SEO AND SEM VERSUS CRO

Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget

Where’s the social, video, images, local, organic rich snippets?! How can we get more clicks to our site?

Dedicated to Rand Fishkin for the inspiration and Tom Anthony for the Turkey

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Search has changed.

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A typical “QDF” query (Query Deserves Freshness) and image results

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“Lion King” yields ratings from Google shopping in PPC ads, video thumbnails, IMDB’s review snippets via Schema.org…

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Lower down the page we have image search results, hCalendar event rich snippets and Video search results

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FRESHNESS UPDATE

This is what a fresh result looks like – here’s how to find quick wins for freshness:

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Blended organic and local listings for “used cars London”

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AND THEN THERE’S SOCIAL!

Social and SEO are the same thing – shares = reach! Shares generate pre-qualified clicks!

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A true reach of 3.1m people via 217 tech / auto influencers identified on Klout – source: http://kcdn3.klout.com/static/images/docs/onesheets/audi.pdf

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THERE’S OPPORTUNITY IN HERE

What is a searcher asking to see when they’re searching for a product? A CRO identifies objections in the purchase funnel – can an SEO adequately handle them in the search

result?

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So what? Does this stuff actually make a difference?

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Yes: “Best pizza in Chicago” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via http://mirametrix.com/

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YES: “Pizza” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via http://mirametrix.com/

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YES: “How to make a pizza” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via http://mirametrix.com/

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YES: “Pizza Cutters” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via http://mirametrix.com/

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Can you influence CTR in classic organic SERPS?

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CLICK THROUGH RATE IN PURE ORGANIC

A high ranking website might receive 25% to 5% of all organic search in an ordinary search result. http://www.slingshotseo.com/resources/white-papers/google-

ctr-study/

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TEST THIS STUFF FOR YOURSELF

Follow this guy!

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“Transactional”

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CTR STUDY “Informational”

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w/Rich Snippet

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The results…

“You're researching Pool Tables.

Click the result that would be most relevant to you.”

VS:

“Imagine you're about to buy a Pool Table.

Click the result that would be most relevant to you.”

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RESEARCH INTENT

VS:

“transactional” received 11.3% CTR, vs “informational” at 16.36% - while users preferred the second snippet this might be the additional sentence (retest)

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PURCHASE INTENT

VS:

“Transactional” received 21.52% CTR, vs “informational” at 14.93% - users preferred the more “transactional” version of the snippet

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ADDED A RICH SNIPPET IN THE PURCHASE TEST

VS:

VS:

“Transactional” received 21.52% CTR, vs “informational” at 14.93% vs “Snippetised Transactional” at 26.32%

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WE NEED MORE TESTING: CAVEATS

• It’s only one query

• We used master categorisers on mturk and we did filter for responses that took less than 5 seconds, but it’s still mTurk

• The informational snippet snuck through with an extra line of text – though this didn’t seem to impact user choice in the transactional scenario

• We’re still collecting data – I’d have liked more responses but we will update as the tests complete – we’re up to 100 searches that took longer than 5 seconds to make a choice per page, per scenario

• The MT work force would be far less brand aware (if at all! – e.g. bias towards Argos), this could impact the results

• Tom did test for reliability – see “great white sharks” here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/split-test-gather-ctr-analytics-serps

• We identified an anomaly where position 4 was beating or equalling position 1 in 2 tests. We think this may be because of the density of the word “pool tables” in the snippet and title, but we need to test for that.

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Can you influence the snippet based on query intent

in classic organic SERPS?

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OPTIMISING SNIPPETS FOR QUERY INTENT

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ONE PAGE CAN YIELD MANY QUERY TYPES

Generic Location Price Speed

Time!

...............................................................................................................................................................................................CAN WE OPTIMISE THE SEARCH RESULTS FOR MANY?

Generic

“Wordpress hosting”

“Wordpress hosts”

Longer tail

“best Wordpress hosting UK”

“best Wordpress host 2011”

<meta name='description' content='Check out the best Wordpress hosting packages - we researched

the top Wordpress hosts for security, uptime and site speed. Looking for the best Wordpress

hosting in the UK? Our 2011 reviews include 123 REG, Webfaction, TsoHost, Clook &amp;

LunarPages.'/>

This test wasn’t perfect but it works – check out this post on SharkSEO: http://sharkseo.com/whitehat/meta-descriptions/

Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget

Twitter: @richardbaxter

Blog: seogadget.co.uk

Email: richard@seogadget.co.uk

THANK YOU