Confidence and cognitive dissonance between words that usually don’t go together can draw a lot of attention while also conveying the right message to the reader. And we all want to read texts from confident people, don’t we?

But adding strong adjectives isn’t the only tip we’ve got when it comes to coming up with your blog headers. Let’s see what other tips there are.

The Importance of a Compelling Title

A headline is the first thing a reader sees about your blog. Whether they’ve specifically been searching for your article or not, and it just makes an impression on them, the title has to make them gravitate toward it.

Headlines play a very important role in search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google utilize headlines to interpret a blog post’s subject matter and assess its relevance to a given search query.

A carefully constructed title with chosen keywords in it can improve your blog post’s search engine ranking and increase site traffic.  Moreover, headlines may establish the mood of your blog article and let visitors know what to anticipate. A compelling title may spark a reader’s interest and encourage them to continue reading, but a dull or deceptive headline may leave them feeling let down or deceived.

The Elements of a Killer Headline

There are several weapons a good writer has in their arsenal which could help them write a killer headline. We will list a lot of tips below. Combine 3 or more of these to achieve solid results.

• Use active tense, instead of passive, use verbs, and be the protagonist in your headline urging someone to take action. Push the reader to action right from the start. “Discover The Mysteries of Oak Island’s Hidden Treasure.”
• Curiosity is very easy to implement in titles. Just find a search term, and go for it. “I Drank only Milk for 12 months, and This Happened.” Although this is an example more suitable for YouTube videos, paired with a thumbnail, it can also work well for blogs.
• Be Concise, don’t go overboard with 15 words for a heading unless you absolutely know what you’re doing in terms of keywords and SEO. That’s why our heading is a bit longer.
• First 8 words matter. If you go for a longer heading, make sure the reader can know what’s going on from the first 8 words.
• Humor can also be used in some cases, depending on the topic you’re writing about.

How to Craft the Perfect Title

Use 2 or more of the work-frames below in order to craft the perfect title to capture the attention of any audience:

1. Curiosity (You Won’t Believe…)
2. Negativity (Best Writer Avoid…)
3. Make the heading a List (Top 5…)
4. Use Timeliness (Fix Your SEO in 5 minutes:…)
5. Use Authority (This is How Gary Vaynerchuk Writes his Headlines…)
6. Target Deep Desire (Reach Millions by…)
7. Beginner-Friendly (Best Beginner Tips…)
8. Extreme Scenario (I Climbed Everest Naked…)
9. Reject an Objection (Shampoo isn’t the Best Way to Wash Your Hair…)

Once you’ve chosen 2 of these, combine them and get good results. For example, combining #7 and #3 is quite common in any space. There are many other combinations you could use for great results. Experiment! Here are some cool examples.

Always  A/B Test Blog Titles

Use analytics to compare different versions of your headlines and how they perform. It’s a mystery. Sometimes you write a perfect headline and another one that you didn’t really like performs twice as well.

Don’t underestimate user-friendly and simple headlines, the can often beat complex and smart titles, that not everyone can grasp. After all, we’re trying to reach many people here, come on!

Avoid These Mistakes at all Costs!

There are plenty of things that can go wrong while writing headlines. So, what to avoid when writing headers for blogs?

• Avoid click-baiting people all the way through. If your title is a bit over-enticing, make sure you deliver in the article you are offering.
• Don’t mislead people with inaccurate information to make them click on your blog.
• Never use all caps in headlines or a lot of punctuation.
• Avoid insider language and jargon, that only your readers would know. That limits your audience to your already established fanbase.
• Try to steer clear from writing unclear headlines, which don’t give out the essence of what your blog is about right away.

What Comes Next After Killer Titles?

After you master the trade of writing great titles, there’s another step of the blog optimization journey. It’s called Ad Optimization. Cash flow is essential for any website, and if yours isn’t generating enough, you should seriously start thinking about it. Get a closer look at how easy it is to optimize the Ad placements on your website and increase your revenue with Publir’s solutions.

The post 5 Top Tips and Tricks for Writing Killer Headlines: And Why They Will Increase Your Website Traffic first appeared on Publir.

You see a 50% decline in mobile users’ session duration, page visits, and increased bounce rates compared to desktop users. What happened? Well, the thing is, mobile optimization is a key aspect of overall website and blog optimization, and if you neglect it for long enough, you might just lose half of your users.

Let’s check the five best ways to fix that as quickly as possible.

1. Responsive Design Is a Must

Employing a responsive design ensures that your website works smoothly and looks nice across all platforms, including mobile ones and even tablets. This makes it simple for your mobile audience to read and navigate your site and read your content, since the design should instantly change to match the screen size of the device.

While you are creating content, you should keep in mind that, according to Oberlo, over 52% of worldwide internet users are on mobile devices, and just 47% come from desktops.

That means every single paragraph you write should fit on half a mobile screen. If it doesn’t, you are giving your mobile users a bad experience of reading walls of text.

2. How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile Search

Mobile-friendly design, mobile-focused keyword research, and on-page optimization tactics such as optimizing titles, headings, and meta descriptions all count as website and blog optimization and are easy changes for you to rank better in mobile searches.

Believe it or not, keyword optimization can vary per device. Readability, visibility, and usability of the mobile interface of your website on mobile are way more important for Google than people usually think.

That’s why you must ensure that your typefaces and font sizes are mobile-friendly by using those that are simple to read on a phone or other portable device. Be away from using tiny or elaborate typefaces that could be challenging to read on smaller displays.

For body content, choose a sans-serif font with a minimum font size of 16 pixels. Sans-serif fonts are simpler to read on smaller screens.

3. Optimize Media and Images for Mobile

Optimize your photos and media. Oversized images and media files might make it difficult for mobile viewers to access your blog. Convert everything to a .webp format and turn your icons to svgs. Compress photos and media assets to minimize their size without losing quality in order to optimize your content for mobile devices.

You can use this free online tool to convert your images to webp for a few seconds per image. This will hasten the loading of your blog on mobile devices. And that’s a big deal.

4. Simplify Everything for Mobile

Simplify the whole navigation of your website so your audience can stick around for longer. It’s a key feature of your non-desktop design, particularly for mobile readers. Use a simple, straightforward menu that is simple to access and browse on a mobile device to streamline your navigation.

To make it easier for people to find what they’re searching for, utilize dropdown menus, icons, and labels, and don’t add any useless sidebars or sections that have no function.

5. Use a CDN and Optimize Speed

Improve the speed at which your blog loads for mobile readers since a slow-loading site might result in high bounce rates and people never really coming back ever again.

Reduce HTTP requests, improve scripts and code, and utilize a content delivery network (CDN) to provide visitors’ material from the nearest server to increase the speed at which your blog loads. To hasten the loading of your site, you may also employ caching plugins.

CDN is amazing. It will not only allow you to instantly replace images on your website by replacing the images directly in the directory and overlapping the link, but it gives you full control of your website. There are practically no big websites around the world left that don’t use CDN.

The main reason is that it relies on several servers around the world and serves the closest for each user, which greatly optimizes website load-time, especially when loading heavy resources like images, graphs, or videos. While this is not a part of SEO blog post optimization, it is something to have in mind if your general website is growing or you plan to serve millions of users.

Never Miss an Opportunity

Having a successful website but not optimizing it for mobile is like having a product everyone wants but selling it only to men or only to women. Don’t cut the wings of your website by limiting its usability to desktop users only.

Make the leap and invest in mobile optimization. It’s definitely worth the time and effort. Resources are best spent when there’s a steady cash flow coming from your website. Have you done everything you can in terms of Ad optimization, subscriptions, and Adblock recovery? If not, make sure to check Publir’s solutions that solve all of that and more in a matter of minutes. 

The post 5 Best Ways for Mobile Optimization of Your Website first appeared on Publir.

When trying to grow an audience, SEO blog writing is a must. However, trying to stuff in too many keywords can easily push your readers away. So content creators and website managers must strive for the best of both worlds.

Does writing blog posts help with SEO? Yes, absolutely. Stick with us to the end of the article because you won’t need SEO blog services after you read it!

What Is Important to Consider for SEO?

Regardless of whether you are running a blog or your blog is just a part of the website you are managing, content marketing drives people to come visit. Here’s a good structural view of what a page must have in order to be indexed and rank properly:

• To be a part of the XML sitemap. (Or, in the case of blog articles, the parent directory part of the sitemap).
• Quick loading speed. The faster your page loads, the better ranked by Google it will be.
• To target specific keywords.
• To resonate with what a person would look to read after typing in these keywords in a search bar.
• Free value upfront.
• No keyword stuffing.
• Proper Meta tags – Meta title and descriptions relevant to what would make the user inclined to click on your article through Google or Bing.
• Proper H1 and H2 tags, good article structure.

There are practically two things that you must achieve to have a good SEO ranking. First, you must make people click on your articles, and second, they must stay for a longer period on your website. We can sum these two things up with impressions CTR (click-through rate) and average session per user in Google Analytics.

Carefully monitor these metrics, and do tests on how to improve them, and in the long run, you will have tremendous success.

Identify the Right SEO Keywords to Target in 3 Simple Steps

Contrary to popular belief, the right keywords can be found with or without the usage of professional tools. When it comes to blog writing for SEO, identifying the keywords of your competitors is very easy. Let’s be smart here.

1. Step one: Find a good article from a competitor on a similar topic.

2. Step two: Copy the text of the article

3. Step three: Check this cool thing out. Paste the well-performing text from your competitors, and you will instantly see the most commonly used keywords in it, by frequency. For example, if you paste this article, you will get these results:

And if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see the most used bigrams and trigrams, which are complex keywords:

If that doesn’t seem like a whole lot of help, then you are probably not ready to use more complex keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs because they provide you with a ton of features that might just be too overwhelming.

Aside from content SEO optimization, there are two other aspects we should pay a closer look to, as well.

On-page Optimization

As mentioned, load time and proper URL and website structure are essential to your website getting indexed and your pages ranking properly.

There are things that will slow down your website, and despite all the SEO blog writing you do or pay for, you might not rank as high as you want to. One of these things is the usage of gifs and super-heavy images or videos embedded on your website.

Hit “F12” on your browser while opening your website incognito, and pay close attention to the Network tab.

Then check the size of each element, and if there are any elements above 500kb, that’s bad news. Optimize all the images by converting them to .webp format and reuploading them. That will greatly increase the speed of your site, especially for mobile users using 4 or 5-g networks.

Off-page Optimization

Having a few hundred backlinks from high authority websites will undoubtedly help all of your pages rank higher, regardless of whether they are specifically linked or it’s just your domain.

It’s more important, however, to do guest posting on relevant platforms and websites that can allow you to expand your audience in a similar niche. Always prioritize backlinks not only by domain authority but by the core audience that they can provide you access to.

Building a Better Website Ecosystem

Step up your SEO game by following the tips in this article, and eventually, you will start ranking higher and higher. But in the meantime, make sure not to forget other core aspects of your website like Ad optimization, subscriptions, and Adblock recovery. Luckily, there are services like Publir that greatly automate the process for you. Give it a look!

The post The Top 2023 SEO Strategies That Will Drive More Traffic to Your Website first appeared on Publir.

Or good? Since if you’ve reached this far without metrics, imagine how much you will improve your website after you learn what we’re about to tell you. About 55% of websites use Google Analytics which means at least half of you need to start.

In order to improve the functionality of your blog website, you need to keep an eye on a number of key Google Analytics blog indicators. Here are some of the most crucial parameters to take into account:

What Are the Best Ways to Define Key Metrics?

Typically, in a perfect world, you want a visitor to land on your website to stay there forever, keep reading from article to article and come back the next day. Of course, this is hard to do on the best day, but there are more than a few metrics that tell us how close we are to achieving it.

• Sessions: This is the total number of visits made by users to your website. This measure provides you with an overall picture of the traffic to your website and may be used to spot patterns over time. There are several factors such as backlinks, guest posts, SEO, or paid promotion that can affect this number. It is extremely important to know what is the main driver of your traffic at all times.
• Pageviews: The number of pages that people have visited. You may use this indicator to determine which pages are the most popular and which would benefit from improvement. And if this number is low, it means your content is probably not suggesting relevant content in the appropriate places. You should experiment with that through A/B testing. 
• Bounce rate: The proportion of visitors to your website that only stay for one page. If consumers aren’t finding what they’re searching for, a high bounce rate may be a sign that your material has to be more relevant and high-quality.
• Time on site: This is the length of time visitors stay on your website on average. You may use this indicator to determine how engaged your audience is and where your content needs to be improved to boost engagement. This is extremely useful if you are writing blog posts. You can compare each topic title by click-through rates and how relevant the content inside is by seeing how much time people spend on the specific page.
• Exit rate: This is the proportion of visitors to your website that click away after seeing a given page. This measure can assist you in locating pages that may be driving visitors away from your website.
• Acquisition channels: These are the avenues, such as natural search, social media, or direct traffic, by which consumers reach your website. You may use this indicator to choose where to concentrate your marketing efforts in order to increase website traffic.

How to Choose the Right Analytics Tools?

Undoubtedly the most popular and free tool you can use is Google Analytics. Make sure you get familiar with GA4 since it becomes the new standard on July 1st, 2023. Using Google Analytics for blog traffic provides thorough information on user behavior, website analysis, and channels of acquisition. 

It includes a variety of reporting options and data visualization tools, as well as integration with a number of website platforms. You can do pretty much anything with it. And it’s free.

The second most popular option is Adobe Analytics which is a complete analytics product with strong reporting and data visualization capabilities, as well as cutting-edge technologies like machine learning and predictive analytics. Large, enterprise-level websites with intricate analytics requirements are best suited for it.

Another option is a real-time analytics platform called Clicky offers comprehensive information on website traffic, visitor activity, and engagement. It has a simple user interface, customizable dashboards, and tools like split testing and heat maps.

If you are running a straightforward content-oriented website, a simple google analytics blog setup is all you will ever need.

What Are the Best Metrics for Improving User Experience and Engagement?

Aside from all the metrics we mentioned at the beginning of the article, load speed and mobile friendliness are often neglected by blog owners and content-oriented website managers. Make sure you test every single way a user can visit and view your website. Check the amount of traffic you are getting from mobile users, Safari, and even tablets.

If you are losing users because you’ve forgotten to optimize something, your good intentions, and perfectly written content goes to the dumpster.

Get Started Right Away

Optimizing your website is an ongoing process. You don’t need to wait a couple of years for it to be “fully optimized,” and to be fair, there’s no such thing. The earlier you monetize your website, the more monetary resources you’ll have to spare for further optimization. Luckily, Publir offers a wide variety of solutions, from Adblock recovery to Ad Optimization and enabling paid subscriptions on your website.

The post How to Measure and Optimize Your Blog’s Performance With Google Analytics first appeared on Publir.

Statistics suggest that native advertising will grow 12.5% YoY in 2023, reaching almost $98.59 billion. The largest share of native ads will be the native social ads on Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to learn to optimize their native to increase their revenue.

Understanding Native Advertisements

Native ads are advertising that seamlessly blends with the medium it showcases on. Native ads use the same format as the content of the website. For instance, a native ad can be an article on a website that contains editorial content. Native advertising is more user-centric as it does not intrude on the user experience on a particular website. There are three major components of native advertising :

1. Ad Attribution: Since native ads look exactly like the content, they appear on the publisher’s website. Ad attribution helps users distinguish between the content and native ads by attaching a badge to the native ad.
2. Advertiser Elements: These elements depend on the components provided by the advertiser.
3. AdChoices Overlay: This is present in the upper right-hand corner of the native ad. The AdChoices overlay contains a link the advertiser provides to target specific customers.

Methods to Optimize Native Ads

There are several ways to optimize native ads to increase your revenue.

1.     Maximize the Relevance of Your Ads

You want to display the ads that are most relevant to your audiences. For instance, if they are reading a post about wine, they should not get advertisements for bathroom tiles. Non-congruent ads do not lead to high conversion rates and affect your user’s trust. Relevant ads will lead to greater audience trust and higher revenue. 

As such, you must ensure that your ads are relevant to your audiences before placing them on any website. To check relevancy, act as the user of your website. If the ads displayed on the site seem relevant, stick with them. Otherwise, test different ad networks to find the most relevant one.

2. Use a Variety of Ad Networks 

As discussed above, users easily ignore default ad creatives and positions, which leads to fewer clicks on the advertisements and lower revenue. As such, advertisers must create several ads to make their campaign successful. A variety of different ad networks boosts audience engagement.

As your audience notices that you are offering newer and more relevant ads, they will become more interested. If the users have already seen the ad on their Facebook or Instagram, they will ignore your ad. Therefore, ad rotation is an effective technique to keep your readers engaged 

3. Be Honest With Your Readers

Native advertisements are meant to blend in with your website. They are supposed to elevate the users’ experience. Tricking your readers into clicking on these advertisements will backfire on you. Your readers are the lifeline of your website; if you trick them, they will not return to your page. Delineate your native advertisements from your website’s content. 

You don’t want the user’s disappointment and frustration when they click on your link only to discover that it was an advertisement. The ad should not be misrepresented in a way that the user clicks on it unintentionally.

4. Take Advantage of Automation

Leverage automation tools to optimize the ads on your website. For instance, automation through split testing is a great way to increase your native ad revenue. Split testing headlines are a common form of automation. In this, publishers can test two or more headlines through automation. The system automatically chooses the headline that receives the most user engagement and maximum clicks. 

You can also use automation to test font color and style. This will allow you to view metrics that work best for your audiences. 

5. Test Different Ad Layouts 

Like headlines, you can also test different ad layouts with the help of automation. You can find the ideal ad layout or placement that receives the most user engagement. Automation allows you to test pre-defined ad placements, track user behavior for each layout and test different ad units and sizes. Automation has become more robust than ever. Automated systems continuously optimize your website based on user behavior. 

6. Use Content Recommendation Systems 

While in-feed ads work for most websites, adding more story views provides a revenue boost to your website. This additional content may come in the form of widgets that allow users to view related stories or sponsored content. This allows users to redirect to other pages of your website and provides you with additional ad opportunities to generate revenue. By redirecting the traffic to other website pages, you increase user engagement and gain opportunities to earn additional revenue. 

7. Test Different Ad Types 

There are several ad types – CPC, eCPM and CPA. You can test these different ad types to see what works out the best for your website. 

• CPC: Content-heavy websites generally go with the cost-per-click model. The eCPM model may be more relevant to you if you have more images.

• eCPM: This is called earnings per 1000 impressions. This model is ideal for larger websites with a lot of traffic. It is a great way to earn revenue even when the users are not engaging with the content.

• CPA: This is referred to as the cost-per-action model. It is related to affiliate marketing. In this model, you will earn money when a user signs up for a service and provides their information.

Just like other ads, testing is important in native ads to increase your revenue. Optimizing the ad layout should ensure that you are not tricking your users into clicking the advertisements. 

At Publir, we are committed to maximizing the revenue of content creators by offering holistic solutions for AdBlock recovery, ad optimization, subscriptions, merchandising, and fundraising. We use the best practices and automation tools to collect recurring revenue and engage users. Curious about ad optimization? Visit us here or email us at sales@publir.com to get started today.

The post Native Ad Optimization Guide for More Revenue first appeared on Publir.

1. Creating Multi-Channel Ad Optimization Strategies

Modern customers expect their brands to interact with them across various channels. They might start from one channel but continue their conversation on a different one. As such, you must create multi-channel campaigns to increase your chances of getting more customer conversions. Multi-channel optimization strategies include creating a uniform customer acquisition strategy containing different promotional and distribution channels. Creating multi-channel ad optimization campaigns saves time, effort, and costs by reusing media across different channels, allows your brand to reach a wider audience, and offers customers a uniform, seamless experience as they move between the channels. 

Creating a multi-channel experience allows you to create a cohesive brand story across various channels. This means your customers will easily recognize your brand when they see it across various channels. To create and optimize a multi-channel ad campaign, you can do the following – 

• Understand your target audience and their preferred channels 
• Set achievable goals for your ad campaign 
• Figure out your key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress 
• Create coherent brand messaging tailored for each channel
• Measure your performance and track attribution using tools like Google Analytics (GA)

Creating a multi-channel strategy might take a little more time and effort, but it puts you ahead of the competition if you can implement it well. 

2. Track Your Campaigns and Make Real-Time Changes

To have a successful ad campaign, you need to have a strategy in place to measure and track your campaign’s performance. Tracking your KPIs is one way to gain insights into your ad campaigns. Measuring various key indicators help you monitor the performance of your keywords, i.e., if your keywords are not bringing in enough traffic, you can immediately intervene and change them. You can test your campaigns with different content types and media platforms, you can understand which media types are the best for campaigns and which ones boost engagement. There are many tools that allow you to monitor audience behavior and figure out which parts of your campaign your audience is engaging with the most and the least. If you have this information, you can easily make changes to make your advertisements more tailored for your audience groups. Using tools like Adobe Analytics and Google Attribution, you can know how each channel is driving traffic.

Reaching your audience groups using the right channel is critical to successful multi-channel ad optimization campaigns.

3. Align Your Ad Strategy With Your Buyer’s Journey

The most effective ad campaigns focus on customers and not the brand. Thus, your strategy should be catered to the needs and expectations of your audiences. Typically, a buyer goes through three stages before converting into customers. The first stage is awareness, i.e., the customer gets acquainted with the problem/issue your product or service addresses. You can create scenarios and examples that exemplify and acknowledge this problem. Use visuals to grab your audience’s attention. 

The second stage is consideration, i.e., the prospective buyers consider solutions to the problem you have highlighted. At this stage, advertisements that position you as a leader in targeting those problems work the best. Your capability and expertise with that problem must be at the forefront. At this point, you can use various retargeting ads to interact with users who have already engaged with your previous advertisements. Another interesting way is life event targeting, where you run personalized ads based on important life event milestones of your customers (for instance, their graduation or when they are moving to a new place). 

The last stage is making a decision, i.e., the prospective buyer evaluates the best provider to solve the highlighted problem. At this stage, you need to generate content that helps prospects to make their final decision. For successful ad optimization, brands need to consider all three stages and make advertisements relevant to customers at different stages. You need to create content for different audience groups that are at different touchpoints in their purchase journey. Aligning your advertisements to your customer’s purchase journey will optimize your ad campaigns and make them more effective. 

While personalizing your advertisements to your customers and their purchase journeys, you should be mindful of their privacy. They can invest in high-quality first-party data and leverage trusted customer relationships to collect information and provide highly relevant and targeted marketing. You can use various probabilistic models to get the most out of first-party data and understand your customers. 

At Publir, we are committed to maximizing the revenue of content creators by offering holistic solutions for AdBlock recovery, ad optimization, subscriptions, merchandising, and fundraising. We use the best practices and automation tools to collect recurring revenue and engage users. Curious about ad optimization? Visit us here or email us at sales@publir.com to get started today.

The post Best Practices for Ad Optimization first appeared on Publir.

CTR = (Click Throughs/Impressions)x100

For instance, if 100 people see an ad online, and 5 people click on ‘learn more’ to know more about the product, then that ad has a CTR of 5%. CTR is used to measure whether PPC (Pay Per Click) search results, CTAs on landing pages, and hyperlinks in blog posts and email campaigns are performing well, or not. Click-Through Rate is basically the number of clicks achieved off secured impressions. If you want to improve CTR, you have to overhaul your keywords and match the type, watch out for your ad copy language, and carefully target your audience. 

Why is CTR important?

CTR is an important metric because you can understand your customers, what works and what does not while trying to reach your target audience. Low CTR means you’re targeting the wrong audience, or not persuading them well enough so they click. 

What is a good CTR?

CTR may vary between industries. If you want to find out what a good CTR is for your business, start by researching the average CTR in your industry. Once you understand the industry average, you could take steps to improve your CTR and reach your business goals. 

How do you improve CTR?

Use Long-Tail Keywords

Use long-tail keywords, especially in headings and title tags, because they are highly descriptive and match your content to search intent. On seeing descriptive long-tailed keywords related to what they’re searching for, users are motivated to click on your URL as they think your post might have the information they are looking for. So, to find long-tail keywords that meet user intent, use keyword research tools like Ubersuggest. Plug your seed keyword in the search bar and click on ‘search’. Next, click on ‘keyword ideas’ in the left sidebar, and then select the relevant keywords, before including them in your content. 

Effective Meta Descriptions

Effective meta descriptions are a great way to organically improve your CTR. Snippets of text that appear below your title tag in SERPs, a good meta description can tell users what your page is about, compelling them to click on your post. Use keywords to show your users that your article can solve a problem and has the answers they are looking for. Optimize your meta description by answering questions, making it specific and relevant, and using powerful language like emotionally charged words to elicit responses. Meta descriptions should convince the user that your content is THE solution. Try including a CTA to aid them.

Implementing Structured Data

A great way to ‘speak’ to search engine algorithms, structured data can be implemented using Schema.org to change content into code that search engines can process easily. This can help them display rich, informative, and interactive search results. Commonly called rich snippets, this type of search results attract more clicks as they appear on top of SERPs, are more attractive than plain URLs, and give more information about content at a glance. People love interactive content, and implementing structured data will boost CTR rates. 

Posts With Images

Using images in posts is fairly common, and a great way to organically improve CTR. Images in content boost engagement because they are an important part of your content, appearing in featured snippets and other infoboxes on SERPs. Images also improve the scope of your URL being clicked on, when users look for search results in ‘images’. You can implement certain SEO best practices like alt text addition, and proper image nomenclature for this to work.

Descriptive URLs 

One of the most vital pieces of information shown on SERPs, your page URL needs to be optimized so your organic CTR improves. Make it as descriptive as possible, including keywords in the URL. This shall reinforce what your core topic is all about, showing users that your content is relevant. Keep your URLs short, making them attractive and easy on the eye to get more clicks. Change your URL in permalink settings, if you are a WordPress user. 

Simplify Title Format

Your title tag is a part of the information displayed on SERPs, and you must format it properly. Keep it simple. People usually sift through search results seeking the most relevant one. If your title is simple, catchy, and explains what your post is about you will get more clicks. Leverage your corporate or personal branding to optimize your CTR. If you are already a leader in your niche, users will get the confidence to click on your URL. Don’t frontload your brand, as that can cause your rankings to drop. Ensure your title is clear, and use tools like Avid Demand to preview the way your content will look on SERPs.

Localize Content

When it comes to traffic sources, mobile beats desktop, hands down. Most cellphones have location and map functions turned on, so Google can read locations and provide local solutions. Localized content is great for SMEs that operate in certain areas, and for in-person service businesses. Localized content allows you to target your audience effectively, receiving high-intent customers who are looking for something that you are selling or offering. Add your location in the content, meta-description, and title tag, so you localize your content. Also, list your business on Google My Business ( GMB), so you are on the map when local searches are made. To drive clicks, you must offer relevant information, and your location needs to be in your metadata for that to happen. 

Listicles

Requiring little cognitive effort to process, listicles are loved by all. Including them in your content strategy can help you get more organic clicks. Include numbers in your headline and title tag, making it clear to users that there’s a listicle beyond the click. Listicles also improve your chances of getting featured in snippets. 

A/B Headline Testing On Social Media

Your headline is one of the first reasons users click on your article. Ensure that it resonates with your target audience. Test your headline on social media. Use tools to optimize your headline, and test your headline by sharing the article on different social media platforms. After a couple of days, change your headline title and re-publish the post. Share the new article on social media, waiting for the same number of days before checking engagement rates. The headline which drives the most engagement wins. 

Yoast Review for WordPress Users

A great SEO tool to improve organic CTR, YOAST can help you preview your snippet as it appears on SERPs. Make changes based on recommendations given. You can also see if any keywords get cut off, or your snippet makes sense overall. 

Google Ads for Preview

Like YOAST, the Google AdWords Preview Tool is a great way to preview ads, so you can optimize them for organic CTR for mobile and desktop. See how different ideas work while generating new ones. 

Identifying Winners and Losers

Calculate winners and losers of your current pages, to see which page titles and content types work well or not. Use Google Analytics for this information. Learning what clicks, impressions, CTR, and average SERP position for your pages, as well as bounce rates, sessions, conversions, etc, can tell you what works and what doesn’t. 

Optimize Site Speed

Google is prioritizing page experience as a ranking factor. People won’t stay on your page if your site is slow, and that will affect your CTR. A leap from 1 to 3 seconds in site speed, can increase bounce rates by around 32 percent. 

Final Thoughts

Thus, the above methods should help you improve your CTR. In addition to these methods, using rich snippets, activating breadcrumb navigation, leveraging Google Analytics reports, building high-converting landing pages, and using heat maps to improve site clicks are some other ways you can improve your CTR. Read our blog on ROAS to find out how to maximize your revenue from your ad spending.

The post Top 13 Ways to Improve your Organic Click-Through Rate (CTR) first appeared on Publir.

Websites today are dynamic and mobile-friendly because most of us use our phones to browse. Have you ever tried to click on an article and ended up clicking on an ad itself because the page layout suddenly changed? This is a very common scenario, because lots of people accidentally click the wrong item, leading to a poor user experience. This is highly prevalent on phones due to their smaller screens and resolutions. With everyone vying for the smoothest user experience, this isn’t exactly desirable, especially since Google has come up with a metric to rank UX. 

What Is Cumulative Layout Shift Or CLS?

A Core Web Vital Metric, CLS calculates the total of all layout shifts on a page that aren’t caused by user interaction. It uses a speed-dependent calculation to look at the ratio between the impacted viewport and movement distance. Google would like publishers to be more mindful of layout shifts and minimize them. Publishers can use the CLS score to objectively measure and optimize their page. So, why is it important to ensure that your CLS score remains high? That’s because CLS measures the page’s visual stability. It is frustrating when content shifts during the interaction, like menu items making way for ads that then redirect you to a third-party website. These cause a massive inconvenience to users, and can even lead to issues for publishers, causing high bounce rates and ad policy violations.

Google counts CLS score among the top three ‘Core Web Vitals’, meaning a low CLS score will ensure a low CWV score, leading to a fail grade. Google’s updated search algorithm ranks sites that pass the CWV assessment. It is imperative to improve your CLS score to ensure a better UX and rank higher on Google, to boost your organic traffic. 

How Is Cumulative Layout Shift or CLS Calculated? 

When an element changes position, the shift is recorded and that element is deemed unstable. A layout shift is only recorded if visible elements change their start position, not if new elements are added or size changes occur. A CLS score is obtained by measuring the impact fraction and distance fraction and multiplying the result. 

The impact fraction is the measurement of unstable elements and their impact on the viewport between the two frames. It is calculated by measuring the union of the shift and the original element as a ratio of the site’s total visible area. The distance fraction is the biggest distance covered by an unstable element, wrt to the viewport. 

The CLS threshold, therefore, determines layout shift score and ranking factor and is a very important metric for UX and SEO performance. Google’s PageSpeed tracks 6 metrics, with CLS accounting for around 15% of the score. It summarises all unexpected content shifts that happen on that page, and users need a high CLS grade to pass the assessment. 

• A good CLS score is– below 0.1,
• One that needs improvement – between 0.1 and 0.25,
• 0.25 is a poor CLS score.

CLS or Cumulative Layout Shift = impact fraction X distance fraction

What Leads To A Poor CLS Score? 

1. Unspecified width and height for images.
2. iFrames, Ads, and embedded elements with unspecified sizes. 
3. Dynamic content on the page. 
4. Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT) and/or  Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT), caused by web fonts.
5. Actions awaiting network response before updating DOMs.

How to Fix CLS Issues and Improve Your CLS Score and User Experience?

Reducing unstable elements, or shifting behavior isn’t easy. However, there are certain steps that you can take to ensure that your CLS score remains favorable. 

Measure the CLS Score of All The Major Templates on Your Website 

Websites receive CLS scores depending on how they are structured. For instance, article pages might have better CLS scores than homepages. A good idea would be to measure the CLS scores of all major page templates. 

Including and Defining the Width and Height of Images 

Size attributes for images and videos are vital. For responsive images, define aspect ratios. Reserve any space for elements using CSS aspect ratio boxes, so the browser can give the document the correct amount of space while assets load. Earlier, web developers would include width and height for images by implementing a code, ie 

<img src=”example.jpg” width=”800″ height=”300″ alt=”Example Image”>

Responsive images changed all that with more and more developers turning to CSS. Space is given only after the browser starts downloading the image. The layout would move after all the images were displayed. This is why the aspect ratio is better for image resizing, reducing the risk of layout shifts. Responsive images also work well with secret attributes, so you can set up different photo sizes so the browser displays the best one. 

Optimize Ads 

Layout shifts are often caused by ads, especially if ad placement isn’t optimized. Reserve space for ad slots, and don’t collapse this using placeholder in case ads aren’t returned. Beware of non-sticky ads on top of the viewport because they push down content. Ads require space, and if they aren’t given some, will shift other content on the page when they load eventually. Leave space for the largest ad size configured. Read our blog on how to effectively use sticky ads without ruining the user experience. 

Beware of Wrongly-Injected Dynamic Content 

Don’t inject dynamic content on top of the content that has been already loaded, unless it’s a response to user interaction and an expected layout shift. Such content won’t affect CLS if it is loaded 500 milliseconds after user interaction. Basically, if user inputs cause layout shift regions to grow, your CLS score won’t be affected.

Using ‘font: display’ Values ‘link rel=preload’

If your site depends on online fonts, and browsers download fonts from servers, they display blank space before the font loads. Termed FOIT, as discussed earlier, can be avoided by using font: display causes like swap, auto, block, fallback, and optional. You could also preload font files using, link rel=preload for important fonts, so they are downloaded on priority.

Conclusion

In conclusion, apart from these best practices, there are many other steps that you could take to ensure that your layout doesn’t shift too much. Don’t try implementing all these steps in one shot. It is better to break them down, measuring the effect of each optimization post-implementation. Users can code layout shift fixes or use plugins to improve their CLS score. If dynamic content remains static, that will happen

Don’t underestimate the CLS score even if it isn’t as intuitive as other Core Web Vitals. It is very useful and can tell you why users are unhappy with your website and give you useful pointers in improving the user experience. Read our blog on striking the right balance between ads and user experience, another important area to watch out for if you want your site visitors to be happy. 

The post What is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), And How To Optimize It first appeared on Publir.