Hey SEO (search engine optimization) people! Guess what! Your cheese has been moved again!
Recently, I found another marketing blogger venting about how the dastardly Google has changed the way they rank who’s shows up first in Google maps. Her post is even titled, “This Is Why People Hate Google” lol.
Based on her case study and many others I’ve come across, the CTR (click through rate), which has been so paramount in PPC (pay per click), is now coming to SEO.
For those not familiar with click through rate, it’s the number of people who see your website link, divided by the amount of clicks. So for instance, if there’s 100 people looking at Website A and 25 people click on it, that’s a great CTR of 25%. But then if there’s 100 people looking at Website B and only 2 people click on it, the CTR is 2% and not as good.
In Google’s opinion (and mine included), CTR is a great way to determine how popular and relevant the content is to the Google user.
And it appears that Google is in the beginning process of eroding the value of links and replacing it with CTR.
This is exactly why I don’t do black hat SEO anymore. The cheese gets moved too much lol. Better to just focus on content, user experience and building the client’s brand and not have all your hard work knocked over by the wrecking ball known as the Google algorithm update.