Why you’re not getting clicks on your blog posts, maybe dull meta tags?

I often wondered this when I saw on Google Search Console that for a key phrase I was getting about 660 impressions but no clicks. Why is that? Why wasn’t anybody clicking on my articles?

You’ll see when writing your first article I mentioned about writing compelling meta tags. Well, I wasn’t doing this.

I was copying my competitors and doing what everybody else was doing.

And when you saw my article up against all the other artricles, well let’s just say it didn’t stand out. It blended in with all the articles that started with the exact same key phrases. But that was my problem.

Boring meta title

I needed to write more compelling title tags and stand out from the rest.

I mean who wants to click on articles that say they’re going to deliver the exact same information as the others. You might as well just click on the first listing on page one and be done.

You want to know what my title tag was? For the key phrase “wordpress theme detector” that had 667 impressions and a big goose egg of clicks? My title was What WordPress Theme is That? WordPress Theme Detector. <= How boring is that?

Now you can see why I wasn’t getting any clicks. And guess what? On page one of Google for that key phrase the majority started with “wordpress theme detector” or “what theme is that?”

How to write more compelling title tags

They actually have a blog post title generator you can use to pick out a better, more intriguing title for your blog post. There are several, but here’s the first one I saw that doesn’t seem to be too bad. And does exactly what it says it does.

Here you can also analyze your blog post tile and get a score back of how well you did. For this blog post title I got a score of 73 which is above average. Not too shabby!

My strengths were optimal headline length, limited use of positive sentiment <= apparently bad news sells, and strong human connection. Sounds good to me.

Now, for “wordpress theme detector” let’s check out my score for that post. My guess is a score of 49. Ok, I guess I’m a little hard on myself, but I got a score of 64. Still needs to be improved in my opinion. My strengths were limited use of positive sentiment <= again!, and limited use of passive language which is a shocker to me because Yoast usually gets me for that.

Not-so-exciting meta description

Another reason, why I wasn’t getting clicks, but not the main reason. I wouldn’t score this as more important than the title tag, but the meta description is another tag you can optimize for a better click-through rate.

And I have to say I’m pretty lazy when it comes to writing a meta description for my blog post. Usually I just copy and paste the beginning of the blog post. Yeah! I know, such a bad habit of mine.

So, my meta descrition for the “wordpress theme detector” post read as follows: But, did you actually know there is such thing as the WordPress Theme Detector site? Say what? I know, LOL! I totally just stumbled across this website today. <= I know so lame, haha! But, I think I'm getting better.I actually got a strength of 71 when I ran my meta description through Sharethrough’s headline analyzer just for the fun of it.

But, really, now that I read it back again, it’s NOT that bad.