Improving Click-Through Rate for New Content Websites in Google Search: A Practitioner Case Study of Title and Snippet Optimisation

New content websites often earn search impressions well before they earn clicks. This paper examines that gap using Google Search Console data from NextPlayIntel (nextplayintel.com), a gaming news and deals site covering many games, which received its first Google impression on 24 October 2026. Over a 28-day window, the site recorded 382 clicks from 38,827 impressions, a click-through rate (CTR) under 1%, with most impressions at positions 4–10. A query- and page-level review found four recurring problems: snippets that contradicted searcher intent, titles that went stale after an event, broad queries the site could not win, and image-search impressions that inflated totals. A narrow how-to guide, by contrast, reached 7.2% CTR. Nine titles were rewritten on 11 November 2026. The paper describes each pattern and the interventions, and offers a reusable checklist. The effect of the rewrites has not yet been measured; those results are pending.