your content is time-sensitive, for example, news, reports, research papers \u2013 having dates will allow you to rank higher for related searches.<\/p>\n

However, if your content is \u201cevergreen\u201d, meaning that it will remain relevant for years to come, having dates can have a negative effect. If a visitor has to choose between two articles, one without a date, and one dated from a few years ago, they will most likely choose the one with no date.<\/p>\n

\"post<\/p>\n

In the picture above you can see an excerpt of the search results for the term “inbound marketing”. These are the only two entries with a date, located at the bottom of the page. Put yourself in the shoes of the visitor – would you click on a presentation that is several years old? The same page would perform much better if the date was hidden.<\/p>\n

To hide the dates from your titles and URLs, you can modify the permalinks structure from the WordPress settings manually from Settings \u2013 Permalinks. The best choice in terms of SEO is just “Post name”.<\/p>\n

Another option is to use a plugin, like WP Meta and Date Remover<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Remember that for optimal results certain types of content such as breaking news and the like should have dates which are updated on a regular basis. Erasing dates is recommended for evergreen types of content only.<\/p>\n

Add the current year to your SEO title<\/h2>\n

There have been multiple studies which indicate that people prefer newly-released content. However, as we already stated, evergreen content can be relevant for multiple years, with small updates if necessary.<\/p>\n

A quick solution to that is the addition of the current year in the title of your post. For example, a post that says “Best dog leashes 2017” will attract more clicks than one that simply says “Best dog leashes”.<\/p>\n

However, if your website has a lot of posts, adding the year to each one of them and then changing it next year will be too much effort.<\/p>\n

Instead, you can create a small shortcode, which you can later include in the title of each post. Simply add the following content in the functions.php file:<\/p>\n

\/**\r\n* shortcode to show the current year\r\n* name of the shortcode: [year]\r\n*\/\r\nfunction output_year() {\r\n$year = date("Y");\r\nreturn "$year";\r\n}\r\nadd_shortcode('year', 'output_year');<\/pre>\n
When you are finished, you can now write “Best dog leashes [year]”. Each year, the title will change automatically to reflect the current year.<\/p>\n
Keep in mind, the WordPress admin will only show the shortcode [year] instead of the value. Only when you see the page on your website you will see the actual year.<\/p>\n
Use short and concise URLs<\/h2>\n
Every SEO professional you ask will tell you the same thing \u2013 you should use short URLs. This will help you increase your WordPress CTR rate and the number of visitors.<\/p>\n
A 2-5 word length is considered optimal for permalinks.<\/p>\n
Don’t forget that the title and the URL of the page don’t need to be the same. For example, the following title “10 best AMP plugins for WordPress reviewed” can correspond to the following URL \u2013 “amp-plugins-wordpress”.<\/p>\n
\"long<\/p>\n
In general, shorter URLs are easier to remember and are preferred by the search engine bots, too.<\/p>\n
Use Google AMP<\/h2>\n
AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, is an initiative by Google to provide a special framework for sites that want to serve better optimized and faster loading content for mobile users. Google doesn’t prioritize AMP pages in search results, but they use a special icon to inform the user about them.<\/p>\n
Initially, the AMP project<\/a> had a limited scope, but today anyone can become a part of it quite easily. There are multiple plugins that will automatically make your website AMP-ready:<\/p>\n