Just 1% Of Clicks Goes To PPC, Fixing 'Soft' 404s & How To Beat Big Brands in Search
SEO TL;DR #30 - 8/07/2024
General SEO
60% of all searches result in zero clicks
A new study from Rank Fishkin of SparkToro found that across Europe, 59.7% of Google searches end without a click - slightly less in the US, which stands at 58.5%.
These ‘zero-click searches’ are broken down into two types.
37.4% do nothing - the browsing session ends. Like when you find what you’re looking for directly within Google, when you look up the weather, or Google how many calories are in something.
22.3% perform another search. Maybe you changed your search because you didn’t get what you expected or did a separate search after your first.
Of the remaining 40.3% of searches, 74.6% of clicks go to organic results, 24% to a Google property (YouTube, Maps, Images, etc.), and just 1% goes to paid ads.
So, how is paid so low when this is Google’s primary revenue stream? Google has told us that less than 20% of all searches contain even one paid ad. The graph above includes billions of Google searches in which no paid ad was present.
Paid ad CTR is at least 5%, on average, when paid/sponsored ads are visible in a Google SERP. My guess is that, when paid ads appear, especially when they’re on top of all other search results, avg paid ad CTR is between 5-10%.
When you break this down, for every 1,000 EU searches, 374 clicks go to the open web.
301 clicks go to an organic result
67 go to a Google product
6 go to paid ads
These stats highlight the importance of SEO in the buying journey. Ads are great when customers are ready to buy, but we need to serve content before this to raise awareness, build brand recognition and persuade.
SEO means serving your brand every chance you can get for as many queries as are possible within your niche. Whether that’s in a featured snippet, an AI overview, an IndyBest article or a forum.
This data shows that if you leave everything to PPC, you’re missing out on 99% of the potential.
Image SEO
4 Tips For Faster Images On Your Website
In the latest video from SEO Made Easy, Martin Splitt shares four tips for loading images faster on your website for a better user experience. And we know how Google like ot give out gold stars for this!
Use the right image format. squoosh.app is a web-based image compression app that converts photos into ten formats including WebP and AVIF. Below, you can see a pretty hefty 2.79MB image reduced by 75% to 704kB, with hardly any noticeable loss of quality.
Image compression settings. In addition to the format, you can also tweak the amount of compression to reduce size further. Once you’re happy with the quality, you can automate the compression with most platforms.
Responsive sizing. For mobile devices, images may look fine at a smaller size, but you may want to serve a higher-quality image for desktops. To do this, you can use the picture element or the source set attribute on image elements. This way, the browser will choose the best image for the device.
Lazy-loading. Images that are unlikely to be immediately visible when loading the page (aka below the fold) can be delayed until they’re more likely to become visible.
Watch 4 tips for faster images on your website.
Technical SEO
Why Soft 404s Are Bad
Most of us know a 404 happens when a link points to a page that no longer exists.
A ‘soft 404 is’ a page that might as well be a 404. The content is so sparse, or there are words on the page that suggest that the page is broken.
You can see these within the pages section in Google Search Console, under indexing.
Gary Illyes from Google wrote.
Soft errors are bad because, 1, the limited "crawl budget" spent on them could've been spent on real pages. 2, the pages are unlikely to show up in search because during indexing they're filtered out, basically no ROI on the resources you've spent on serving them.
He went on with this coffee shop analogy.
You go to your favorite coffee shop after consulting their online menu and you order your favorite corn spice latte with yak milk. They're all out even though the menu claimed they had it. You order a half espresso. They're all out. Fine, you order a matcha latte with water chestnut milk. They're all out. Frustrating. Is this a coffee shop or Wendy's?!
While for users it might not matter much that your error page came back with a HTTP 200 (OK) status code, crawlers use the status codes to interpret whether a fetch was successful, even if the contents of the page is basically just an error message. They might happily go back to the same page again and again wasting your resources, and if there are many such pages, exponentially more resources. All while they could spend the time and resources on fetching real pages, with actual helpful content.
If your site has a lot of soft 404s, you need to find out why and rectify it. Figure out if those pages need to exist in the first place and remove them if not.
It’s common for empty ecommerce collections to be flagged as 404s. Too many of these, and that’s a lot of poor-quality signals going to Google, which can hurt your rankings.
General SEO
How To Beat Reddit And Big Brands
As reported in Search Engine Journal, Gary Illyes offered advice on what small sites should consider doing if they want to compete against Reddit, Amazon and other big brand websites.
The question specifically was
Since Reddit and big publishers dominate nowadays in the SERPS for many keywords, what can the smaller brands do besides targeting the long tail keywords?
Gary shared that the history of SEO is also about small sites figuring out how to outcompete the bigger sites. For example, reviewed.com, before it was purchased by USA Today, was started by a child whose passion for the topic contributed to it becoming massively successful.
Gary says that there are two things to do:
Wait until someone else figures out how to outcompete and then copy them
Or figure it out yourself and lead the way
Many define long-tail keywords as phrases with a lot of words in them. But the truth is that they're phrases that searchers rarely use. It’s the rareness of these keywords that makes them long tail, not how many words are in the keyword phrase.
Gary said Google sees about 15% or more new long-tail keywords every single day, which is a lot of opportunity. The problem with small sites is that they’re trying to hit the big traffic keywords without first showing relevance in the long tail.
Starting small and building up toward big is one of the secrets of successful sites.
Gary emphasises the advantages small sites have: speed and agility. Big brands often struggle with bureaucracy and risk aversion, while small sites can quickly adapt and take bold actions. This agility can be a powerful tool in competing with larger, slower-moving competitors.
To summarise
Outcompete or Follow: Small sites can either pioneer new strategies or learn from those who succeed.
Long-Tail Keywords: These are not just long phrases but rarely searched terms that can drive significant traffic.
Start Small: Establish relevance with long-tail keywords before targeting high-traffic terms.
Technical SEO
Why Negative SEO Doesn’t Work
In another post from Search Engine Journal, Google's Gary Illyes shed light on how Google prevents low-quality spam links from harming websites, offering reassurance on the often misunderstood concept of negative SEO.
Negative SEO involves bombarding a competitor's site with low-quality links, aiming to get them penalised by Google. This tactic originated in the online gambling industry due to its high stakes and fierce competition. Today, there are 100s of services from Fiverr and the likes specialising in removing these harmful/spammy/toxic links.
The reality of negative SEO
Gary discussed his experience with numerous cases of alleged negative SEO following the Penguin update. Out of hundreds of examples, only one case potentially involved negative SEO, highlighting that the fear surrounding it is vastly exaggerated.
Gary explained that Google evaluates the context of links. If links come from irrelevant or spammy sites, Google disregards them. This means links from unrelated topics or dubious sources don't affect your site's rankings.
Because of this, Google is rumoured to be removing the disavow tool, as Bing has already done, as it can do more harm than good (sorry Fiverr snake oil salespeople).
Google’s sophisticated algorithms ensure irrelevant or harmful links don't impact your site, allowing you to focus on creating valuable content instead.