GOOGLE SITELINKS - WHY I SHOULD CHARGE MY CLIENTS MORE!
One of my client’s websites has recently been given the all important Google Sitelinks for one of its key search terms.
After basking in my own glory for a couple of weeks I thought I’d investigate the effect this has had on website visitor levels.
THE SITELINKS KEYWORD
Due to various reasons not worth going into here I am going to keep the client’s site and keyword which are the topic of this article hidden.
What I can say about the keyword is as follows:
- 1 word keyword
- 100% related to the content of the client’s site
- Google shows ‘about’ 41,000,000 results for keyword
Historically this keyword has always provided a decent number of sales for the client however actual measured conversion rate is low at around 1.2%, we mainly attribute this to the ‘genericness’ (is that a word?) of the keyword.
The client has held the number one spot without the Sitelinks for a few months now.
Also, to help analysis of these newly acquired Sitelinks the client (conveniently for us) spends a lot on Google AdWords and actively targets this keyword. Further data taken from AdWords about the keyword is:
- Average CPC of 41p gives an average position of 3.8
- During the test period impressions came in at 8,341 for the exact match keyword
- Also during this period CTR was fairly low at 1.94% generating just 162 clicks
So there is a fair amount of data for this keyword which we can now use to help judge the effectiveness of the Google Sitelinks.
TESTING PERIOD
The Sitelinks have been in place for 2 weeks now which seems a good period to evaluate the results over. The actual dates are: 25/08/08 – 07/09/08 which is (again conveniently) 2 weeks from a Monday to a week on Sunday.
ORGANIC TRAFFIC RESULTS
Google Analytics shows that for the 2 weeks visitors from the natural keyword totalled 1,906. Compared to the immediate 2 week period before the Sitelinks were allocated this is a massive 80.83% rise in visitors!
Maybe the previous week was slow? What if we look back over the previous few months when we know the site held the #1 position without the Sitelinks and look for our busiest period then compare?
Analysis shows our busiest organic traffic period was the first 2 weeks in June, comparing the 2 periods the Sitelinks still provide over 42% more visitors still an amazing result considering June was the busiest period the client had ever recorded!
COMPARING TO ADWORDS
Okay, I realise I may be stretching the analysis a little here but let’s look out of curiosity how well the Sitelinks compared to the AdWords data.
As mentioned before, AdWords recorded 8,341 impressions for the exact match advert which ran for 24 hours per day during the test period.
We could also assume that the ad was displayed continuously as the minimum bid remained strong and daily budgets never ran out.
It should be noted that the ad was shown Google’s ‘Search Partners’ sites (no content network advertising though) such as AOL and Ask during the period so these will have bolstered the impressions recorded in AdWords meaning actual Google.co.uk impressions would have been somewhat lower.
If we used the 8,341 as the Google.co.uk impressions for this keyword during the test period then our Sitelinks placement achieved a CTR of 22.85%!
For the paid search campaign to achieve this would be a minor miracle based on its historic performance, and assuming it did a similar amount of clicks would have cost in excess of £781 at current bid levels, position 1 bids would be much more expensive than this.
CONVERSION RATES
Recorded transactions went up during the period for this organic keyword as you would expect from increased traffic levels, however did the Sitelinks affect conversion rates?
Look at the immediate 2 week period before the Sitelinks were allocated the conversion rate for the keyword jumped from 1.3% to 1.7% coupled with the increase in traffic this resulted in a 135% increase in registered transactions and a 151% increase in revenue generated.
Comparing again with the busiest period record (early June) conversion rate jumped from 1.4% up to over 1.7%, a not insignificant rise. In revenue terms the recorded revenue increase was up just over 100%.
These jumps in conversion rate may be due to people using the Sitelinks and landing ‘deeper’ into the site. Also the allocation of Sitelinks may convey a higher sense of ‘trust’ to potential customers, my gut feeling is both of these factors play into the equation.
To read about further benefits related to Google Sitelinks see Ann Smarty's excellent Search Engine Journal post.
SO SITELINKS ARE GOOD THEN?
In my opinion achieving Google Sitelinks for highly related keywords is most definitely worth it, traffic increases of between 40% - 80% would be amazing on their own, combine this with the 20% - 30% increase in conversion rates as well and you are on to a definite winner!
The final thing which I have concluded from the whole Sitelinks experience is that I should definitely charge more! ;-)
ARTICLE DETAILS
Author: Darren Atkinson
Date Published: 10th September, 2008