Anatomy of Your Search Results

Posted by Laura Bergells

November 13, 2006

When you conduct a search at one
of your favorite engines, maybe you
say that you focus strictly on the links.

As one client told me, “I never click on the ads. I don’t even look at them.”

Thus, he was surprised to learn that there is more information than just organic search results and ads. And it’s information that is important to serious online marketers.

What kind of information? Here are just three items that website marketers need to review:

The statistics bar - very helpful information, indeed. It shows the total number of results for your search, as well as how long it took to dredge up all those results. If you are in marketing, pay attention to these numbers! It gives you a good idea about the amount of competition for your search terms.
Page title - Searchers will most often click on the title of your page to get to your website. One of the worst marketing mistakes I see on the internet are sites that use boring, non-descriptive page titles for their content. The worst? Sites that use a) nothing or b) their company name for every darn page on their site. If you want to improve click-throughs to your site, get in there and write great, must-click headlines for every page of your site! This is a little tweak that makes a HUGE difference in your website traffic.
Text below the title – here, you’ll see a few more lines of copy from the web page. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: copy is KING when it comes to search engine marketing. So ask yourself: do the few lines of copy under the title make you want to click on the title? If not, what can you do to improve your site’s copy?

At Google Help, you can see a complete anatomy of a search results page. This guide can give insight into some important elements you need to consider when it comes to search. Why not review it today?