Organic Search
250% increase in click-through rate over pay-per-click (PPC)
A
recent eye tracking study conducted by the marketing firm Enquiro and the eye
tracking firm Eyetools, has shown that the overwhelming majority of eye activity
on a search engine page identifying the areas of heightened interest creates a
triangle at the top of the page coined as “The Golden Triangle.” The study concluded that listings within this "golden triangle" enjoyed a
click-through rate 250% greater than those found in the paid and sponsored
listings. Search engines these days return two types of results whenever you
click “search”
Natural/Organic.
These are the “real” search results, the ones most users want and which take up most of the results window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content that is related to the word the user searched for. These results are then ranked according to how relevant and important they are.
Paid Rankings.
This is pure advertising, and how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ads whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled “Sponsor Links.” These usually take up less of the results window.
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Natural Results Trump Paid Results
When people use search engines to find content, the usually pay much more attention to the natural results than the paid results. They know natural results are more relevant and the sponsored links are just ads. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out “spiders,” or “robots,” which “crawl” (analyze) your site and “index” (record) its details. The search engine then uses complex algorithms to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engine’s results.
Relative Click Volume by Position
- 42.13%, 2,075,765 clicks
- 11.90%, 586,100 clicks or 3.5x less
- 8.50%, 418,643 clicks or 4.9x less
- 6.06%, 298,532 clicks or 6.9x less
- 4.92%, 242,169 clicks or 8.5x less
- 4.05%, 199,541 clicks or 10.4x less
- 3.41%, 168,080 clicks or 12.3x less
- 3.01%, 148,489 clicks or 14.8x less
- 2.85%, 140,356 clicks or 14.1x less
- 2.99%, 147,551 clicks
First Page vs. Second Page Totals
1st page totals: 89.82%, 4,425,226 clicks
2nd page totals: 10.18%, 501,397 clicks
Based on this data, if you are ranking 8, 9, or 10 you may be able to increase your traffic for that keyword 1,400% by ranking #1. Even jumping from #8 to #3 can triple your traffic. This is where SEO comes in. For more information about Eye Tracking or the study, see
Eyetools
Author: Neostead | Content Protected By Copyscape