You’re a savvy digital marketer. You follow Google best practices and read “all the SEO blogs.” You sound like a zookeeper with your extensive knowledge of Pandas, Penguins, Possums and Pigeons. You’re always looking for ways to improve organic search rankings. Instead of investing your time researching some of those gray (or even black) hat tactics that are oh so tempting, I suggest you take a step back and look at the basics of your organic SERP listing.
An area that often gets overlooked by digital marketers is engagement and the click-through rate (CTR) associated with their organic listings. No matter how much you improve your ranking, if your listing itself is not compelling, it’s all for nothing!
Google has not confirmed that CTR is a direct ranking factor, but this slide from a Google engineer at SMX West in March 2016 suggests that click-through rate plays a significant role.
From How Google Works: A Ranking Engineer’s Perspective on SlideShare
Regardless of Google’s ranking algorithm, all digital marketers strive to make organic listings compelling to searchers and enticing to prospects. These recommendations will help you improve organic search results and drive additional qualified traffic.
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