Apparently, yes! As you can imagine I was somewhat surprised to have this (apparently) confirmed while listening to a BBC radio 4 programme about the issues of managing your reputation online.

While the programme runs over various topics about online reputation management, the interesting (for SEOs anyway) bit comes when Anthony House, who manages Google’s policy & strategy team in Europe, comes on. The journalist, Emma Barnett asks him about what factors make pages appear high up in search results, the response:

Anthony House, Google 

If you want to hear precisely what he said, check out the podcast, the question and comment come in at 10:44.  Here’s the podcast: ‘Do I have the right to be forgotten?‘ (note, podcast not available for download at the time of writing and may not be available outside the UK BBC iPlayer for the podcast)

Now, is this rock solid evidence that clicks in SERPs are used for rankings? Maybe not, but I’d like to think that a Google employee responsible for  policy and strategy making a very public declaration would not be making assertions about how search works without knowing what he was talking about.

So, what does this mean for SEO? We have long known that how your pages appear in the SERPs is important. This ‘fact’ reinforces the value of ensuring you have an engaging meta description and a page title that encourages clicks rather than being stuffed with keywords.

Have you seen any feedback from Google or elsewhere that confirms or refutes the view that Google uses click-through rate in organic search as a ranking factor?

How do you make an impression online when your competitors have been in business for decades and yours is a relatively new entrant to the market?

That’s the question Geeta Thomas, owner of cloud-based waste management software My Yard Software, was wrestling with. When we’d finished the project, Geeta was saying, “I’m really pleased with the hard work put in by WebSearchOne to get My Yard ranking so highly. Beating long-established competitors in this way is a fantastic achievement.”

My Yard was already working with Vitis PR, achieving excellent results with award entries and articles in the trade press, however the My Yard website was only appearing on page three of Google search for the main industry search term and not even in the top 100 for related phrases.

Geeta asked us to help move My Yard Software up the search results; ranking higher in search would help raise My Yard’s online profile and ultimately reduce the need to spend on online advertising such as AdWords.

Setting an SEO baseline & SEO audit

The first step in the process was setting a baseline against which improvements could be tracked, this included rankings in search engines and the number of visits to the site (from search).

We conducted a site audit, identifying technical issues and other on-site changes changes that would lead to better search rankings. We also looked at conversion optimisation, adding trust and credibility markers so that visitors would see the great work My Yard had done and excellent coverage in the waste industry press.

Links & tools

Having addressed the on-site issues, we looked at ensuring the setup of google analytics and other tools provided by the search engines, making sure they were correctly configured and that the site was getting the maximum benefit form the information those tools provided.

The final step in the process was link building. We built relevant links to the site to increase its visibility in search results (in building links, we were careful to avoid risky link purchasing or link network schemes to ensure that the site didn’t fall foul of the Google Panda or Penguin updates).

Results

Ranking in Google search moved up to position one for the top industry phrase, pushing long-established competitors down the results and the site now appears on page one (most in the top five results) for several other industry terms.

Traffic to the site increased by 63% and non-brand organic search (i.e. visits attributable to SEO) increased by 266% compared to the quarter preceding the SEO work.

Would you like to bring more traffic to your website and increase your site’s profile in searches your prospective customers are making? If so, give us a call on 0121 285 8048 or use the contact form.

These are the slides from Jaspal’s talk at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) B2B Expo at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry on 21st – 22nd May.

Can’t see the slides? You may have more luck directly on the slideshare site (especially if you’re using an iPad or iPhone).

If there’s anything you’d like explained more clearly or would like to know more, get in touch, we’re happy to help!

When checking your website rankings you need to make sure that what you’re seeing is what other people see. Here are a couple of tips on how to do that quickly and for free together with some tools you can use to do this on an ongoing basis.

You may check your website rankings every couple of days, click the link to ‘help’ it to rank higher. Perhaps you see your site on page one (or maybe top of page two) of the search engine results, you might even see a little image appear next to the listing of your site in the search results like this one:

Google knows who you are…

…but you can alter what appears in search results

It’s important to remember that when you search Bing or Google, you are going to see personalised results. So, when I search for http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=SEO+Solihull+WebPageOneHQ I’m going to see a search result like the one below, whereas you may see something a little different.

This is important. What’s happening is that Google knows I’m base in Solihull, it knows I’ve shared the site on social media, it knows I like to click through to www.webpageonehq.com and so on. The result of this personalisation is that I’m more likely to see the site higher in search results than someone else. Why not try it out yourself to see? If you have a google plus account click the +1 button or share this post on Facebook and then try the search again (it may take a little while for google to catch up with what you’ve done, but it will happen).

How to make sure your search results are ‘de-personalised’

There are many add-ons and tools for Google Chrome and Firefox to help you check rankings, but probably the simplest way to do it is simply use the private browsing mode of your web browser.

How to de-personalise search results via private browsing mode:

• Chrome: incognito mode (hit ctrl-shift-N in Windows or cmd-shift-N on mac)
• Firefox: private browsing mode: (use the menu on Windows or cmd-shift-P on mac)
• Internet Explorer: (ctrl-shift-P or use the menu under ‘safety’)

Another way is to add a parameter to the end of your search query address.To do this:

• Enter your search as normal then,
• When the search is complete, add &pws=0 (that’s a zero at the end) to the address bar and press enter

If yours is a local business, you want people to be able to find you easily and ideally, you want people to find your business rather than your competitors. Google often shows a local search result (the ones with the little red map pins next to the company name) for locally oriented searches and SEO for these kinds of local searches is a little different to traditional SEO.

Why is local SEO important for local businesses?

Say you lived in Solihull and wanted to buy flowers today. You would probably be much more likely to search for ‘florists in Solihull’ than for something more general like ‘florists’. You want to buy a product or service (flowers) and you want it soon, so you search in the local area.

Many other searches, especially those performed on mobiles and smartphones, are also local searches for products and services. Just as in the florist example, these searches are interesting for you as a business owner because searches with local intent are more likely to lead to a purchase more quickly.

The five-steps to local SEO joy

You might ask yourself how do I make my business appear high up in local searches? There are five basic steps:

1. Do the basic Google Places setup
2. Consistency is king
3. Reviews
4. Citations, citations, citations
5. Traditional SEO

Do the basic Google Places setup

Go to www.google.co.uk/places and claim your business listing. Fill out as many details as you can, include pictures and video if you have them.

Having an address close to the centre of the area being searched helps too for most local searches: if there is nothing else to differentiate two places pages, Google will probably show the more central page higher in the results.

Consistency is king

Google isn’t always very good at recognising that one address is the same as another, so it is important to be consistent. Wherever your business is mentioned online, try to make sure that the name, address and phone number are always the same (including spellings and abbreviations).

Reviews

Reviews on your places page are important, not just for SEO, they also indicate to a searcher what they can expect from your business. If a searcher sees several (hopefully good) reviews your site is more likely to get that all important click.

Citations, citations, citations

Google uses local citation sources to help it determine whether your site is relevant to a particular local area. Local citation sources are other websites that Google has ‘decided’ are a good place to get a list of sites related to your local area. When getting these local citations remember the point above about consistency – if Google can’t match your listing to your business then there’s little SEO value in getting the listing.

Traditional SEO

Traditional SEO, building links and creating great content is essential for local SEO. The ‘authority’ of your website plays a large part in how high you will rank in both local and normal (i.e. universal) searches – and one of the best ways to increase the authority of your website is to get good links from good quality websites.

How long does this all take?

So, you’ve got your Google Places page setup and some reviews, how long before you see your site climbing the rankings? As with most things relating to SEO it can take a while. Google Places is notorious for how long it takes to see an impact and it can be up to four weeks before you see anything changing – so don’t expect results overnight and be ready for the long haul.

If you’d like professional help with making this happen or even just a chat about what’s achievable, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help. In the meantime, good luck with your local search optimisation and Google Places SEO!

If you’re interested in inbound marketing and SEO, check out www.inbound.org where you’ll find a curated list of some of the best inbound marketing news, tips and stories.