The Impact of Social Media on User Engagement
For this week’s R&D post, we ask a simple question spawned from a discussion we had in our research lab: How does social media impact user engagement? Read more »
Cyber Monday Recap: A Comparison of Before & After
As comScore recently reported, Cyber Monday 2011 was the heaviest online spending day in history, 
with $1.251 billion in online sales – up 22% from last year. Thanksgiving night and Black Friday are generally acknowledged as the start of the holiday shopping season and some of the busiest in-store shopping days, but as more retailers are optimizing for online sales, these days have become just as popular for online shopping as Cyber Monday. Thanksgiving and Black Friday combined for a total of $1.259 billion in online sales (slightly more than Cyber Monday), an increase of 23% over the previous year. Read more »
Holiday SEO Checklist
What started as a simple marketing ploy in 2005, the Monday following Thanksgiving, known as “Cyber Monday,” has quickly become the largest online shopping day of the year.
With $1.028 billion in online spending, Cyber Monday 2010 was the heaviest online spending day in history and the first to surpass the billion-dollar threshold, according to ComScore. It generated 16% more spending than the previous year, and retailers could be in for another record-breaking day on November 28.
The Impact of Your Branding Efforts on SEO
“All I have is a crush proof box and four out of five dead people smoked your brand.”
I was a big fan of Mad Men in the early seasons. This quote stuck with me as being one of those great marketing observations. Unfortunately, the show writers passed right by it without paying attention to the four-out-of-five statistic. The brand of cigarettes was no deadlier than others; it was just that more people smoked it. Brand impact.
In marketing and advertising terminology, branding involves plastering your logo and name in as many places as you could afford to do so and determining the ROI by asking folks whether they remembered your brand about a month later. The basic purpose of branding, which remains unchanged today is to get potential customers and referrers to remember your company/brand/products so you’re in the decision pool when it’s time to buy. Read more »
A Tale of Two Studies: Google vs. Bing CTR
I like to believe that BING is a recursive acronym meaning “Bing Is Not Google.” Since its inception in 2009, Bing has set out to rival Google as a “results engine,” even going so far as being accused of copying Google’s results. 
Bing started out as just an annoying Kimmy Gibbler to Google’s Full House, but fast-forward to 2011. Bing has acquired a 10-year license to be Yahoo!’s exclusive search platform and now holds 30.5% of the overall search market share.
Bing has become a dominant player in the search industry and has caught the attention of millions of search engine users with their superfluous advertising campaign. But even from the beginning, SEOs have wanted to know more about Bing and how it differs from Google’s ranking factors, search results, and users. The folks here at Slingshot SEO are just as curious. Read more »
Thinking Outside the SERP: CTR on Positions 11-20
This week, Slingshot SE
O’s Research & Development department released its first research project, “Mission ImposSERPble: Establishing Google Click-Through Rates” – a study on user search behavior that was over two months in the making. The study examined CTR for non-branded keywords in organic positions 1-10.
We’d like to give a special thanks to SEOmoz for posting the blog announcing the release and to the readers who provided their feedback and support. The study has sparked a lot of interesting discussions as well as ideas for further research.
You Spoke. We Listened.
One of the suggested ideas was to extend our research beyond positions 1-10:
“I’d LOVE to see the results for 11-20. Who knows…maybe, just maybe 11-20 spots have value after all. Wouldn’t it be nice though to really know that it DOES matter in that spot when talking to clients if you have the data to prove it? … We’re all going for Top 10, but how many times have you been stuck in the mud on page 2” – Kyle Neuberger, Inbound Marketing Strategist, Firespring. Read more »
Explosive Holiday Search Terms
The 4th of July ranks pretty high on my favorite holidays list, right above Singles Awareness Day and just below the NBA All-Star Game. All kidding aside, the 4th of July is a wonderful holiday, a perfect microcosm of summer, minus all the burnt hamburgers (thanks, Dad) and close calls from fireworks (thanks, Uncle Dave).
How do holidays, like Independence Day, affect search traffic for certain keyword phrases? We know it’s a weekend of heavy consumption and traveling. The golf courses are packed, the grocery store is all out of sparklers, and some guy is parking on my front lawn to get a view of the fireworks show (it’s okay, he paid me $5). Read more »
Mission ImposSERPble: Establishing Reliable Click-Through-Rates (CTR)
What are the click-through-rates (CTR) for each organic position in a search engine ranking page (SERP)? SEO aficionados have been pondering this question for years, and given the volatile nature of SERPs, it is an incredibly difficult question to answer. Any given SERP changes on a day-to-day basis as domains compete for top rankings and as Google constantly tweaks its algorithm. While it may be difficult, establishing a reliable CTR curve is extremely valuable in estimating the amount of traffic your website will receive.
“All men by nature desire knowledge of click-through-rates.” – Aristotle 340 B.C.
Initial Studies
AOL’s leak of massive amounts of private-user data in 2006 allowed the creation of some of the first CTR curves. Recent studies by Enquiro Search Solutions and Optify have enabled a better understanding of click-through behavior and have produced some interesting results. Although these studies were conducted at different times (Enquiro in 2007, Optify in December 2010), they have yielded similar CTR curves.
Read more »