There are lots of developments out there that SEO folks are watching and talking about. While they may not be important yet, they might become have an impact on your search engine rankings in the future.
Trust is a big SEO topic in the Blizzard Office. Google has made it clear they want trustworthy sites to show up in their rankings. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the Internet is a cesspool. While there are many factors that can affect your trust, here are a few worth reading more about:
- Does Including a Physical Address On Your Website Help Rankings? (by Michael Gray) Clearly, many untrustworthy sites lack of a physical address. While an address does not appear to be a huge factor now, it could prove interesting for the many “virtual” businesses that don’t have a physical presence.
- Is Page Load Speed Google”s Next Organic Factor? (by Jeremy Bencken) It sure would make sense. Slow websites are pretty irritating, and I wouldn’t mind if Google dinged them.
- Beyond Algorithms: A Librarian’s Guide to Finding Web Sites You Can Trust (by Karen G Schneider) is at Google’s Librarian Central. This librarian says that, among other things, Librarian’s look at:
- A site’s availability. Uh, being down is a bad thing. But this also means putting valuable content behind passwords or pocketbooks.
- The site’s credibility. Who owns, operates and writes the site’s content?
- External Links: Broken links on your site kills its reputation! (uh oh… this blog has lots of those)
- Optimize Your Search Engine Listings for Improved CTR (by Chris Silver Smith) points out that Google may be posturing to give sites with higher CTRs a boost in their rankings. Makes sense! If people “vote” by clicking, then give the people what they want.
Click Thru Rate (CTR) is a hot topic because you can get more traffic from your existing presence by making it more appealing. Increasing the CTR from search results, PPC search results, banner ads, listings sites, etc. is big business and becoming more important and accessible to small businesses. One area of promise is the ability to enhance your listings in search engines with “rich content” that really catch the eye and provide useful information.
Last Year, Yahoo introduced SearchMonkey which was a way to add rich content to search engine listings. These enhanced listings have increased Click Thru Rates by as much as 15%. Now, Google has introduced Rich Snippets. Both SearchMonkey and Rich Snippets promise to let websites enhance the way they show up in search engines and increase CTRs. This new opportunity is too new for most businesses… for now. But, keep you eye on this, because it promises to open up a new area to improve your online results.
It is very obvious that if a user clicks on a website in SERP and it takes too much time to load user just clicks on the next one. If Google is taking it as criteria for trust rank it is justified enough. A web page should be light enough to load faster, it should not irritate a visitor who is looking for some thing.
These are all very good possible algorithm features. Coincidentally these are all things that would help your site convert better anyway. So you should do things like this regardless of whether it is part of future algorithms.
I am not sure about the physical address thing.
How can Google check if a piece of text is an address? Then it must put all text through the “Google Map Server” to see, if some of it is an address.
I do think having a physical address should help. Any trust worthy site will not mind attaching a legitimate address to their onlline company. I have a physical address in my ‘Contact Us’ section. I think everyone should have one.
CTR does make a lot of sense. If people are clicking particular website then it is because they match the search they have done. Will it effect the indivduals computer who search it or will it effect everyones search results?
Great post