The click through rate is a measure of the number of times a link was clicked divided by the number of times the link appeared in a search engine results page.
For example, if one of your links is clicked once but appears ten times in a search results page, it has a 10% CTR.
Typically, achieving a significant CTR rate requires ranking high on the first page of Google.
Due to the challenge of naturally obtaining a high CTR rate, people may resort to manipulating the results to artificially boost their CTR rates. This is referred to as CTR manipulation.
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CTR Manipulation explained
Boosting your CTR rate is not manipulation. Of course, website owners and bloggers want to maximize their click through rates.
A high CTR is an important ranking factor, and in the next section, we will explain ways you can achieve that. In this section, I want to highlight some methods that are considered manipulative and go against Google guidelines.
Keyword stuffing
This refers to the practice of repeatedly and unnaturally stuffing a blog article with important keywords that you want to rank for. The intention is to artificially boost rankings for those specific keywords.
However, this approach violates Google’s spam policies. You can find more information about keyword stuffing here: Keyword Stuffing.
For instance, take a look at the following text that employs keyword stuffing (excerpted from Google’s spam policy page). Notice the repeated use of the phrase “app store credit”.
Machine generated traffic
You can buy apps or bots that will find your content via Google search and click on links for you, automatically. This tricks Google into increasing your rankings because it looks like your links are popular and searchers are clicking on them.
This is a violation of Google’s spam policies: Machine-generated traffic
If you get caught manipulating Google’s search results, your site may face penalties and could be completely de-indexed by Google.
Instead of relying on bots, people can employ organic CTR manipulation methods. These methods involve sharing your content on social media or through a newsletter, and redirecting visitors to the content you are promoting. This is considered link spam and violates Google’s spam policies.
Link spam can be one of the following practises:
- link exchanges (“link to me and I’ll link to you”)
- buying or selling links for ranking purposes
and others… See Google’s link spam guidelines for details.
Although CTR manipulation can quickly and drastically increase traffic to your website it is strongly discouraged. It violates Google’s spam policies and can lead to your site being de-indexed and heavily penalised.
The negative consequences of engaging in CTR manipulation
To be eligible to appear in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) you must not violate Google’s spam policies or it’s content policies.
Google uses automated processes to find spam content and other policy violations. In addition, Google employees can review your content and impose manual actions against your site.
From Google Search Console you can see if manual actions are outstanding against your site.
Long terms risks of CTR manipulation
It’s crucial to understand that CTR manipulation is not a sustainable or effective long-term strategy for improving search engine rankings. Search engines like Google consider multiple factors beyond CTR, including website relevance, user engagement, anchor text and content quality.
Google constantly updates its search algorithms and spam detection processes. Your site is at risk of de-indexing if you try to manipulate the rankings.
Ethical Strategies to Improve Click-Through Rates
I’ve written about how to improve your CTR rates before. In this article I’ll briefly include some strategies to naturally improve your CTR.
Optimize your headline and meta description
Writing a compelling title and meta description, both appear in the search engine results page and will boost your click through rates.
Write helpful, informative content
This is the main way to improve your click-through rates (CTR). It’s also the most difficult way – that is why people look for shortcuts.
Your blog articles need to be persuasive to engage your audience and meet your business goals such as:
- encouraging readers to purchase a product or service
- contacting you for a quotation
- clicking on an affiliate link or ad
- subscribing to your newsletter
Or other conversion goals you have in mind.
By focusing on delivering valuable content, you can effectively drive engagement and increase your chances of achieving desired actions from your readers.
Use long tail keywords
Long tail keywords, or low competition keywords, are keywords with less competition. They are usually 3+ words in length and with less monthly search volume than more competitive keywords.
Optimizing for these types of keywords increases your chances of ranking and receiving clicks. For new websites or those with limited traffic and backlinks, focusing on low competition keywords is recommended to drive traffic.
Final Thoughts
In summary, don’t use manipulative tactics to increase your click through rates. Instead, write helpful, informative and persuasive content – this will naturally increase your CTR and conversion rates.
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