Steven Cox - Founder of TakeLessons. Build Something You're Proud Of

Biggest Organic Search Opportunity Could Be On Page 2 of Google

Here are a few search tips from the Search Analytics Conference in Tornonto.

• Links on the first page of Google get clicked 45 times that of subsequent pages (93% of all clicks come from the first page). This is very important to remember as your biggest organic keyword opportunities are current rankings of 11-15. If you can do something to “bump” them up to the first page, chances are you will reap major rewards.

• Walk in your customers’ shoes. Use your analytics pathing tools as a road map for a site visit; actually go through some of the common paths your users take to see load times, drop off points, obvious navigation issues, etc. Even try to spend the same minutes/seconds on each page as the users do.

• In many multivariate tests, local phone numbers perform better than toll free ones. “800″ numbers perform better than other toll free numbers such as 866, 877, etc.

• Good stat to remember: “89% of consumers research products online yet only 7% of sales happen online.” (Yahoo’s ROBO study)

Josh Dreller is the Director of Media Technology for Fuor Digital, an agency concentrated in the research, planning, buying and stewardship of digital media marketing campaigns.

SEO Tips for Bloggers and Site Owners

Matt Cutts, Sr. Tech guy at Google, gave a great 1 hour presentation on the best tips bloggers can use to make their blog SEO friendly. While the focus is mostly on Wordpress users, Typepad folks can also benefit from it.

In essence, don't be evil, and don't try to trick your way to the top. Instead, focus on creating something of value that everyone can use.

Thanks to John Pozadzides for the video.

Xinu Returns: Nifty Little Site for SEO / Marketers

Xinu Returns is a fast tool to help you see your site stats, check page rank, and see back links - all from one easy-to-use interface. Created on a creative commons license, the tool should be a part of any site arsenal.

Some of the data did not come up when I ran our site through there, but I'm sure they'll work out the bugs.