Google, as you might have guessed, has the luxury of not having to answer to millions of interested consumers. The end result, however, is that its rivals will continue to tweak their techniques for maximum impact.
How effective is SEO to boost revenue?
While it’s hard to answer this question scientifically, we can do better than traditional averages and forecasts. We’ll use evidence to determine if there is any relationship between some piece of search advertising and sales (read more about it here).
We’ll do this by testing different tactics on a sample of keywords, as well as on a broader group of metrics that apply to the keyword you’re seeking. By comparing each metric’s performance on the sample keywords with the same metric in your main search term, you’ll get an idea of how well different tactics do on your keyword. In some cases you’ll use a combination of metrics.
After testing dozens of different metrics, we found that even our best techniques need tweaks, and it’s likely that we’re seeing some evidence of this in our results.
Our examples are from a world where much of the world searches online for products. As Google has consolidated its algorithm over time, more highly relevant phrases have become more valuable. On average, we see that keywords with fewer than five links get fewer than 1,000 results from Google. They’re becoming increasingly risky to target for profit.
Additionally, online shoppers are increasingly seeking discounts on the items they’re purchasing. Google has a lot of algorithm power at its disposal. In order to address this fact, we’ve worked to get Google to prioritize backlinks and other resources to high-value terms in order to create the best results possible.
These results show the power of the Bing Mobile Search optimizer, the accuracy of Google Search AdWords, and how the difference in metrics makes a difference in Google AdWords performance.
As the illustration illustrates, if we were to apply the Google Mobile Optimizer keyword modifiers, we would get a slightly better result on the main terms and some slight higher numbers on both the combined main and combined small searches.
Similar to a white paper, we’ve prepared three very different but complementary sets of data. The first sets the stage by showing us how a set of metrics in search can benefit a keyword based on Google’s Knowledge Graph. The second sets a marketer’s strategy by highlighting the specific techniques Google uses to find the best keywords. The final set is showing us how search ad performance affects customers’ purchases, the power of search optimization, and how we can improve these metrics ourselves.