Heres some interesting SEO Statistics for 2010 as compiled by Econsultancy (link at the bottom).
PPC Conversion rates are set at 2.03% compared to an average of 1.26% from organic. THis is a great benchmark to identify whether your website is converting above or below par and definately a key demographic to watch.
Out of 1.5 million searches only 10% are ‘transactional’ in nature with 80% being identified as research based. Basically theres a lot of window shopping and fact finding going on so ensure that your website caters for this market – this should also help your site overcome Googles bias towards non-commercial content.
More than 60% of ecommerce sites perform SEO without optimising langing pages or thinking about customer egnagement.
SEO originated traffic achieves 200% more conversions when compared to banner, affiliate and social shopping referals.
When a customer is closer to the point at ahich they intend to buy the search pattern switches from broad match to branded terms so make sure your site is optimised for long tail brand terms and that your products by brand etc pages have content and feed directly into the sales funnel. The conversion metric for this type of search is almost 10%!
Approximately 26% of businesses spend between £10,000 and £50,000 on SEO per year. 30% spend under £5,000 and 44% spend over £50,000
92% of people searched across the first three pages of a search result.
98% of people browse organic listings with 95% using the sponsored listings at the top of the page and onlu 31% looked at sponsored listing in the right hand gutter.
Theres so much information in the full document and if you’re in the SEO industry its certainly worth a dig through.
Today we received some great news, Blueclaw have once again been shortlisted as finalists in the prestigious DADI Awards. Now unfortunately I cannot claim to have been involved in any of this as I’ve not been working there for very long but it’s always nice to see the team doing well.
So far we’ve been nominated for the following categories:
Best PPC
Best Ecommerce
Unfortunately we missed out on being entered into the DADI Awards Organic SEO category despite submitting what I believe was a really great case study (with SERPS that are better now than when originally submitted), but since we won this last year we are prepared to give someone else a chance.
Great Work Guys!
If you want to see more of the DADI Awards shotlist then you can see it here.
From the creators of jailbreak comes flash for the iPhone.
Steve Jobs said it couldn’t be done but some crayzee guy has managed to port flash to the iPhone 4/3gs/3g so you can now play farmville in all its glory.
Its very buggy but worth it if you’re tired of seeing those blue lego bricks everywhere.
I’m proud to announce that as of the 19th July 2010 I will be taking up the position of SEO Manager for the award winning Leeds based creative studio and SEO Company, Blueclaw.
I’m really looking forwards to the change of pace and getting back to being part of a close-knit team, dealing with a large number of clients across multiple industries.
What attracted me to Blueclaw was their openness, impressive client list and passion for SEO which reminded me of the days when I owned my own studio.
I hope to add my own blend of innovation, dedication and ferocious thirst for success which, fingers crosses, should help the business achieve even greater success.
So brace yourself Leeds, here I come
For more information on Blueclaw’s SEO and web design services visit the website blueclaw.co.uk
And in case you’ve been away of had your head stuck in a bucket of sane, Google Caffeine is now fully live across all datacentres.
As expected nothing much has changed as Matt Cutts has said this is mainly and infrastructure update focusing on collecting and collating data much faster resulting in a more incrementally dynamic SERPS.
Panic over people! its certainly no Boston or Florida (shudders)
Ive been thinking for a while now that i really should create a popurls clone that aggregates SEO news from all of the top sources… well damned and blast it, Alltop have gone and done it already.
If you want all of your news in one handy scrollable page then give it a look-see, its already become my start page… now if they could only integrate google search on top that would be awesome lol.
I was supposed to be going to a well deserved relaxing all-inclusive holiday to Fuerteventura last Friday however the Volcanoes in Iceland appear to have different ideas. I thought it would be funny to document just what went down as I’m sure in the months to come i will be able to look back at the last 36 hours and laugh… just not right now.
Thursday – approximately lunch time
Had a joke with the girls in the office that I didnt know if my passport had expired.
Thursday – 5pm
Listened to Radio 4 heard about Volcanic eruptions in Iceland causing havoc with flights. Told to check with airline to see if we’re still flying.
Thursday – 6pm
Last minute dashing around trying to buy a beach towel which was needed after reading a review on tripadvisor.com that stated there wasn’t enough sunbeds at the hotel and that you needed to get up early and stake a claim to enjoy your spot in the sun.
Thursday – 7pm
My gf showed up and laughed at my checklist of items being packed in my luggage and turned house upside down looking for my NHS card which is needed to get treatment overseas.
Thursday – 8pm
Checked with manchesterairport.co.uk to see if the flight was cancelled…nope says its still flying.
Thursday – 11pm
Checked again with manchesterairport.co.uk, it appears they stopped updating the site at 10pm WTF!
Friday -4am
Alarm rings I rush over to the computer to check flight details. BBC News and other sources state that everything has been grounded, i check with manchesterairport.co.uk and it says it’s sill flying.
Friday – 4.15am
Try to call the specific Manchester Airport on the phone number suggested on their website… not open until 9am (helpful!). Try to call airline… not open until 9am (helpful!). Scoured Internet for any additional numbers.
Friday – 4.30am
Located a non-descript number for Manchester Airport and got through to a woman who said the flight had been cancelled.
Friday – 9am
Tried to call airline… engaged.
Friday – 9.05am
Tried to call airline… automated answer, told to call different number… rung off WTF!
Friday – 9.10am
Called travel agent, told they’ll take our details and get back to us with any news.
Friday – 9.20am until 11.30am in 5 minutely intervals
Calling airline… get engaged tone.
Friday 11.30am
Went to get some supplies for breakfast. Ate bacon butties.
Friday 11.50am
Get back , my GF has called the travel agents again and been told that the flight has been cancelled and that we’ll know more at 6pm.
Friday – 12.00
Calling airline… get engaged tone. Call airport parking company and told we can move our booking by 30 days free of charge.
Friday – 2pm
Visit brothers to fix his email, set up his new phone and move his contact across. He’s supposed to be flying BMI today and is experiencing the same difficulty in getting information.
Friday – Approximately 4pm
manchesterairport.co.uk stops updating the online flight timetable.
Friday -Approximately 4.30pm
thomascook.com updates their alert page telling people that the deadline has been moved back to 1am.
Friday – Approximately 5.30pm
thomascook.com adds a statement telling us we can either opt for a refund or reschedule our holiday within the next 30 days.
Friday – 7.30pm
Go to local restaurant to have a slap up holiday style tea… Yum Seabass.
Saturday – 8.30am
Wake up, shower, get dressed, head off to Bury to visit travel agents before the rest of Fridays passengers do to try and arrange new holiday.
Saturday – 9.30am
In travel agents. All Thomas Cook resorts are fully booked so can’t move flight. Find a new destination and upgrade for £5.45 (bargain) to a 4 star hotel with apartments on all-inclusive nice)…searching tripadvisor.com on my phone while the agent is recommending hotels to make sure we don’t get stuck in a $#1!hole, looking at pictures of the resort on Google Images and finding the location using online maps. Told to disappear while the travel agent tries to contact Thomas Cook to arrange refund.
Saturday – 10.30am
Call back at travel agents, no luck they can’t get through either. We leave the £5.45 in good faith and go shopping in Manchester.
Saturday – 5.30pm
Call from travel agents to confirm booking we just need to go in tomorrow to sign the paper work.
Saturday – 7pm until 11pm
Order curry from takeaway, get plastered on Jack and Coke.
Binaryday.com has published their review of the leaked Google internal SEO report card produced for all Google assets. Its a nice find as it reaffirms some of the guesses that SEO’s have made as to how to best optimise a site.
Their review is great, but there’s some missed opportunities that could be worthwhile exploiting.
Google are playing up the importance of ‘descriptive’ title and meta description tags.
Make title tags 60 characters in length as this is the default size
Keep keywords to the front as later terms may have ‘less weight to words after a certain point’
Add in what the product does, who it targets and what the main features are
Use the noodp meta tag to override Googles default use and add in your own meta description snippet
Google advocate having your brand as the first part of a title – this may help with brand recognition and the implementation of Site Links with your listing?
Google reinforces the fact that meta keywords and descriptions do not benefit your search position, instead the meta description tag can be used to support your listing making it more inticing
To get Site Links…
Use a heirarchal site structure (is Google using folders to define Site Links?)
Use descriptive anchor text for links (I suggest keeping anchor texts uniform across all pages and inbound links with the exception of using plurals to further determine relevancy)
Avoid deep nesting of content behind many sub directories (keep your site structure 1 or 2 tiers deep)
Use Google Webmaster Tools to remove irrelevant terms
Google are highlighting issues with their multi-path site structure which sees google.com/foo google.com/foo/ google.com/foo/index.html www.google.com/foo www.google.com/foo/ www.google.com/foo/index.html foo.google.com foo.google.com/ foo.google.com/index.html all directing to the same page and all accessible in their own rights or being re-directed via 302 (temporary redirects). To combat this they suggest using 301 redirects on all non standard versions of the URL’s to either foo.google.com or google.com/foo.
Its also important to make sure your internal links and external links under your control follow this procedure to avoid further indexing of these ‘broken’ URLs.
Make sure any logo links back to your sites home page have descriptive alt text and not just a repetition of the brand name.
Remove all ‘click here’, ‘learn more’ and other generic links with more descriptive (keyword rich) texts.
Just downloaded the new Bruce Clay SEO Factors and Trends Report which acts as a great reminder of SEO issues we all faced throughout 2009. All in all it’s pretty well written and contains lots of hints at things that can/have been done in SEO over the last 12 months.
Heres a few of the takeaways from this excellent document.
Online Brand Presence
…the number of times a brand is used in conjunction with a keyword on pages…
Adding your brand name as part of your link building effort achieves positive results in google so now is the time to name-drop in blog comments, forum signatures, press releases, social media and articles.
Richer Search Listings
…one line site links, rich snippets, breadcrumbs and geo-location…
They mention using ‘named’ anchors to help achieve ‘one line site links’… I assume this is a turn of phrase and will be investigating whether they actually mean the name=”" attribute or whether they mean consistency of anchor text.
The use of Microfotmats such as hCard, vCard and hReview are encouraged to give more information and pull-out your listings from the crowd.
Folder structure is being used as an alternative to ‘one line site links’ so think folder structure people!
Engagement Objects™
…and will thus reward (rank higher) sites that include appropriate Engagement Objects™.
I have no idea what these are but they sure sound interesting. When I get a moment I will report back with my findings.
Contextual Links
Our research indicates that search engines have added more weight to contextual links and less weighting to links from the navigation, side bars and footer…
Hit articles, blog posts, guest posts, social media and other sources of in-content links to boost your rankings.
So there you have it. Just a few of the excellent points raised in the Bruce Clay document. There’s some new things for me to check out (what a novelty) and I am looking forwards to spending some time evaluating these techniques.
I'm now SEO Manager at the award winning Leeds based SEO Services company, Blueclaw. If you would like to hire my team for your SEO project or would simply like an over the table discussion about how your businesses SEO can be improved please email mark@blueclaw.co.uk with your questions, expectations and project details.
