It appears that Google added a snazzy feature to see the CTRs of your top search queries in their Webmaster Tools. Here’s my website’s data for the above query:

So that’s a factor of 4-6 times better than the normal CTRs accepted as the standard in our industry.  How is that possible?  What’s attracting searchers to my search engine listing?  Let’s take a step into the mind of a searcher and examine their thought process.

So what’s working for our website?

• Title of the website matches their exact search query
• Url of the website matches their exact search query
• Description of the listing matches their search intent – They are probably looking for a list of controversial issues and possible further elaboration on these topics
• Url of the website is .org – Conveys a sense of authority and trust among many searchers especially on a query like this
• 1st result’s url is an ip address
• None of the other listings include all of the search keywords in their urls

What’s causing some organic traffic to click on our competitors?

• Sitelinks under the 1st and 2nd listing
• 1st and 3rd listings’ titles exactly match their search and the 2nd listing includes all of the search keywords

You’ve thinking “who cares that your website is a fluke and doesn’t follow the trend?”  Indeed this website is a bit of an oddity, but you should still care.  You now have the ability to see how modifying your title and meta description tag influence SERP click through rates on specific queries and pages.  Yeah, you could have estimated the changes these alterations would have had previously, but there’s a much larger margin of error because of the noise you have to deal with.  Isn’t it about time you reoptimized your page titles and descriptions to take full advantage of organic search rankings by boosting your CTRs well above the norm?

Let’s say you go through every single webpage on your site and start doing some on page optimization. You run through the pages and change the tittle, meta, and html tags to be more appropriate; you even revise the content while doing some keyword optimization. All of those images missing alt tags get fixed, and the anchor text of links on pages gets adjusted and refined as well. It’s possible your ambitious enough to do this entire process again just to fix some of the things you overlooked on the first run through.  After you do one thorough or a few quick passes through of on page optimization, you are going to stop seeing benefit for the time you spend and things are going to flat line near that theoretical maximum.

Let’s take a look at link building now.  Maybe your website’s niche is extremely small, and it’s possible that you could tap out the number of links to your site.  That means you would have hit the theoretical cap for links.  Didn’t I say that was impossible?  Yes and no; if a website’s niche is very small and targeted, it is probable (but also very hard) to hit that max.  For the vast majority of people this will not be an issue, but if it does happen to be a problem, don’t worry because it’s really not.  Expand your options and and look at the broader picture; start link building from the more general niche that your website belongs to.  So if your website sells hypoallergenic suntan lotion and you think you’ve hit the link cap, you haven’t.  You just need to look into the hypoallergenic or suntan lotion supplies market.  It’s always possible to take a step back up in your vertical.

When it comes to seo, every other factor aside from links can only do so much.  Although, you are a fool if you only improve upon a few factors affecting your serps because search engine optimization is the sum of these factors.  Yeah, you can build a successful website with pretty much only links or incredible content, but that same site could be substantially more successful if all factors were focused on.  Plus, whenever search engines modify their algorithms, your website is going to be that much more stable in the serps.  That being said once you’ve approached the cap of all other factors, links are the only thing that can take you higher.

Writing for search engines is easy.  You take your knowledge about a topic and simply regurgitate it as text as quickly as possible while including those all important keywords.  If you are a bit lazier you might not even write original and just plain bad content, you’ll take an article already written on the issue and simply rewrite it, so that you trick search engines to think its unique content.  And if you are even lazier, you’ll just take that article, run it through a spinner, and repost it to save yourself valuable time.

The amazing thing is that you can get all of that poorly written, rewritten, or spun content to rank in the search engines.  You can get a handful to thousands or visitors a day (depending on which keywords you targeted and competition) to be directed to your site through search engines.  The fatal flaw with this system is that the end users you care about coming to your website are visitors and not search engines.

After those visitors read a few sentences of your content, they are going to be driven right back to the search engine results page away from your website.  Sure you might hook a few straggling visitors that don’t realize your content is crap, but the majority of these visitors will never return to your website again, and they most definitely will not convert to a conversion.

I guess you could harass your visitors with CPM and popup ads, but really the amount of money you’d make from that is insignificant to what you could generate if you wrote for people to begin with.  Plus in due time, Google is going to realize that you content is not worthy of visitors;  as search engines refine their algorithms, they are going to be able to identify useless content that currently ranks by examining everything from the actual text on page to how many users instantly return back to the serps.

Anyone can write for search engines, but writing for people is an art.  If you are writing for visitors, then you will recognize the challenges presented.  To create quality content you need to

• provide value
• give detailed examples
• say something new
• engage readers
• offer something unique

It is by no means easy to do this, and you still need to link, comment, and network to get your content recognized by others.  Writing for people takes talent, but by doing so you’ll see positive results.

Imagine yourself as a searcher looking for information about cutting the fat off of your web portfolio.  The author need to engage you as a reader which can be done using humor, posing a question, or even taking an unusual stance on an issue.  After this author has your interest, they need to inform you with details and examples about how to go about cleaning out the trash in your portfolio.  If the content fails to be different and say anything new, then you might turn elsewhere or just never be directed there in the first place.

If you provide knowledgeable and useful content for your readers, your chances of a conversion are greatly improved.  A conversion could be anything from getting first time visitors to return back to your website to having a user purchase a product you posted a review on.  The conversion is a multiphase process.  It starts off with getting visitors to a landing page and ends with your final goal, such as a sale or return visitor.  If you are writing for the search engines, then visitors are never going to make it past the first step.  The better content that you produce and push on user, the further you increase your chances of a conversion.

So take a look at the content you’ve been producing or have had produced for your sites.  What are visitors reactions to this content?  Are the majority of them bouncing away?  Maybe that’s not a bad thing.  If visitors are exiting your site after one page view, it could mean you addressed the question they wanted answered.  It could also mean that your product landing page needs work, thus they didn’t proceed further down the path that leads to a sale.  Look at visitor behavior, but look deeper than the basics – get into the mindset of your visitors and see your website as searchers do.  If you do that, then you’ll have an understanding of whether your site is satisfying the needs of your users, but more importantly you can see where change needs to be implemented, so that ultimately your websites serve people and not search engines.

You need to use photos properly to enhance your writing.  Excellent pictures will do the following things:

• grab a reader’s attention
• increase their interest
• further communicate your point

Photos need to be used in conjunction with quality writing in order to further captivate your audience.  Some writers are able to create superb content without any graphical aids, but I’m sure that if they included appropriate pictures within their writing, it would make it that much better.  Additionally, pictures opens up a whole new market – image search.  Take advantage of the opportunity to gather more traffic to your website.  You can’t sell yourself short in such a competitive time.

Which version of our website is more appealing?  Professional?  Involving?

It’s a pretty obvious decision that the version with pictures is a lot more lively, engaging, and interesting.

I used to include no photos whatsoever and the occasional graph when appropriate, such as when I showed how a Google penalty can affect your traffic.  I realized since then that images can greatly improve the message you are trying to get across.  The problems I struggled with when trying to incorporate photos were: where do I get these pictures from and what images should I use where?

Where do I get these pictures from?

• Websites: Flickr’s creative commons, stock.xchng, MorgueFile, EveryStockPhoto, iStockPhoto – You might have to pay for quality stock photos sometimes, but the price is well worth it.
• Take photos yourself if possible – Being able to tailor photos to your exact needs can have a significant difference in their effect, and it will save you the time of hunting for that perfect picture.

What images do I use where?

Stock photos should be used to enhance the point you are trying to get across.  Just because a picture looks fantastic, it does not mean it will work well with your content.  The counter-side to that is don’t use generic or overly used images; they look boring and add nothing.  The pictures you use should essentially flow with your content while adding a new depth at the same time.  There are plenty of other things you’ll need to avoid when you use stock photos, but that’s not what I’m trying to address right now.

There are 3 different types of images that you can include in your content: thumbnails, additive, and informational.  Thumbnails connect to your text but in a vague manner; there main purpose is to spark interest from your visitors.  Additive pictures are similar to thumbnails, yet they have a stronger link to your content and add another dimension.  For instance, if you are writing about chocolates, you might insert a tasteful photo of Godiva’s chocolates along side your text.  Informational images are essentially a graphical tools that helps develop your position.  You could include a graph instead of a table because it allows your readers to better visualize the data.  All convey a varying amount of information to your reader from “look at me” to here are the statistics behind my claim.

Pictures are an extremely powerful medium and if used properly they give your content an increased punch of delivery.   Utilize photos to their full potential, but remember to use them in moderation such that you don’t dilute their bonuses.

Writing superb content just doesn’t cut it anymore.  You can create a website or blog with cutting edge and novel content, but unless you promote it no one will find it.  Well, a few people might accidentally type in the url for your site and discover it, but the market you are targeting will be oblivious to your existence.  In order for people to find your website, you need to market it.

Linking

Don’t be afraid to link out to what you believe may be your competitors.  Obviously if you are running an ecommence site, do not link every product page to a cheaper competitor.  That is just plain stupid.  However if you run a blog, linking to useful and related posts or comments is beneficial to your readers and to your website in terms of seo.  Matt Cutts says that linking out is a smart thing to do.

Q: Okay, but doesn’t this encourage me to link out less? Should I turn off comments on my blog?
A: I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to “hoard” your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.

Not only are there benefits in terms of seo, but I’m sure your readers will appreciate it when they want more information on that topic.

What does it say when you have a website that has no outbound links?  If you fail to recognize your resources, why should other people bother linking to you?  Linking is part of the web, and by failing to link you segregate yourself.

If you start linking out, people will start linking in (assuming that your content is worthwhile).  People are inherently curious; visitors on your website will click on those links.  When the webmaster of the other website looks at his backlinks or traffic referrers, that person is going to proceed down the same path as your visitors.  Curiosity will capture them, and they will visit your site.  When they arrive, that first impression will be lasting.  Would you rather them leave thinking – “God dam copy scrapping blogs” or “wow this person really has some incredible knowledge”.  Even if you only plant a seed in the back of their mind instead of leaving a monumental impression, it’s a start at the very least.

Commenting

Interacting with readers on your own blog, as well as, writers of other blogs helps increase your exposure.  It will alert others to your existence, and allow you to participate in discussions beyond the post. Commenting can have the same effect as linking.  If you write an thoughtful respond or question, people will be overcome with curiosity, and they will want to see what else you have to offer.

Commenting is a means of attracting new visitors, and increasing your visibility within your niche, but it also helps with seo.  The majority of blogs may have no follow comment links, but that doesn’t mean that those links lack value.  These links might be unable to pass pagerank and be treated differently by search engines, but the fact of the matter is that no follow comment links are still seen and thus they provide some benefit.

Networking

It encompasses a pretty wide range of mediums from social networking to networking while at a conference. The means by which you network doesn’t really matter, but the message you convey does.  Whether you are talking to someone at a business conference or expressing yourself on Twitter, it is a powerful tool.  Enlarging your contact circle, sharing opportunities and ideas, and marketing yourself is what networking is all about.

When you are networking, do not be self absorbed and have a one track mind.  Just as with commenting, you need to be interactive, engaging, and care about what the other person is saying.  No one likes a person who just pushes their own agenda, while essentially ignoring the other person in a conversation.  You might as well just talk to a mirror if that is how you are going to go about networking.

Linking, commenting, and networking are resources that can be utilized to improve your exposure and gain you credibility.  They are all tied together in a sense, but if you try to squeeze by only using one of these things, increasing your visibility will be hindered.  Don’t ostracize yourself, instead interact with the people involved in your niche.