Back with a few Friday Links
It’s been a while since we’ve done a Friday round-up and as I’ve seen a few interesting things this week I thought I’d care to share, so here goes:
Analytics360 – This nifty little WordPress plugin lets you view your Google Analytics data in your WP dashboard (found via BlogStorm).
Introducing Rich Snippets – Google are rolling out some changes to how certain SERPS are displayed (namely reviews and people). If you have a review site, you can now provide Google with extra information to display in the snippet. (via Rishil on twitter).
Sometimes Quitting Is The Only Way to Win – Interesting read on why it may be a smart move to quit.
Think Visibility – Tickets are now on sale for this excellent mini conference and I am certain it’ll sell out. If you can get to Leeds on September 12th I’d strongly recommend it.
Bing using DMOZ Description – For those of you living under a rock Bing is Microsoft’s new(ish) search offering. This article demonstrates how the SERP snippets are extracted from DMOZ and more importantly how to ensure they are not.
Call to action experiment – Great post showing the results on how changing the wording on a call to action statement increased actions from 4.7 to 12.81%, nice (via ChrisG).
Even found a game for you to waste a few minutes with, Neon Maze.
Related Posts:
The call to action is an interesting experiment. I think you found a similar result when you started using the imperative “Buy Now” on your Coolest Gadgets site Al.
Dan
Totally agree, best link of the bunch! That’s really bizarre though, the results are completely counter-intuitive. I would have bet loads that adding ‘here’ would have lowered the conversion rate tremendously. Guess it’s time for me to start experimenting again!
I also wonder if there’s a cultural influence on a call to action, and the language used?
For example, I’d expect that the language would need to be less confrontational for the UK, as the Brits are not too keen on being told what to do.
Dan
I have just stuck a new site up – http://www.equityreleasespain.org (needs loads more padding and pages, spent literally an hour on it.
Thinking about this call to action stuff and added an “Apply Now” button on the front page.
I was thinking about putting the actual application on the front page as well but it doesnt look very good so for now, the apply button links to the contact page.
I also guess I should have that button visible without having to scroll down so the rest of the content will go below it right?
Design isnt my strong point….
I must have been living under a rock cos I hadn’t heard of Bing! But I really like it even tho it is Microsoft!
Very useful links, thanks Al!
I’ve been using the Analytics360 plugin on a few sites for a couple of days now and I really like it!
Especially how it shows the blog posts so you can see how certain posts affected traffic!
That 360 plugin sounds great and I’m defo going to try it. Has anyone tried the wptouch plugin? It makes your blog easily readable by touch phones. Looks good on the sites I’ve seen it on….
That’s a nice tip regarding Bing and DMOZ. At least there is a fix available on the site you referenced.
Interesting, I have been doing a few experiments to increase conversion rates ona one of my sites for car rental.
I switched the enquiry form to the front page than providing a link and had a lot more people filling it in – maybe because I made it really easy?
I want to try this with one of my mortgage sites as well I think!
Everytime I see that 10 people have clicked on my contact page but only 3 have filled it in I think “70% fail!!!”
Anyone recommend further reading on this subject?
The article on calls to action is pretty interesting. I’ve got a few AM sites and, typically, I started using a pretty garish image to get more clickthroughs. I’m going to modify the text inside the image inline with the article and see if it improves the number of clicks. I’ll be hack to let you know the results…
ahoy mate!!
really dugg the sparkplugging link. reminds me of Seth Godin’s “the dip”…
checking out the call to action experiment now. seems super cool.
thank you!
alex – unleash reality
I agree with the others the article on call to actions was interesting. I am experimenting with some of my AM sites at the moment and have seen an improvement in CTR following tweeking on page call to actions and meta descriptions to increase CTR from search engines.
Great to see all these posts coming from you. Please keep at it.
As for the links I did try out the 360 plugin but I found that it would only use the first website you have in your analytics account so in other to make it work I would have to create a new Google account and a new analytics account for each site in order to make it work. Needless to say I removed it again fairly quickly.
It look cool though.
Mikael
I hope that Bing is getting more market share. Google really needs a competitor when it comes to search!
Well as it is, we only have to read Matt Cutts blog and try and figure out the Google algorithm.
if traffic was evenly split with another search engine we´d have twice the work to do!
I can’t imagine anyone, even Microsoft’s Bing taking much market share from Google. The brand “Google” is so strong and is a household name, even my Nan says “I’ll Google it!”
When it comes to SEO all I care about is Google, it would be a real pain in the behind to look at other search engine behavour.
Some interesting links there. There was a good post about Analytics360 by Yoast last week http://yoast.com/analytics360/ Interesting stuff
Your recommended plugin is really useful – I can now view the Analytics directly off the WordPress dashboard without having to sign on to the Google site. Thanks, Al!
The link to the inner workings of Bing is most appreciated. The sudden popularity of Bing is such that we need to sit up and take notice, and make sure that our websites conform, at least. Every bit of traffic helps, and only ranking high in Google isn’t just the ticket any more.
And now microsoft own yahoo. Two search engines… Will they make any inroads into the google dominance?
These links are definitely worth sharing. As for the rich snippets, do they apply to review sites alone?
Thanks for sharing these interesting links. The analytics plugin will come in useful and the quitting is the only way to win was an interesting read