Stacking the SERPS for an 80% Increase in Click Through Rates

Something we’ve known for years but finally got confirmation on is that stacking the search engine results with SEO, local SEO and Google ads increases your click through rates by as much as 80%. So the click through rate on each listing will be greatly enhanced when you show strongly in multiple places.

What I mean by this is that if you can show at the top in 3 or more places on any given search result page, the amount of traffic that flows to you is greatly enhanced. Now I got that number from a friend who is a Google Partner that reported it to me verbally from a meeting with Google. He’s a very professional guy who meets with the Google team each week, but that’s the extent of my proof. But it certainly jives with everything we’ve seen for years.

So even though these aren’t the most scientific numbers, I think we all “get” that’s its very effective if your business is prominently displayed in all of the top search listing formats on your top searches. Google simply doesn’t publish this type of stuff so you’ll have to proceed on gut instinct if you’re still interested in this concept.

So here’s how it works. The 3 core sections of most local search results are the ads, maps and organic search results. When we get our clients into each one of those ranking highly together, that’s when a noticeable jump in traffic and leads occurs. This is especially true when they have a solid review profile with stars showing in their maps listing as well.

Now I’m not saying to go out and spend a ton of money on Google Adwords so you show up everywhere. As a matter of fact you should not do that unless you know you have a profitable keyword, ad and landing page combo. What I am saying is that it’s smart to advertise on your most valuable keywords, especially when you combine that with a 3 pack maps ranking and a solid organic presence.

To take it even further, sometimes you can also get your Facebook profile, Yelp listing, or other online profile on an external site to rank there as well. At this point you may have 4 or more listings on your most targeted keyword. That’s very powerful and quickly builds trust in your business as a leader to the prospects that come to that page.

Now I want to make sure people understand that this is very powerful, but it’s something that should be used in conjunction with other techniques as well. You might be surprised how little traffic often goes to the “money” keywords in a niche. Where the big traffic numbers are at is in the long tail. It’s the questions people ask search engines earlier in the buying cycle, the problems they are trying to solve and the related items.

Take someone considering a custom home build for example. They’re looking at a large purchase and will be researching all aspects of it for quite some time. They may search on everything from a realtor to buy a lot, to the cost of permits and building a custom home, all the way to audio components for a home theater. They may be thinking about what kind of trees they might want and types of appliances they might want. How many custom home builders are helping folks out at this stage? Probably zero. And this is where your content strategy and approaching your ideal customers earlier in the buying cycle really pays off.

You’ll have far more keywords ad traffic to go after and you’ll be there with your prospect earning trust each step of the way.

Also, get this. When you have a more informational website with more traffic your ability to get more links naturally goes up exponentially. So if you do your content right and promote it a bit, the snowball of natural rankings and search engine optimization has a chance to actually work for you. So this body of content becomes a valuable asset to your company and continues to build up over time.