Rand's presentation from Brighton SEO, Fall 2018 focusing on the shifts in Google's behavior toward the SERP and away from referring outlinking traffic.
3. Google gets to:
Crawl our sites for free
Use our hosting bandwidth free
Scrape our content w/o trademark consequence
Rely on us to optimize to their standards
in exchange…
4. Those who solve searchers’ problems
earn clicks with their content
8. With 3-4 Serious Competitors, Google Couldn’t
Afford to Piss Off Content Creators
9. But, Once
They Got 90%
Market
Share…
Via Rand’s Blog
Core Google
Search
61.6%
Google Images
22.6%
YouTube
4.3%
Yahoo, 2.4%
Amazon, 2.3%
Bing, 2.2%
Facebook, 1.4% Google Maps, 1.3%
Pinterest, 0.5%
Twitter
0.4%
10. And even better results
wouldn’t make folks
switch…
Via AdAge
11. Google was free to wallow in its crappy treatment of
websites & content creators
13. Via Rand’s Blog
In 2017, for every paid ad click on Google,
there were ~20 clicks to an organic result.
14. In Q3/4 2017, there were (seasonally) fewer clicks available for SEO
for perhaps the first time ever.
Via Rand’s Blog
15. Google’s Desktop CTRs
February 2018:
Paid: 3.82%
Organic: 65.72%
No Click Searches:
34.28%
*Note:Sumsare greaterthan100%assearcherscan
clickmultipleresultsperquery
16. Google’s Mobile CTRs
February 2018:
Paid: 3.12%
*Note:Sumsare greaterthan100%assearcherscan
clickmultipleresultsperquery
17. Google’s Mobile CTRs
February 2018:
*Note:Sumsare greaterthan100%assearcherscan
clickmultipleresultsperquery
Paid: 3.12%
Organic: 38.97%
No Click Searches:
61.03%
18. The Scary Part:
Organic Paid No Clicks
Mobile
Desktop
February 2016 February 2018
Organic Paid No Clicks
65.56% 2.50% 34.44%
58.43% 1.83% 41.57%
65.72% 3.82% 34.28%
38.97% 3.12% 61.03%
20% drop in mobile, organic CTR. 20%
increase in mobile “no click” searches.
19. Across All Google’s Search Queries…
Organic CTR: 52.96%
Paid CTR:
No Click Searches:
3.49%
47.04%
~15 organic clicks for
every paid click.
Down from ~20 a year
ago.
For every 10 organic
clicks, 8.8 searches
with 0 clicks.
20. Where Are These Changes Happening?
More heavily on mobile
than desktop
More on popular queries
than long tail
Near-equally on
informational &
transactional queries
60. Use CTR % Estimates in Your KW Research
This metric uses clicksteam data to
estimate the % of searchers who’ll
click on the standard, non-paid,
organic SERPs
65. #1: Control What Appears For Your Brand
ID sites that rank in
your space, & build
profiles on them
Claim Your Panels
Leverage the Rich
Snippets Google
Offers
66. #2: If Google Biases to YouTube, Images, G News,
Maps, etc… Create Content For Those Platforms
67. #3: When KWs Show
Aggregated Answers, Influence
the Publishers Below to Get
Listed
To Get Into These…
Get Mentioned + Listed In These
68. #4: If You’re Using Featured Snippets,
Entice the Click!
Some accents are
better than others? I
have to know where
mine ranks!
69. #5: If Other Sites Can Rank, But You Can’t, Use
Barnacle SEO
Every one of these
sites enables user or
guest editorial
contributions