If you already have the number one spot, how do you get more traffic? Optimize your search snippet. While your title tag is likely to be re-written about 30% of the time, you should work really hard on your snippet. This is your opportunity to sell yourself and get users to come to your page instead of your competitors. I have seen 20% improvements in organic traffic from improving the search snippet. The good news is that there is a relatively straight forward process to testing thanks to a tool called SERP Turkey. This tool will let you test different variations of your snippet to see what will generate the best click through rate.

  While the test results typically don’t translate exactly (due to Google re-writing your snippet and test sample is not 100% accurate), there is a lot of opportunity to improve what you are doing.     If you’re not able to test your SERPs through SERP Turkey, you can leverage data from paid search efforts to find common themes in your snippets that correlate to higher CTRs or you can make changes to your titles and review changes in performance in Google Search Console. Siege Media has provided an overview of this method here. While the space in your title tag is sacred, you do have a lot of opportunity to play the meta description. Highlighting unique features, reducing objections, and reasons to buy can significantly improve your CTR. Some examples are “free shipping”, “free returns”, “no hassle returns”, “#1 in x”, “risk free”, “best selection” and “lowest prices”.

Action Items

• Identify pages that currently rank well
• Review paid search data to identify common trends in ad snippets which are associated with higher click through rates
• Leverage SERP Turkey to test revamped snippets for improved CTRs