The relationship between targeted traffic and search engine ranking page (SERP) position shows that search engine optimization, or SEO, treads a fine line between being an art and being a science. Obviously there are specific algorithms that are used to rank sites for a given search query, but finding out exactly how they work is shrouded in mystery.
Even without, say, Google giving up how its search engine ranking is determined, every time there is a new factor taken into account by an algorithm, SEO researchers are pretty quick to learn in general what that new factor is, and less scrupulous site owners are ready to pounce with less than honest ways to try and game the system.
One fairly recent example is back links. Once it became general knowledge that search engine ranking and Google PageRank took back links into account, “link farms” and sites where you could buy links sprung up like so many mushrooms after a rainy spell. It was then Google’s turn to ferret out sites using these techniques and either de-list them or drop their rank significantly.
It’s like an arms race: as soon as people figure out and exploit some “new” wrinkle in SERP generation, the search engines have to find a way to stamp dishonest practices out. Otherwise, the search engines aren’t worth much to people doing real searches. This arms race continues because making it onto the first page of search results is good, making it “above the fold” (in the upper 700 or so pixel rows) is better, and ranking number one is best.
In 2006, some AOL search engine ranking data was leaked, and SEO researchers pounced. The analysis showed that the number one position brings with it a 47% average click through rate. Positions two, three, and four have click through rates of 13%, 9%, and 7%. Clearly, bringing your ranking up from third or fourth to first makes an enormous difference in a site’s traffic and its bottom line if it is a commercial site.
Of course, these figures are only approximations, but they do seem to hold water. People notice great differences between their statistics between the top rankings. Anecdotal evidence suggests that going from the #2 to the #1 spot can increase traffic by 100% or better. Dropping from #1 to #2 corresponds to a 30% to 50% drop in search volume.
As you move downward through the first SERP, the rate of decline of click throughs falls, and one interesting quirk that could be an artifact is that the number 10 position gets a slightly higher rate of click throughs than the number 9 position. Some speculate that users will be more likely to glance at the last listing while scrolling down to suggest searches or page navigation buttons. Once you move off the first SERP you’re close to being invisible. For all but the very highest volume queries, the non first SERP listings will generally offer no benefit to site owners except in unusual situations.
A factor in your SERP position is the quality of your site’s meta data. To ensure that your web pages get the best shot at appearing high in the search engine results, you need to give some thought to the meta data in your web pages. Meta data is data describing other data. For your web page, meta data includes things like the page title, keywords, and description.
In Google, the display of a “snippet” of your site will be longer, the longer the query is leading to the site. In other words, a detailed query that hits your site will sometimes show a three line snippet rather than the traditional two line snippet. The main reason this makes a difference is that it can in some cases limit the results shown “above the fold” to the top three results rather than four.
As you can see in the accompanying screen shot, a search on “chloe light gray leather riding boots” results in a long snippet for the top result, though the others in the top ten are still short snippets.
A good snippet can improve click through rates, and you can be sure that if extended snippets cause only three listings to show above the fold, then position in the top three results becomes even more important. In other words, yes, people are too lazy to scroll down in many cases.
Now, while the extended snippets come from actual content of the page it refers to, meta data is used in other cases. A well-optimized page has a title containing the target keyword phrase, and the keyword phrase from the title (with slight variations) should be made of phrases most used to find your page in the SERPs. Putting all the title keywords into the meta description will maximize the number of times your meta description is shown as your snippet. If the meta description contains all of the keywords from the user’s search phrase, it will be used as the search snippet for your page.
The meta description should also contain, if possible, a call to action that will make the user want to click on through to your site, and the description should be accurate so that the user doesn’t jump right back to the SERP from your site. A well optimized meta description, title, and a URL that is rich in keywords can all work together to boost your click through rate even if your site is ranked third or fourth rather than first on the SERP.
In August 2008 Google launched its tool called Google Insights for Search. It’s like Google Trends on steroids. There are many new features designed with advertisers and marketing professionals in mind to help them (and anyone else who is interested, such as the average website owner) understand search behavior.
Google Trends displays how frequently a search term is queried in relation to the total search volume throughout all regions of the world in different languages. Google Trends produces a graph where the horizontal axis shows a simple timeline (which goes back to 2004), and the vertical axis is how often a term gets searched for devided by the total number of searches worldwide. It also produces popularity broken down by location and language.
Google Insights is a more sophisticated tool to help people gauge interest in relevant search terms. For example, Google Insights can help you figure out which messages go over best. Suppose you make high-end espresso machines. You can use Google Insights to determine whether your advertising should highlight money savings over coffee shop coffee, taste test results, or performance and features. Google Insights can also be used to determine seasonal variations in search behavior and to help advertisers and marketing professionals create more effective brand associations.
As just a quick example, typing the search terms “espresso,” “home espresso machine,” and “gourmet coffee” in the category “Food & Drink” for 2009 yields the data you can see in the first screen shot. when you look at the graph of “Growth Relative to the Food & Drink Category” you can see that it takes a big jump in December that is most likely due to Christmas shopping. Looking at the terms by region, you can see that Greece, Netherlands, and Germany are the regions that searched most on “espresso.” The only blip at all for the term “gourmet coffee” comes from the United States, and it’s very small.
But you can also learn that the top three searches of related terms are “coffee espresso,” “espresso machine,” and “cafe espresso.” The top three rising searches are “espresso on line” (popular in Italy), “espresso apparaten” (tops in Netherlands), and “cowgirl espresso” (the most popular in the U.S.). With this information I could zero in on Greece, Italy, and Netherlands and try to get to the heart of the popularity of the search terms there.
You are not limited to Google web searches. You can also analyze results from Google News, Product Search, and Image Search. You can break the data down even further from there. For example, you could look at hot Google News searches over the past week, month, or quarter. Queries can be broken down by region into individual metropolitan areas. This is a tool that news journalists find helpful in gauging interest levels in different subjects among their readership base.
One researcher gauged the interest of the U.S. college basketball tournament known as “March Madness” for a period of one week during March 2009. The results showed that interest was highest in the states of Kentudky, Iowa, and Kansas. In 2010, journalists could gauge popularity of search terms related to the World Cup in South Africa in various regions around the world. In a nutshell, what Google Insights does is help anyone who is interested (webmaster, ad agency, small business owner, academic researcher, or otherwise interested party) measure interest in search terms relative to their particular area of research.
Suppose, for example, you have a seasonal business, perhaps a surf shop in Torquay, Australia. While you know that your peak business will occur in January through March, maybe you want to know when people start querying about surfing holidays in Australia. If you plug “surfing Australia” and “surfing holidays Australia,” you’ll discover that with the exception of 2004, there are peaks of interest at the beginning and end of each year as one might expect. This can be seen in the second screen shot.
But scroll down further and you can see that the rising searches include “rip curl australia,” “asp surfing australia,” and “surfing in australia.” Further probing shows that Victoria is the state with the most searches, and Melbourne is the city with the most searches on “rip curl australia.” So as the theoretical owner of a Torquay surf shop, I may decide to pitch my advertising especially aggressively in Melbourne.
You can use Google Insights to flesh out keyword ideas and perhaps tweak any Adwords Campaigns you’re running. You can download the results to a spreadsheet for convenience. To download data to spreadsheets you will have to sign into your Google account. Google Insights is available in 39 languages, and will soon add a forecasting feature that will be available for some queries. An Animated map function will allow Google Insights users to see how interest changes with time and location.
Google Insights is a flexible enough tool that users can think of countless ways to use it. Beyond just expanding your keyword lists or looking at economic trends, you can use it for things like satisfying your curiosity about why some other site ranks higher in the search engines than yours. Even historians of the post-2004 era will find a wealth of information about how search queries evolve over time and across world regions.
Small business owners, ad agencies, and marketing specialists can use Google Insights to compare brands in real time over real markets. If there is a clear indication that a particular ad campaign is working well in a particular region or city, they can more accurately target offline advertising and even promotional events. Research using Google Keyword Tool has shown that search volume estimates are reasonably accurate, particularly in terms of relative value. That means that you can have a healthy amount of trust in the results you get from using Google Insights.
caffeine roll out planned for 2010
The Google Caffeine sandbox has been switched off today, replaced by this message.
We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.
Based on the success we’ve seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.
Thank you – Google
So it looks like Google is finally rolling out the Caffeine updates into its live search, with the holiday season approaching Google has put webmasters and SEO’s mind at ease by deciding not to roll out the changes until January 2010, as confirmed by Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team on his blog today.
Some key comments from his post regarding Google Caffeine;
1. I know that webmasters can get anxious around this time of year, so I wanted to reassure site owners that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays. Caffeine will go live at one data center so that we can continue to collect data and improve the technology, but I don’t expect Caffeine to go live at additional data centers until after the holidays are over.
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It was bound to happen, both Google and Bing have been targeting social media and real-time search since the launch of Google caffeine back in August 2009, roughly the same time that Google started to index tweets from Twitter.com.
On October 21st during the Web 2.0 Summit, Yusuf Mehdi of Bing officially confirmed partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to integrate public tweets and Facebook updates into its search results.
A few hours later Marrisa Mayer of Google also announced a partnership with Twitter in her presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit.
Wow, what a day! Two massive partnerships announced in 1 day and only a few hours apart. However, those of you that have been following the two search engines will understand that both Google and Bing have been working on real-time search facilities for quite sometime now and have been trading blow by blow with each other.
Lets take a quick look at the scores
top search queries - Google webmaster tools
Checking the Google webmaster tools today we noticed the keyword sorting feature appearing in the ‘ Top Search Queries’ dashboard.
The three drop down menus will allow webmaster tool users to segment the top search queries by;
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