Do i give up? My Website Nightmare

0.5 CTR is badly low for an average position of 5,
If changing the meta titles/descriptions did not help, it sounds like your audience is stick to the few websites ranking above you,
The only solution to increase your CTR would be either to write more engaging titles & descriptions or to aim for a better position(s) in the SERPs, other than that, nothing could magically do influence it
Your niche seems to be kinda easy & profitable and if the ROI is really good, you should probably invest in more content & target more keywords
 
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hideath said:
0.5 CTR is badly low for an average position of 5,
If changing the meta titles/descriptions did not help, it sounds like your audience is stick to the few websites ranking above you,
The only solution to increase your CTR would be either to write more engaging titles & descriptions or to aim for a better position(s) in the SERPs, other than that, nothing could magically do influence it
Your niche seems to be kinda easy & profitable and if the ROI is really good, you should probably invest in more content & target more keywords
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply bud
 
5% is incredibly ambitious for a CTR in SERPs.

But anyhow, try a variety of different things like:

- A/B testing title tags: Look at what title tags the adwords results are using, PPC often is more heavily reliant on CTR and can test title tags far easier so it should give you a few good ideas to test.
- FAQ Schema: Add FAQs to the page with the FAQ markup to take more real estate of the SERP
- Review Schema: Is there anyway you can get some stars pulling through?
- Featured Snippets: Attempting to get Featured Snippets (although this can also negatively impact CTR)

Aside from all that, grow and spend money on growing a brand if you think that it's a truly valuable tool. The way you break into the high CTR in SERP is by users recognising and trusting you.
 
I see you've already tried a lot of options. How different are your CTAs to those of GOV websites?
Is it possible that you are not ranknig for the relevant keywords? Still, the CTA is very low for such a high positioning.
How your website speed?

I would try 2 things:
1. Invest more in SEO to hold position #1 firmly
2. Invest in brand. This might be the key factor you're missing out here.
I don't know if you have social media following, subscribers? there's a number of things you can do to help your brand and grow the CTA with that.
 
This software can maybe help you as well. https://panel.userguiding.com/guides
 
@robdenio - what geo location are you targeting? are you competing with us .GOV sites?
 
Average position: 5

I think this is your problem. With all the stuff google put on their page nowdays, position 5 brings very little traffic.
I have an article ranking 5 on a 15k monthly keyword and I'm barely get 200 users/month out of it
 
If I were you I'd sell it tbh. Finance niche is hard, as you say, and since the comp is mostly gov sites everyone will want to click those instead (more trustworthy ofc).

Selling it would give you like $50k to invest in loads of other projects. $50k is a lot to have for building websites and no doubt you can make that investment yourself more than $1500/month with a bit of work and outsourcing (you said you know SEO quite well).
 
robdenio said:
The fact I am competing with GOV websites is definitely a big factor.
Click to expand...
Have you tried adding a benefit driven feature to your title or description that would make the user think they are better off going to your site than the gov site?

Promise them something that they won't get on the gov site. "Save time, effort, and sanity and get all your [niche] answers here" etc
 
Have you tried schema for rich snippets? Star ratings, FAQ and table of contents schema will help CTR.

How many featured snippets do you have?

Are your titles and descriptions engaging?

So many factors that go into CTR.
 
fb3003 said:
@robdenio - what geo location are you targeting? are you competing with us .GOV sites?
Click to expand...
There is no specific location, but the majority of traffic comes from US
DunderMannen said:
If I were you I'd sell it tbh. Finance niche is hard, as you say, and since the comp is mostly gov sites everyone will want to click those instead (more trustworthy ofc).

Selling it would give you like $50k to invest in loads of other projects. $50k is a lot to have for building websites and no doubt you can make that investment yourself more than $1500/month with a bit of work and outsourcing (you said you know SEO quite well).
Click to expand...
Selling it hasn’t really entered my mind, I’ve invested so much time and effort. To even rank the site has been an achievement, I know the site isn’t anywhere near its potential so I would be reluctant to sell it knowing there’s a possibility in a few months’ time I’ve increased to CTR x4 which is modest and quadrupled the income. I appreciate what your saying tho.
thescrrr said:
Have you tried adding a benefit driven feature to your title or description that would make the user think they are better off going to your site than the gov site?

Promise them something that they won't get on the gov site. "Save time, effort, and sanity and get all your [niche] answers here" etc
Click to expand...
I did try adding the finance calculator, spent six months creating it. It gets a lot of returning users but not anywhere near what I expected. I might hand it off to a developer see if it can be improved.
Stitches and Burns said:
Have you tried schema for rich snippets? Star ratings, FAQ and table of contents schema will help CTR.

How many featured snippets do you have?

Are your titles and descriptions engaging?

So many factors that go into CTR.
Click to expand...
I did try adding the finance calculator, spent six months creating it. It gets a lot of returning users but not anywhere near what I expected. I might hand it off to a developer see if it can be improved.

The site is full of scheme, I think at least 25% of the position 1-3 rankings have featured snippets and FAQ’s. I wouldn’t really benefit from star ratings there’s nothing for sale or there are no review pages is more just information and facts. Thanks for the reply
 
robdenio said:
I did try adding the finance calculator, spent six months creating it. It gets a lot of returning users but not anywhere near what I expected. I might hand it off to a developer see if it can be improved.
Click to expand...

I meant adding the benefit driven cta as your meta description so people would click your link more instead of the gov sites.
 
Aleksandar916 said:
I see you've already tried a lot of options. How different are your CTAs to those of GOV websites?
Is it possible that you are not ranknig for the relevant keywords? Still, the CTA is very low for such a high positioning.
How your website speed?

I would try 2 things:
1. Invest more in SEO to hold position #1 firmly
2. Invest in brand. This might be the key factor you're missing out here.
I don't know if you have social media following, subscribers? there's a number of things you can do to help your brand and grow the CTA with that.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply

I'll be honest i havent done any work on the social media side of things, although i have created them. Might look to improve that over the next month or so.
 
Sorry if this has already been asked, but is this like a content site? Product? Service? Cause depending on that I may have a tip or two.
 
I'm still in a similar situation as you, I had a 0.5% CTR and went ahead and optimized my site to try and get some featured snippets and now I have a CTR of 1%. Still pretty low, but maybe you can think of something based on that information. Regardless going to be following this thread to hopefully get some ideas myself
 
How many backlinks did you create to get this site up there? And how much did it cost?
 
I would say that your biggest problem lies in the fact that you choose the highly competitive niche and the one that is pretty saturated and that's why you are lacking in getting better CTRs. You could maybe do some A/B testing and experiment with different setups, change the landing page a bit, mention various offers, but this still can't guarantee some big success. Don't give up just yet, but you can start thinking about other niches that you could work on in the upcoming period.
 
I have several sites with low ctr, it is because the niche is quite competitive
 
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