'Net Features : compete

Journey to the Top of the SERPs

Michael Garrity — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:00:00 GMT

Have you ever wondered why everyone seems to make such a big deal out of search engine optimization (SEO) and reaching that coveted top spot in the search engine results pages (SERPs)?

Well then, new data from Compete may just enlighten you, as a recent study of tens of millions of consumer-generated SERPs from Q4 of 2011 shows us just how massive the difference between a first and second place listing can be to a website.

According to the data, approximately 85 percent of all the listings shown are organic, with 15 percent appearing as paid search listings; they also found that 55 percent of all SERPs have ads.

But the more telling information comes from looking at the clicks on organic results. Compete says that 53 percent of those clicks go to the top organic listing, and the number decreases significantly from there. The second link gets 15 percent of the clicks, while the third gets nine percent, the fourth sees six percent and the fifth is clicked on just four percent of the time.

Being on top is also beneficial for paid listings, as well, though having the number one spot in the ad block is less important than simply appearing in the block at the top of the page. The study shows that about 61 percent of paid search ads show up on the right-hand sidebar, but they only account for 13 percent of the paid search clicks with the top listing getting just four percent of all paid search clicks. In contrast, the third listing in the top ad block receives around nine percent of all paid search clicks; in fact, the ads in the top block see an impressive 59 percent of all the paid clicks.

The report also shows that around 24 percent of the ads on a SERP appear at the top and make up an impressive 85 percent of the clicks, while 15 percent of them appear at the bottom of the page and get a paltry two percent of the clicks.

In other words, this report wants you to know that it pays off (big time) to invest in getting your site at the top of the SERPs. But as we all know, that's easier said than done.

Just a few weeks ago, Google released a list of 65 new changes to its search engine algorithm from August and September, many of which may have direct implications for how websites and pages will be able to move up in the SERPs. Here's a look at six of the most important updates; webmasters and SEOs take note.

The Role of Authority

One of the updates from August focuses on page quality and intends to help searchers find "more high-quality content" from sources that the search engine trusts. This means that building that kind of trust is crucial to improving your search ranking. You can do this by receiving (and giving) links from trusted and authoritative sites, creating a sitemap, lowering your bounce rate and not "over-optimizing" your content.

Matters of Location

Two updates now look more at location to determine a site's place in the SERPs. The first now determines relevancy of pages for queries containing locations, and the other "nearby" change improves the precision and coverage of relevant local Web results, helping it better identify results that are localized for each user (and ranks them appropriately). To better find these local, relevant searchers, optimize your site for local search by registering with a search engine's local business registry, getting links from local directories, developing location-specific landing pages and adding geographic keywords into landing page content, <h1> and <h2> tags and metadata.

The Return of Keyword Density

The changes also included an update to term-proximity scoring, which means it would behoove you to improve the keyword density on your site. You can do this by inserting keywords into page titles, headlines, ALT text, page URLs, rich footers and, of course, your copy.

The Importance of Freshness

Being fresh is crucial, and the last two months saw a number of changes aimed at rewarding sites with fresh content. Now, Google will apply a more granular function based on document age, and also seeks out and favors the latest content from a given site when two or more documents from the same domain are relevant to a search query. So make sure you're continually adding fresh content to your site, and if you're busy schedule makes that difficult, don't be afraid to ask for guest contributors or even press releases that you can publish. Anything to keep your site from just sitting there and getting stale.

Title Tags in Focus

It's difficult for Google to generate preview snippets for pages that it does not crawl because of robots.txt, so now a replacement snippet will be included that explains that there is no preview because of robots.txt. To prevent this, include titles and descriptions in the metadata of your Web pages.

Universal Intent

In addition to all of this, Google can now show improved Universal Search results through a better understanding of when a search has strong image intent, local intent, video intent, etc.

Take these key updates into consideration as you continue to optimize your site for the search engines (and maybe take a look at the other 59 changes, as well), and before you know it, you'll be movin' on up the SERPs.

Measure Like You Target

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 22:00:00 GMT

Where are all your display ads being shown… and are they being show to the right audience?

A new solution from online media verification service DoubleVerify and Kantar Media Compete aims to provide an answer to advertisers’ lingering questions about exactly who is being reached with their media campaigns.

The Ad VRF solution combines DoubleVerify’s verification technology and viewability metrics with Kantar’s digital consumer panel to measure campaign reach into specific behavioral segments. The solutions aims to help marketers better plan their media investment and measure effectiveness of with a consistent measurement framework. The solution enables advertisers to quantified metrics including reach, frequency, viewable impressions, GRP and viewable GRP (Gross Rating Points), TRP and viewable TRP (Target Rating Points), behavioral and demographic segments, and measure ad visibility above/below the fold.

“The last few years have seen an explosive growth in audience segmentation enabling advertisers to maximize Return on Advertising Spend by hyper focusing their targeting,” says Oren Netzer, CEO of DoubleVerify.

“Ad VRF enables marketers for the first time to measure audience exactly the same way they target consumers by bringing together the strengths of the largest US behavioral panel from Compete with granular impression level viewability measurement from DoubleVerify. The combined solution provides the most accurate, third party measurement of viewable Gross Rating Points (GRP) available today allowing marketers to close the loop and continue to iterate to drive campaign performance.

Ads in Apps Are the Most Likely to Stick

Linc Wonham — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Compete has released a new Smartphone Intelligence survey which found that advertisements in mobile apps have a better chance of influencing consumers than do ads on mobile websites.

More than half of the smartphone users polled (52 percent) said that they remember ads they see in mobile applications, but only 40 percent could make the same claim about the ads they see on the mobile Web. The divide increased when respondents were segmented by the mobile platforms they use, with Android and iPhone users claiming better recall for in-app ads over mobile Web ads in even greater numbers.

Given the popularity and demographics of each platform, the mobile advertising industry should take note of Compete's conclusions.

“If the behaviors of iPhone and Android users – who have more experience interacting with different forms of mobile advertising – are indicative of where the industry is headed, we’re starting to see what forms of advertising could be most effective moving forward,” said Danielle Nohe, the director of technology and entertainment for Compete.

Compete Releases New Search Market Share Data

Linc Wonham — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:45:00 GMT

Compete has released its search market share data for March 2011 based on the search behavior of the company’s panel of more than 2 million U.S.-based internet users.

Search activity picked up in March with a 9.2 percent month-over-month increase in total query volume across the engines and all five major engines experiencing query volume growth.

Among notable findings for March:

• Bing continued to gain market share, capturing 17.5 percent of web queries in March. Among the top three engines, it experienced the highest M-O-M query volume increase of 12.6 percent.

• Yahoo! also gained 0.3ppts in share this month, bringing the total share of Bing Powered engines to 31.7 percent of the market.

• While still the market leader with 63.8 percent share, Google experienced another decline in share in March, dropping 1.2ppts.

• March was the first time in several months that both Ask and AOL gained some traction; double-digit percentage increases in M-O-M query volume drove incremental share gain for both engines.

To learn more, visit Compete.