Why A Number 7 Listing Gets More Clicks Than A Paid Top Of The Page Ad

We all know statistics can say anything the author wants so it's always good to be a little careful when reading results. After reading about Googles Golden Triangle I did decide to undergo further research just to ensure the figures I was reading were somewhat accurate. With a little variation you can take any stats on this post as accurate to the very best of my knowledge.

Googles Golden Triangle – What is this? Basically it's a web page heat map. It was compiled from a survey done with 400 people to identify the habits of people when visiting a web page. It appears that we are all so similar in our online habits that just 8 people will give an accurate survey result so 400 should be a fair indicator. Even infra red cameras were used to track the eye movement of the testers.

Type in Googles Golden Triangle to see the page heat map. In essence the top right hand side of a web page is the hot zone. Be aware that the results work for all search engines, not just Google.

If you are within the top 7 naturally returned results you are going to get good traffic. This is because searchers are now conditioned to knowing where the paid ads are and they are usually looking, in the first instance at least, for information to make a buying decision rather than a straight sales page.

63% of top natural listing will get a click.

Natural search results will return 250% more clicks than Paid Search Terms.

Natural search visitors will convert around 30% more than paid search visitors.

Surfers Hit The Natural Search Results First Every Single Time

3, 4, 5 or 6 term phrases are much easier to optimize for. It's called a "long tail" search term and it's much easier to rank for. You will not get as much traffic but it is highly qualified traffic so definitely worth having.

Latent Semantic Indexing. Sounds a real mouthful but this LSI is actually very simple. It's all to do with page keyword density and related words / terms to your main keywords or keyphrases.

Google is one smart bunny and keeps getting smarter all the time. Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past and search engines are wise to such techniques anyway. Nowadays SE's are looking for a much more natural flow to the page and it seems that an acceptable keyword density is around 2 – 3% but an important factor is also associated words and phrases.

For example, if our keyphrase was camping holidays in France then it is worth doing some research on terms associated with this phrase and use them in the body text so the SE can associate them with your search term. Briefly some words would be tents, caravans, ferries, camping site facilities and so on.

Bad Example: Camping Holidays In France is our specialty. If you are looking for Camping Holidays In France call us now for more information where one of our expert representatives will be only to pleased to discuss Camping Holidays In France with you.

The Search engine will pick up on the keyphrase but it has no other related information to help it decide the value and relevance of your page. Always keep in mind that Google is obsessive over the quality of the information it serves up to it's clients.

To maintain a quality service then issues like the latest craze in churning out thousands of "unique" articles from a single source or the general poor quality of Adsense pages has to be addressed as a matter of priority otherwise Google will just become a has been. No one will continue to use a service if the results dished up are erroneous or just plain rubbish.

This is the basis of LSI.

Hope it has been of some interest and use to you.