3 tactics to improve CTAs for increased relevance and conversions
Calls to action (CTAs) provide customers with a path to follow to achieve their goals, whether that’s completing a purchase or requesting a consultation. Despite being one of the last steps in the customer’s journey, CTAs have gone overlooked as brands adopt a generic approach in this final, crucial solicitation, using messages like “Click here,” “Join Now,” and “Read more.”
Creating descriptive CTAs takes time, but it can also signal relevance to search engines, guide your users and improve conversion rates. At SMX Convert, Billie Hyde, senior account manager at The SEO Works, shared several tactics she uses with her own clients to improve the experience for users while furthering business outcomes.
Ditch the generic CTAs
“There are two types of calls to actions . . . subtle calls to action or glaringly obvious,” Hyde said, “These super obvious ones . . . they appear everywhere on the page, so they can be in the meta description or in the actual content or on the product description towards the end.”
CTAs often serve as anchor text, but generic wording may downplay the relevance of the link for users as well as search engines. Hyde recommends that marketers go beyond these bland CTAs to provide more value.
“Try to put something relevant to the page you’re trying to take users to,” she said. Instead of a CTA like “Browse our collection today,” Hyde recommends “Browse our collection of gold earrings today,” she provided as an example. “So I’m still saying to Google that where this call to action is taking you is relevant for this reason and the page that we’re linking to is what we’re saying it is,” she said, adding that this also helps with internal linking.
If you must use a generic CTA, it’s worth researching and testing whether it actually applies to the content you’re using it for, Hyde added.
Read more: 3 tactics to improve CTAs for increased relevance and conversions
When Google’s title change goes wrong
Analyzing the Google SERP title tag changes
Ever since Google announced changes to its SERP page title generation process, SEOs have been scrambling to measure its impact, adjusting their strategies when necessary. Many organizations saw minor changes to their site’s title tags, but there were some notable exceptions. Our team, in particular, noticed a major edit to our MarTech mission page title link (the title of a search result in Google Search).
Reviewing the changes in clicks and CTR
Most of the MarTech SERP title changes we’ve seen haven’t changed drastically. As a result, their clicks, impressions, and CTR numbers stayed at expected levels over the past few months.
But, we wanted to zoom in on the search metrics for our “What is Martech?” page to see what impact an unwanted title change made by Google has had, especially since it’s one of our most visited pages. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t good.
Read more: When Google’s title change goes wrong
Google Search lets you see if a doctor or healthcare facility takes your insurance
Google is rolling out a few updates to Google Search to help users find doctors and healthcare providers that are right for them. These updates include being able to see if a doctor or healthcare provider accepts your insurance and if they speak your language.
Health insurance. Google Search can now show you which insurance networks the doctor or healthcare provider might accept. Plus, on the mobile search results, Google will let you filter providers by the insurance plans accepted. This will help users determine if a provider accepts their insurance, including Medicare, private insurance and employer-funded insurance, government-affiliated health programs and more.
Speak my language. Healthcare providers and doctors can also edit their Google Business Profile listing to define the languages spoken at their offices. Google said patients “want to be able to communicate clearly in their language of choice.” Google says there are over a dozen languages represented, including Spanish and American Sign Language.
Image: Google.Read more: Google Search lets you see if a doctor or healthcare facility takes your insurance
Google adds PrestaShop to list of e-commerce integrations
Google has announced a shopping integration with e-commerce platform PrestaShop, the company announced Thursday. The integration is available now via the “PrestaShop Marketing with Google” add-on, available in France and in countries where Shopping campaigns are available.
This new integration gives PrestaShop’s 300,000 merchants an easy way to make their product listings more discoverable across Google properties, such as Search, the Shopping tab, Image search, and YouTube.
Making it easier for retailers who may not be working with an agency to show their products on Google strengthens the search engine as an e-commerce destination, which will help it compete against other e-commerce platforms and may also help it attract more retail advertisers.
Read more: Google adds PrestaShop to list of e-commerce integrations
Google December 2021 product reviews update is rolling out now
Google is now rolling out a new search algorithm update named the December 2021 products reviews update. This is the second time Google is pushing out the reviews of a product update this year; the first one rolled out in April 2021.
This update is “designed to better reward” product reviews that “share in-depth research, rather than thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products,” a spokesperson told Search Engine Land in April. Reviews that are written in a way that has “insightful analysis and original research” will be rewarded, especially “content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well,” Google said.
What is changing? Google said that if you made changes between now and the last update, you may see improvements to your rankings since the last update. Google wrote, “if you have made positive changes to your content, you may see that improvement reflected as part of this latest release.”
Google also said the search company has “received more feedback from users on what type of review content is deemed trustworthy and useful, motivating us to provide additional product review guidance. Users have told us that they trust reviews with evidence of products actually being tested, and prefer to have more options to purchase the product.”
Read more: Google December 2021 product reviews update is rolling out now
Google says it values all local reviews, both positive and negative
