SEO Expert, Anthony Yap

Here’s something Google Advertisers will find useful. Google Adwords offers a tool called Website Optimizer. With it, an advertiser can test conversions on different landing pages, headlines and ad copy. It then shows the testing results with graphs to help the advertiser choose the best ad combination for highest conversions.

From the Adwords blog:

help you find out which content will convert best on your site. Whether you define a conversion as a purchase or a newsletter sign-up, Website Optimizer allows you to experiment with different headlines, copy, and images on your site in order to find out which combination results in the most conversions. You can use this tool on your landing page or any page that represents a conversion.
At the end of each experiment, graphical reports show which version of your landing page users liked best, as measured by which variation had the highest conversion rate.

Experimenting with Website Optimizer on your landing page does not affect your Quality Score if you maintain the existing default landing page for the Ad Group.

You can sign up for their beta here.

Ever wonder what number of clicks you can expect for position #3 in Yahoo or #7 in MSN?

Wonder no more…

SEO Scoop derived data for Click-Through-Rates (CTR) of top 10 search results based on data from AOL.

Total Searches:9,038,794
Total Clicks: 4,926,623

Click Rank1: 2,075,765
Click Rank2: 586,100 = 3.5x less
Click Rank3: 418,643 = 4.9x less
Click Rank4: 298,532 = 6.9x less
Click Rank5: 242,169 = 8.5x less
Click Rank6: 199,541 = 10.4x less
Click Rank7: 168,080 = 12.3x less
Click Rank8: 148,489 = 14.0x less
Click Rank9: 140,356 = 14.8x less
Click Rank10: 147,551 = 14.1x less

It just demonstrates the importance of striving to better rankings continuously even while a site achieves the top 10. Make no mistake, the #1 position garners the majority of clicks and therefore the profit for laser-targeted keywords.

SEO BlackHat extrapolated the figures from this CTR data and created a wonderful tool to estimate clicks for Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others.

Clickshare By Rank and Search Engine
Rank Google Yahoo MSN The Rest Total
1 25.36% 9.48% 4.97% 2.32% 42.13%
2 7.16% 2.68% 1.40% 0.65% 11.90%
3 5.12% 1.91% 1.00% 0.47% 8.50%
4 3.65% 1.36% 0.72% 0.33% 6.06%
5 2.96% 1.11% 0.58% 0.27% 4.92%
6 2.44% 0.91% 0.48% 0.22% 4.05%
7 2.05% 0.77% 0.40% 0.19% 3.41%
8 1.81% 0.68% 0.36% 0.17% 3.01%
9 1.72% 0.64% 0.34% 0.16% 2.85%
10 1.80% 0.67% 0.35% 0.16% 2.99%

The tool for displaying the estimated CTR traffic is located in my previous post under Keyword Research.

AOL released data on the 20 million searches 650,000 searchers did over a 3 month period earlier this year. The data contains a goldmine of information at 20 million keywords. This data, while seasonal and limited only to AOL data, potentially links data to specific AOL users. In the case of Thelma Arnold, a 62-year old widow who lives in Lilburn, GA, a NY Times reporter used the search information to follow the trail leading to her. This presented privacy issues leading AOL to pull the search information made publicly earlier.

While it is no longer available directly from AOL, you can still obtain them from these AOL search data mirrors.

Since then, web tools were created to sort and search this data.

At aolsearchdatabase.com, you can search the data by:

Another tool at askthebrain.com/aol, lets you search the data by:

By default, the tool displays the top sites URLs, number of referrals to that URL, keywords leading to that URL, and the keyword diversity ratio.

The last tool, dontdelete.com, lets you search the data by:

You can also view keywords leading to a specific URL.

Great keyword research data for the search engine marketer.