As part of our coverage from the sold-out Searchmetrics x Search Engine Journal conference in San Francisco on SEO, content marketing, and analytics, I recently caught up with Jordan Koene of eBay to discuss the effects of click-through rates (CTRs) on search rankings.
Jordan is a big believer of soliciting user feedback on how pages can be improved and then implementing that feedback to boost CTRs. Hear him discuss this in more detail in the video below:
Here are some key takeaways from the video:
- The relevancy and the quality of your page, if improved, can have a dramatic effect on your click-through rate. The quality of your page can be improved through obtaining user feedback.
- Even the smallest changes can make a difference, like changing titles, tweaking content, or moving/replacing images. Those simple things can significantly improve the relevancy and overall quality of the page, which then in turn brings up the CTR of that page.
- Jordan uses internal data to guide the changes he makes to pages, and he also leverages partners like Searchmetrics to better understand the relevancy of queries and which competitors are showing up for those queries.
- It’s not all about analyzing data though, as Jordan also recommends getting feedback from human reviewers on the relevancy and quality of pages.
- The direct impact of improving CTR is a higher ranking. When optimizing a page’s CTR, the goal is always to obtain a higher ranking, which of course trickles down to traffic and conversions.
For more video interviews, please visit SEJ’s YouTube page.
Category
SEO
