Why You Must be the First, in Google’s Search Results at Least!
People always say that you need to be in the first page of results in Google if you want to receive clicks, right? Well, this will hurt, but the reality is that merely being in the first page is not enough. In fact, if you are around the lowest positions, you could end up getting a meager 1% of the overall clicks on searches for those keywords.
This is a very hot topic, but strangely there it not a large amount of research around it. The most reliable study so far comes from the Cornell University. They used an eye tracking technology to discover what percentage of users would click on each of the 10 results appearing on the first page of Google for certain topics. The results, at least my opinion, are pretty shocking, as the image below illustrates (image via SEO Researcher):
Let’s use some numbers to understand it better. Even if you manage to rank in the first page of Google for a keyword that receives 2,000 searches per day, you could end up receiving only 28 clicks daily if you appear on the ninth position. Even the web page appearing in the second position will only receive 268. Not a bad number, but it pales in comparison to the 1126 clicks that the first result would reap.
It is a pity that we don’t have more data to confirm those numbers (if you do please share with us). Google would be in a very good position to find out these patterns, but I guess they have no interest to reveal them.
Regardless, the takeaway message is: there are increasing returns as you move up into the first page of results. if you are aiming to get organic traffic, therefore, you need to appear in the first position for your target keywords!
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Google PageRank Update Going On?
Personally I have not seen any major changes yet, but some readers emailed me to let me know about a possible toolbar PageRank update (thanks Court).
There is also some activity going on the Digital Point Google forum, which indicate that some change is indeed happening right now.
Keep in mind that we are talking about the toolbar PageRank, that one that you are able to see with your browser. Real PageRanks get updated continuously.
I tried to use some of the prediction and cross datacenters tools to see if the change was trackable from them, but most are not working anymore.
Have you noticed any change on your websites?
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Check if Your Images Appear on Google Image Search
Bloggers and webmasters know that every single visitor helps to build up traffic, right? If that is the case, you should make sure that Google is correctly indexing your images, and that people searching for related image terms will have a chance to visit your blog.
Here is a quick check that you can perform to find that out. Just head to Google, and click on the “Images” link on the top left corner. That will take you to the Image Search. Now you just need to type on the search bar “site:yourdomain.com“. This quiery will filter only the results coming from your site.
If your images are getting indexed correctly by Google you should be able to see a whole bunch of them on the search results.
If, on the other hand, your images are not getting indexed by Google you will just see a “Your search did not match any documents” message.
The most common cause for this problem is a flawed robots.txt file (read “Create a robots.txt file” for an introduction to it).
For example, I used to have a “Disallow: /wp-content/” line on my robots.txt file, with the purpose of blocking some internal WordPress files from search bots. It worked, but as a result it also blocked all my images that were located in /wp-content/uploads/. The solution was simple: I just added the following line after that one: “Allow: /wp-content/uploads/”.
So if your images are not getting indexed, check your robots.txt file to make sure it is not blocking the access to them.
There are other causes that might make Google not list your images on its search results, including a low Pagerank, non relevant tags, poor permalink structure, bad image attributes and so on. If you are sure that your images are accessible to search bots, therefore, it could be a good idea to work on their tags and attributes. Here are two articles that you guide you through the steps required:
- 19 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site Using Google Images
- Using Google Image Search to Drive Traffic to Your Site
Even if your images are already indexed, the tips and tricks described in those articles will help you to maximize the incoming traffic from image searches.
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