Ok, so your trusty SEO company has got you onto page 1 for your search phrase. Competitive or not, it’s an achievement that places you right in front of the eyes of people looking for your products and/or services and allows you to grab potential sales or leads from being visible in the right areas. But is Page 1 really considered a success?

For some campaigns, it definitely is a major achievement to get a competitive keyword onto page 1 – I have a few! But the campaign really doesn’t stop there.

Research from a study by Optify recently shows that almost 60% of people click on positions 1-3. Position 4 only sees 7.9% of clicks while position 10 gets a measly 2.2%. Positions 1 really is the place to be with 36.4% of all clicks.

With this information we know that to get the most of being on page one you really have push hard to be to be in position 1-3, although there are other attributes that may skew this information. Things such as video and image listings, or non-blended and blended places results.

It’s also worth noting that positions 1 on page 2 actually gets more clicks that the bottom of page 2.

The information was taken in December 2010 and based on the US version of Google‘s search results pages, analysing 250 randomly selected sites for keyword visits to sites within the B2C and B2B.

Optify noted that ranking beyond the top 20 results (2 pages) has almost no business value and concluded that that you won’t see “huge benefits until you get to the top few positions”.

From our perspective it shows that there are two distinct goals, particularly for bigger campaigns; one to get the site onto page 1 and another to work our way up page 1 to get to position 1-3. Do they have different strategies? Potentially.

It’s something that needs more thought and analysis but clearly there are two different – and easily measurable – goals and, although the overall goal is very similar, allows us to set smaller goals within this that can be tackled individually.

After all, if you’re consistently taking small baby steps one day you’ll look back and see that you’ve not just pottered forwards but you’ve actually taken a giant leap towards achieving a much larger goal!

A/B testing is a way of testing different versions of a site or a page to work out which one achieves a particular goal at a more effective rate, with a view to rolling out the version that performs better for good or for further A/B testing.

For example, a sites home page layout can be altered by including more or less images or text and the test could be to track which results in the user visiting the contact page or actually putting an enquiry through.

It’s best to make small changes to the version you are testing, rather than many, so you can track what works and what doesn’t. If you make too many changes and you see an improvement in goals being reached it is going to be almost impossible to attribute the success to any one thing in particular.

Some changes you should consider making to your site include:

• Making the phone numbers stand out more
• Including full contact details including physical address more prominently
• Including accepted payment methods
• Adding testimonials to the site
• Trying a cleaner, more modern website design or layout
• Adding a video presenter or slideshow to the site to introduce your product or service quickly
• Moving the sidebar to the other side of the page
• Making the main navigation menu system more prominent
• Displaying prices on your pages
• Comparing your prices to well-known brands of a similar industry

There are endless small tweaks you can make to the site that may help or hinder a sites conversion rate, but with a few tests run over a period of several months you can increase your sites success and potentially your business as a whole.

If you’re a fan of Alanis Morissette, you might be interested to know that not that many things she actually sang about in that song were ironic, which is kind of annoying. But late last week I came across something that’s a little bit close to ironic; Google announcing that a recent algorithm change is designed to target and penalise ad heavy websites.

According to their blog, Google are targeting sites which have an extreme number of ads on their site – specifically though they’re talking about sites with too many ads above the fold. Their argument is that sites with lots of adverts above the fold make it difficult for users to find the useful content which Google has directed them too, thus affecting the all important user experience.

So will your site be affected? What type of sites will suffer a hit to their rankings?

Well, to get an idea of the kind of site this algorithm change might affect, imagine a site that places heavy prominence on ads above the fold. A site that optimises hundreds of pages so that each one presents ads before the more natural, useful content, and which does this to monetize and bring in as much revenue as possible. In fact, imagine Google.co.uk.

Any one of Google’s own millions of search results pages could be considered offenders under this new algorithm change, simply because of the number of ads in place. I’ve just run a general search and the resulting page has 7 ads above the fold and three organic listings.

My point is that although Google’s search results pages have lots of ads above the fold, (for now) these ads are relevant and useful, and don’t detract from helping me find what I’m looking for.

This brings us to the crux of this new change – how much is too much? Google might argue that their 7 ads above the fold are acceptable – but then how many is too many in terms of other sites?

It’s also ironic that Google have announced this algorithm change when they own and operate one of the web’s most popular ad display networks. Does this change mean that Google will begin to penalise organically those sites which use its own ad display network too religiously? Perhaps Google haven’t noticed this irony yet, or perhaps there’s provision in the algorithm which effectively ignores Google’s own display network but penalises others. In theory, this would certain help to solidify the display network’s dominance as the choice of the masses, but there are issues there in terms of fair competition.

We’re unlikely to get an answer to any of this in the short term, but it’s worth bearing in mind next time you’re placing ads. Ominously, Google suggested that this change isn’t limited to ads above the fold either. In the blog in question they seem to suggest that if a site has only a small amount of content above the fold then it could be penalised in search, regardless of whether the rest of the above fold space is taken up by ads, flash, video or anything else.

Bear this in mind if your site’s take a hit in the coming weeks.

It can be a case of mixed feelings when you hear the news that one of your competitors have closed down. On one hand you fear the worst – that the same might happen to your business if the demand for your products or service is slowly drying up with the current state of the economy. On the other hand, you’re feeling that this means there should be more opportunity for you to gain a bigger market share. So how do you grasp that opportunity through your online marketing?

Gain instant traffic with pay-per-click adverts

As soon as you hear the news, you could set up a new campaign in your PPC account to target those searching for the closed down company’s name. Add variations of their company name to your keyword list and create adverts that inform searchers that the company has closed down, as well as displaying your key USP. Let’s make an example, let’s say you have a website that sells football socks and your company name is ‘Red Socks United’. Your competitor that’s closed down is called ‘Blue Socks City’. Here’s the type of PPC advert I would run along with keyword variations of ‘blue socks city’ to target those searchers:

Attract traffic to your site with a blog post

To target people searching for your competitor’s brand name through organic search, you could write an article or blog post to publish the news online. Using their name in the title could help you pick up organic traffic, and with Google’s recent freshness update, your article may just appear on the first page of results for a few days after posting. Obviously you don’t want to be seen to be taking pleasure in them closing down, so keep it non-biased and informative like a proper news post. However do make sure you have a call to action of some sort at the end of the post which encourages readers to stay on your website.

Improve your organic rankings with broken link building

This is an SEO link building technique I’ve been reading about more and more recently, and is one which I feel brings a fresh lot of link opportunities for those who have become a bit stuck and are running out of ideas. The concept is basically that you find broken links on a website that you want to gain a link from, kindly tell the webmaster that you have found the broken link whilst browsing their site and just wanted to point it out to them, with the aim that they will agree to link to your site instead, since you have content which is suitable enough to replace the previous content they linked to.

Whilst doing some competitor analysis the other day, I came across various links to a site of a company which I know went into administration last year. As they would’ve been a competitor of my new start-up client, a lot of the links that they have to their (now dead) site could link to my client’s site instead as they sell the same products that their competitor did.

Gain more revenue from your existing customers

Knowing that one of your competitors have gone bust might make you re-evaluate what you’ve done to stay successful and what you’ll probably find is that an important factor is – without a doubt – your customers. Now is a better time than any to thank your customers and businesses can always do more to gain more revenue from their existing customer base. Why not send out a newsletter/email to everyone on your subscribed list and offer them a brilliant discount, free delivery or a free gift with every purchase – whatever you think your customers will appreciate, what you can afford to give away and still make a profit on.

Don’t let a competitor’s misfortune get you down, instead adopt these positive online strategies to try and increase your share of the online market. If you need any help with putting these strategies into place, call Creare on 01788 551 591.

Do you know any celebrities? Have you thought about using them to help your search rankings? It’s a bit of an odd idea but I think it can actually work – and on several levels. Here’s why.

You’ve probably heard by now of people selling tweets or followers. For some time now celebrities have been generating additional income through this and – I’d imagine – to a fair bit of success.

Not only does the tweet get published to thousands – if not millions – of followers and can bring you many clicks and followers, it also acts as an endorsement from that celebrity. And I think that’s why so many people are turning to celebrities to push their brand or cause, whether it’s for charity or for financial gain through business.

We know that celebrity endorsement works – that’s why we see Michael Parkinson selling life insurance policies, George Clooney selling coffee machines and Davina McCall and Cheryl Cole advertising hair products on the television.

Taking this back into the online world, with Google Plus becoming more important as a social tool – as well as an SEO tool – getting high profile +1′s from authoritative celebrities is one way of publicising (or even initiating) endorsement quickly and encouraging people to click your site within the search results.

Let me explain. Those that are logged in while searching and have a Google Plus account will see which of the people they follow have +1′d your site. If that celebrity is one of those that are being followed this will appear in the search results next to your listing and the chances of click-through and potential sales potentially can increase massively.

Chosen wisely, the celeb will also have close ties to your industry and with a wide reach this could be a very powerful move for your online SEO campaign.

Not only that, but through the association between your business and the celebrity you might also see people publicly talking (via social media, forums and blogs) about the decision made by the famous face and it all contributes to creating buzz. In turn, this could quickly lead to links pointing to your website helping to push it up the search results.

Previously, a celebrity endorsement would be printed on leaflets and magazines and put on radio and television adverts and took time to be publicised, yet with social media it is almost instant and reaches out to those that are already ‘connected’ with the celebrity. And now that these +1′s appear within the search results, the connection is made obvious to those looking for products and services similar to what you provide – a connection that could work really well.

The idea is very quick and potentially very effective when it utilises social media, particularly powerful if there’s a good overlap between the celebrity and your audience and can be exploited as often as you like. It can also work for highly authoritative and well-known figures within your industry.

As for the cost… please contact your nearest celebrity.