One of the most common questions we are asked by our clients is “What kind of clicks can I expect when I am in position 1?” Another is “How many more clicks will I get at the top of the page, compared to the bottom?” Valid questions when choosing to employ an SEO firm and ones we’ve struggled to answer, until now.

We’ve spent some time this month and put our heads together to conduct a little research that we hope goes someway to answering these questions. As you surely know, page 1 on Google is the much revered promised land of Search Engine Optimisation, but did you know that by battling your way to the first position, your site could enjoy three times the traffic that a competitor in 3rd place receives?

We compared Click Through Rates for a dozen of our retained SEO clients by looking at their Google Adwords data, their Google Analytics data and our ranking tracking software. We compared traffic levels against where they were in the search results month on month for each keyword and the results averaged out as:

As you can see, there are drastic differences between the click through rates you can expect if your site shows at top of the Google rankings on page 1, or if you are somewhere in mid-table or towards the bottom of the page. Our research shows that if your organisation finds itself as rank 1, you can expect just over 51% of all people searching on that term to visit your website. This then falls quite dramatically...

Position 1 = 51.4%
Position 2 = 27.4%
Position 3 = 16.8%
Position 4 = 12.7%
Position 5 = 10.8%
Position 6 = 8.3%
Position 7 = 6.6%
Position 8 = 6.2%
Position 9 = 5.3%
Position 10 = 4.8%

Interestingly, the difference between the listings ‘below the fold’ (i.e. the lower half of the page that you often have to scroll down to) is quite small. Perhaps people click the first listing impulsively but when they get down to the second half of the page, take the time to read through the lower listings?

If you are carrying out SEO work or want to appear at the top of the search engines then hopefully this gives you an idea of what to expect. Compare these figures with the search volumes found on the Google keyword suggestion tool and you will have an idea of the visitor levels your site will receive.

Please bear in mind that whilst we ran this for a dozen sites, that’s still quite a small number and if we had the time or resources then we would have done more. Also, the figures varied quite widely depending on the market and the type of keywords involved.

Your CTR will obviously depend on how compelling your listing is in the search results, so spend time to ensure keywords are included within your page titles, meta descriptions and the URL (if possible), as these are the three things that users see in the search results. Also try and include words that will enhance CTR, such as “free trial”, “low cost”, “high quality” or whatever works for your target market.

In essence, SEO (search engine optimisation) is two areas: keywords and links. Whilst most people who have a website have thought about keywords and most website designers will help include these in the important parts of your web pages, links are often an afterthought, if considered at all.

This can be good news for your businesses as if you haven’t bothered seeking out links then your competitors probably haven’t either. If you start getting the type of in-bound links that the search engines like, then your site will soon start to rise to the top of the search results, bringing you much more traffic and enquiries.

Why are links so important?

The search engines need to be viewed as a popularity contest. Just because your website says that you sell cheap widgets doesn’t mean Google believes it. You need other websites to point Google towards yours, with each link acting as a vote of confidence. This means that Google finds your site more often and pays more attention as other sites it trusts are telling it about yours.

Where should you get links from?

There are many different types of link and it is important to build a diverse link profile, so seek links from a wide range of sites. Here are a few of the more common areas:

1. Directories. Directories list and link to other websites. It is a good idea to request links from popular general directories, such as DMOZ and Hot Frog, as well as niche ones that specialise in listing sites from within your industry. Quality is key with directories, so if it looks like a site full of spammy listings then move on and find another.

2. Blogs. Commenting on other blogs is popular in the link building world as you can choose the text displayed in the link and the page on your site that it links to. Blog comments can also bring high quality traffic but you need to leave a valuable comment and not spam them with some meaningless drivel.

3. Link requests. Send an email to other websites asking them to link to yours. If it is someone you know, such as a supplier or friend, then they will probably not hesitate to help. If it’s an unknown website then you may need to provide a reason why they should, e.g. an interesting article or special offer they can link to.

How do you find these links?

There are numerous ways of finding links but we only have a few hundred words here to try and describe what can be a full time job. Have a play around with these search strings and vary the words to find an array of sites that are easy link targets (substituting the word ‘keyword’ for your keyword or keyphrase):

If you are looking for directories then try typing this into Google:

keyword “add URL”
keyword “submit site”
keyword “suggest website”

Want to find relevant blogs? Try these and see what comes up:

keyword “add comment”
keyword “powered by Wordpress”

The entire ranking algorithm that Google uses is based on the concept of link popularity, so focusing on this area can bring in huge improvements to your search engine rankings. By doing nothing but building links, we have helped many businesses reach very high Google rankings for very competitive keywords. It really does work, so best of luck!

Last week saw PubCon, an SEO and online marketing conference in Las Vegas. Each year thousands of professional web developers and marketers meet up to hear about the latest changes in the world of search engines and PubCon 2009 offered a lot of information for them all to think over.

One of the most prominent speakers at the event was Matt Cutts, head of Web Spam at Google. Whenever Cutts speaks, search engine marketers listen, as there are very valuable insights into the ways Google works and the possible changes in how they rank websites.

Even though Liberty was not in attendance, we have kept an eye on what was discussed and have chosen to highlight a few of the points which were discussed as potential future rankings factors.

1. A website that loads quickly = good

The time it takes your web pages to load could have an effect on how Google ranks your site. Cutts said that while a site with slow pages won't necessarily drop in the rankings, one which acts quickly could rise. This is good news for businesses that invest in quality websites and hosting. This is an SEO factor that you have complete control over and if you give users a better experience, then Google could recognise this by rewarding your site a more prominent position in the search results.

2. Repeating keywords in footer links = bad

Cutts was asked to review specific websites and on one there were many keyword rich internal links which he viewed negatively. Many of these links were from the footer and to deep pages within the site. If you have a website where you have stuffed keywords into the anchor text of your footer then this may be something you want to re-address.

3. Blocking the Internet Archive = bad

Sites that block the home of the Wayback Machine can be viewed as waving a spam flag at Google. Many websites choose not to let the Internet Archive index their site, something that Cutts believes is the type of behaviour associates with spammy websites. You may want to check to see if your site is blocking archive.org and if you have no legitimate reason for this, get the block removed.

Whilst neither of these two negative factors is enough to get your site Google slapped, it’s always sensible to follow best-practice guidelines as it may only take a few of these spam indicators to push your site from one that is ranking well to one that is never seen in the search results again.

On that topic, another comment was made, regarding domains that have been banned from the search results – that it may be easier to write it off and start again. It looks like Google engineers may not be able/want to sift through websites that have been penalised, looking through on-page SEO and link quality, so re-inclusion requests may go unanswered. If you have been involved in black-hat practices then you might have more luck starting a new domain and trying again with a little less trickery.

The Lincoln House Hotel is a stylish and well respected bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Cardiff city centre. The management of the hotel approached Liberty Marketing in early 2009 looking to increase the number of enquiries and bookings, which had been falling since the start of the economic downturn. Together we agreed on an online marketing and search engine optimisation strategy which could be rolled out over the course of the year.
 
How did we improve their online marketing?
 
SEO advice & copywriting - The hotel was having a new website designed so we helped by advising on keywords to target and re-wrote elements of their site so that the chosen keywords were used in a stronger way.
 
Pay Per Click advertising - A small Pay Per Click advertising campaign was set up on the Google Adwords system to bring in quick traffic and enquiries at a low cost, while the SEO elements were being worked on.
 
Advertising advice & link building - We started reviewing other websites in the travel and accommodation industry to see which were worth advertising on and which would be useful to seek inbound links from. This was done so that the search engines take the site more seriously as well as to bring in quality traffic.

How has this helped the Lincoln House Hotel?
 
Online marketing has now become a core part of the hotel's marketing strategy. The search engines are paying attention to the site a lot more than before, with Google now showing it on the first page for keywords such as "bed and breakfast Cardiff", which it used to be on the 3rd page for. This has meant that website traffic has been rising month on month and the site now receives a few thousand visitors each month.
 
"We would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff at Liberty Marketing Ltd for all the work you have done promoting our web site. During the deepest recession this country has ever had we have had an increase in enquiries and bookings and have maintained our turnover of previous years" - Kathy Howard, Lincoln House Hotel

This is a follow up post to Confusing search engine marketing and SEO jargon made simple (A-F) and More confusing search engine marketing and SEO jargon made simple (G-N).

Outbound link - Hyperlinks leading out of your website to other websites are known as outbound links.

PageRank - The value given to a web-page by Google. Ranging from 0 to 10 (with 10 being the best), the rank is primarily made up on the basis of in-bound link quality and quantity.

Paid link - When a website pays another website, search engine or directory for a link. Although not a black hat SEO technique per se, Google frowns upon such practices, however commercial sites must pay in order to appear in the Yahoo! Directory. Also known as Pay For Inclusion (PFI).

Pay Per Click (PPC) - The advertising system where businesses pay for each click their advert receives. The adverts are mainly displayed on search engine pages and once clicked, the user will be sent through to the website belonging to the advertiser.

Reciprocal link - When two websites exchange links with each other, this is known as reciprocal linking. An activity that used to be more popular than it is today, since the search engines started discounting the value of reciprocal links. Also known as link exchanging or link partnering.

Robots file - The robots.txt file is stored within a website and tells search engines what they can do with the website, such as the pages not to show in the index and links not to follow.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - The process of improving a website’s rankings in the search engines and therefore its traffic volume.

SERPs - Stands for Search Engine Results Pages and is simply the results you see when you perform a search query.

Social media - A term used to describe a variety of websites where people meet to share information and often express their opinions. Blogs, forums, video hosting sites, user review sites and wiki's, are examples of popular social media sites.

Sitemap - A page on a website that lists and links to all of the other accessible pages on that website. Useful not only for users but for the search engine spiders.

Spider - A search engine robot that jumps from website to website, via hyperlinks, for the purpose of scanning information to add to the search engine’s database.

URL - The Uniform Resource Locator, or more simply, the address of the webpage.

White hat SEO - Techniques used to improve website rankings that confirm to best practice guidelines and do not try to manipulate or trick the search engines into ranking a specific site.

Google has announced a big change to its web search, which it plans to launch very soon. Codenamed “Caffeine”, Google hopes the alterations will improve its search engine in every aspect, making it faster, provide more relevant results and index more sites. A test version has already been unveiled here; allowing webmasters to try it out and compare the differences with the current search, something Google has never done before.

Whilst the look and feel of it are very familiar, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s anti-spam team, has given assurances that the updates are strictly “under the hood” and that the differences in the search results will be subtle, maybe even unnoticeable to some users. That said, with Google also claiming that this is a change to the search engine’s architecture and infrastructure, it’s a bit of a bigger deal than one of their regular algorithm changes.

They’re right about the subtlety. Many people who have tested it (ourselves included) have only noticed minor differences to the results. However what’s interesting to note is that social media websites such as FriendFeed, Facebook and Twitter have been given a big push, featuring much higher for results in the new version.

This could be a big sign for businesses to start considering social media in their future online marketing practices. Many companies have already taken advantage of this increasingly-popular online phenomenon, having created Facebook Pages or set up profiles on Twitter. Also known as mini-sites, they might not be as important as a company’s official website but social media marketing can certainly still be implemented to promote and raise awareness of a company.

After all, Search Engine Optimisation is not only about raising the profile of a business solely through its website, but rather through their entire online presence. In other words, social media platforms can be another means of finding a business, and given that their growing popularity is also being highlighted in Google’s latest evolutionary step, your company could be found more than once through the search engines: not just directly through the official site but also via the most popular social media websites.

This is a follow up post to Confusing search engine marketing and SEO jargon made simple (A-F), where we hope to help demystify the world of search engine marketing.

Gateway pages – A website or web-page that exists to attract search engine traffic and re-direct it through to another site. Gateway pages (also known as doorway pages) are an example of black hat SEO and are frowned upon by search engine companies.

Googlebot – The name given to the spider used by Google to crawl over, and index, web pages.
 
Google dance – The changes seen in Google results, often around the time of a change to the algorithm or update to the index. The Google dance is something all SEO professionals will be familiar with and is often a time of great stress as rankings can shoot up and down quite dramatically.

HTML - Stands for HyperText Markup Language and is the programming language in which web pages on the internet are written.
 
Hub – A web page respected as having expert content, that links out to other sites of the same subject.
 
Inbound link – Hyperlinks coming into your website from others are inbound links. Important to search engine optimisation, as the more inbound links a website has from relevant, good quality sites, the more likely it is to rank highly and increase search traffic share.
 
Keyword – The word or phrase that a user submits into a search engine query.
 
Landing page – The first page a person lands on after clicking on a Pay Per Click advert or search engine listing.
 
Link bait – Content that has been created to attract in-bound links from other sites. Common types of link bait include informative articles, videos, audio, downloads, blog posts.
 
Link farm – A group of websites which exchange links between one another. Link farming is an example of black hat SEO and if discovered, can lead to a website being penalised by the search engines.
 
Long-tail – A more targeted search made using a number of words. Whilst a broad search might be “Mercedes coupe”, a long-tail example would be “Used black Mercedes CL500 coupe”. The amount of people using long-tail searches to find information is growing, so website owners need to be aware of both the broad and long-tail keywords used in their market.
 
META data – Information held within the HTML make-up of web-pages that describe to search engines what that page is about. The META title and META descriptions need to be written well as these are displayed to users within the search engine results, and should contain keywords the page is targeting (as should the META keywords list, obviously). META data are also often referred to as META Tags.
 
Monetisation – The process of turning a normal website into an income producing one. Placing adverts or becoming an affiliate are two of the most popular ways.
 
Natural listings – The web pages displayed on the left hand side of the search engine which are not labelled as “sponsored listings”. Search Engine Optimisation is the technique used to bring websites higher up in the natural search listings.
 
Nofollow – An instruction that can be placed on a web-page that tells search engines not to follow the links from the page. Nofollow can also be applied to individual links.
 
Noindex – An instruction that can be placed on a web-page that tells search engines not to index that page.

According to a recent report by Advertising Age, an exciting new deal is in the pipeline between Yahoo! and Microsoft. If it goes ahead, Yahoo! will use Microsoft’s Bing as its search engine instead of its own, effectively joining forces to become a more serious competitor to Google.

The deal could have a huge impact on Search Engine Optimisation. comScore reported that Google commanded an impressive 65% share of the search engine market share in June, while Yahoo! and Bing held 19.6% and 8.4% respectively. If all of the current Yahoo! users were to continue using Yahoo! via Bing, their combined share would reach 28%, which could really begin to challenge Google in the future.

So what does this mean for your SEO? A number of possible things. If your website currently ranks well in Yahoo! but not in Bing or Google you could really be in trouble of not ranking at all. Alternatively, a website at the top of Bing and Google but not for Yahoo! could see a considerable increase in traffic, as Yahoo! users will now see their site via Bing’s engine instead.

Pay Per Click advertising could also see a major change. Either Yahoo! Search Marketing will be replaced by Microsoft adCenter, or the two will merge. This could affect the Cost Per Click and positioning for many of the Sponsored Links found when a search query is made.

In recent years, Google has been criticised for its strict rules and T&Cs as well as its somewhat monopolistic nature towards the World Wide Web. This is fairly understandable, given that two-thirds of all Internet searches are run through them. However the Ying/Bahoo! engine could encourage Google to relax or change some of its policies and prices, especially if the combined alternative becomes popular enough to claw away some of Google’s dominant market share. This could have a radical effect on AdWords, AdSense and other Google services in the way that they’re operated and managed - perhaps a potential sigh of relief to many search engine marketers.

Overall, the important thing to understand is that change could be on the way, with this new partnership being a possible indication of things to come. Anyone who believes that Google will remain the king of the search engines forever will be hugely unprepared if Bing and Yahoo! meet or even overtake its share of the search engine market. Of course this might not happen at all, but it’s best to be ready, just in case.

I recently spoke at an event, teaching small business owners some of the basics of search engine marketing and optimisation. A few times I used basic industry terminology which created a sea of puzzled faces. Hopefully the following list of the more common terms will help clear up any confusion caused by SEO jargon.

Adwords – The name for Google’s Pay Per Click advertising system. Businesses that use Adwords will find their adverts displayed on the Google search results labelled as “sponsored listings”.

Affiliate – A person or business that doesn’t sell products or services, rather existing to send traffic to retail sites and take a commission or fee for any sales generated.

Alt text – A description given to an image on a webpage. Not often shown to users unless their browser cannot show graphics but important to search engine optimisation as search engines use these tags as a factor in determining keywords.

Anchor text – The blue, underlined text displayed for a hyperlink. Placing your keywords in anchor text of links pointing to your site has a positive impact on SEO.

Black hat SEO – Techniques used to trick and manipulate search engines into ranking a webpage. Examples include cloaking, gateway pages and keyword stuffing. Black hat SEO is frowned upon by search engines and can lead to a site being penalised or banned from search results.

Bounce rate – The number of visitors who leave a site without visiting any pages other than the one they land on. Shown in a percentage in website analytics tools, for the majority of sites the lower the bounce rate the better.

Canonization – Strangely, search engines see http://www.yoursite.com and http://yoursite.com as separate sites, which can lead to duplicate content penalties. Canonizing one of these URLs tells the search engines to only focus on one, and can lead to improved search engine rankings.

Cloaking – To cloak a website is to show one version to the visitors, and another to the search engines. Cloaking is an example of black-hat SEO and if discovered on your site, could lead to a falling out with the search engines.

Content Management System  (CMS) – The software that many websites come with which allows people to easily add to, and update, content such as text and images. Blogging systems are a good example of simple, user friendly CMS.

Conversion rate – The percentage of visitors who reach a goal. Conversion goals include signing up to a newsletter, making a purchase, filling in an enquiry form, clicking an advert, etc.

Cost Per Click (CPC) – The amount of money each click costs a Pay Per Click advertiser, which can range from a penny to over £10, depending on the competitiveness of the keyword.

Duplicate content – Content on a website that is a copy, or very similar, to content that search engines have found elsewhere. Web-pages containing duplicate content are less likely to outrank the originals in the search engines.

Ecommerce – Selling products online. Many of the most popular sites on the internet are ecommerce based. Some sell a wide range of products, like traditional department stores, while some stick to one or two specialist lines of product.

Free For All (FFA) – The name given to web pages that allow anyone to place links on them. These pages are not very well respected by the search engines as a lot of the links are low quality and point to spammy websites.

A follow-up post for terminology starting with letters G-N will be made soon.

Here are five tricks used by the more unscrupulous internet marketing firms. Swindles such as these have been going on since the dawn of the internet and while some of them are just a cheeky way of getting a few pounds out of your marketing budget, some of them could cost you thousands and potentially cause long-term harm to your website.

Each of these is a scam in use today and is one that businesses we deal with have been caught out on in the past. We are highlighting them here so that you can see the types of tricks that exist and can hopefully spot them before handing over your cash.

Scam #1 - “We’ll put you top of Google for 10 of your keywords for only £200 a month”

This is a pay per click scam that has become pretty popular over the past couple of years, with a number of businesses we know falling for it, to their later regret. On the face of it, the offer seems like a good one: A company calls you saying they will put your website in the sponsored listings on Google and guarantees that your site will appear on the first page for only £200 a month. What they don’t tell you is that the search terms are ones that are rarely used so are cheap to bid on. For example, if you were an IFA that works nationally then bidding on the keyword “pension advice” would be expensive, but bidding on “independent pension advice in South Wales” wouldn’t be. These pay per click companies will bid on keywords like the latter so that not that many clicks happen, and when they do, the cost is minimal. Out of the £200, you may only receive a few pounds worth of clicks, with the company pocketing the other £190 or so as a monthly management fee.

We have also seen one company that doesn’t stop there. They will charge you an additional £50 set-up fee which they say is mandatory as it’s charged by Google. Whilst it is true that Google does charge an Adwords set-up fee, it is actually only £5, and it gets refunded out of your first few clicks anyway.

How can you avoid this scam? If anyone cold calls you offering pay per click advertising then perhaps it’s better not to sign up over the phone. Instead, take their details, stick them into a search engine, and have a look to see if they are associated with this type of con. If it looks genuine then find out whether they let you bid on the more competitive keywords or whether they just let you choose from low level ones.

Scam #2 - “We’ll submit your site to hundreds of search engines for only £10”

One of the oldest online marketing scams and one of the most pointless. The first thing you should be aware of is that there are only three main search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Bing) and they take up over 95% of all search queries made in the UK. Submitting a website to any others is a worthless exercise.

The next thing you need to know is that submitting a site to a search engine can potentially do more harm than good. For a long time it has been widely accepted within the online marketing world that search engines prefer to find websites via inbound links. It is believed that search engines will sooner show a website they find on their own, via another website, than one they are force fed through a submission.

If you have a new site then to get indexed, all you need is one link from a website that is popular with the search engines and your site will start showing in results pages within a matter of days or weeks.

There is a variation on this scam where companies try to get on-going money out of you by offering to re-submit your site regularly. Even if the above wasn’t true then this additional service is a complete waste of time as once the search engines know your site exists and have crawled it, they place you within their database, something they don’t need to be asked to do over and over again.

Scam #3 - “We guarantee to get you #1 on Google”

No-one can promise you the first position on Google. There are hundreds of factors that search engines use to determine the search results, many of which aren’t known to people outside of Google. If someone is making guarantees then it is highly likely that one of two things are happening. They may be offering to optimise your site for keywords that are of a very low competition level (much as the pay per click scam, above), or, more worryingly, there may be something dodgy going on.

Black hat techniques, such as cloaking and keyword stuffing, are used by some SEO companies to trick search engines into ranking a website. Whilst these often work in the short term, they can actually damage your website in the long-term. When the search engines discover that these techniques have been used they can penalise, and even ban your website from the search results. Don’t think it can’t happen to you either, as BMW once had their website disappear from Google thanks to some black hat work, and if it can happen to a company of that size, then it can happen to anyone.

Scam #4 - “We will give you 1000 links for only £9.99”

Whilst inbound link building is an important part of search engine optimisation, the links do need to come from quality, relevant websites. Buying links in bulk, through companies that have automated link submission systems will never bring in links from good websites in relevant fields.

The links will most likely come from spammy directories that no person and no search engine is ever going to bother with. Not only will the links be completely worthless but they could highlight to the search engines that something dodgy is going on and pose harm to your existing rankings.

Scam #5 - “We will build you a high ranking sales page on our site”

Whilst micro sites and separate sales pages can work for businesses there is one fairly common trick that should be avoided. The company offers to build a one-off page, branded with your logo, optimised for your keywords, and hosted on their business directory site. This sounds good as there are no hosting or web development fees for you, but what it lacks is control. The page is a part of their site, not yours, so your monthly fee is paying them to work on improving the ranking of a website that doesn’t belong to you.

If you ever decide that you no longer want the page then you are left with nothing, and they are left with a valuable asset that they can easily sell to one of your competitors. If you decide that coming up high on the search engines is a goal for your business then it is probably wiser to work on improving your site rather than someone else’s.