E377: Google’s rich answers give a dramatic boost in daily organic clicks from search. Many assume rich answers are near worthless for traffic; they’re not.
This episode gives examples of rich answers, shares how much they decrease clicks, but also demonstrates they are not completely worthless.
Having a rich answer still gives substantial traffic, though not as much as ranking #1 on Google without a rich answer.
Then the episode shares how to get rich answers with copywriting, and something more creative: how to get rich answers with video.
By using video you grow a brand on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube simultaneously while also ranking on Google!
The episode also stresses bottom-of-funnel organic search traffic vs. top-of-funnel.
Experiments from https://seosherpa.com/seo-experiments/
00:00 SEO Experiments 00:19 The Article 01:59 Understanding Rich Answers 03:22 Impact of Rich Answers on Click-Through Rates 04:49 Using Rich Answers for Traffic 06:12 Writing for Rich Answers 07:45 Bottom of Funnel Keywords 11:54 Using Social Media for SEO 15:41 Conclusion
#seo #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
We're doing SEO experiments. Again, we're doing search engine optimization experiments on this episode of the Edward Show. This is episode 377 of my daily digital marketing podcast. A lot of people have been requesting more SEO episodes. So I'm going to share something expected about SEO and then something that not a lot of people would expect. This comes from seoshirpa.com/seoshirpa.com/seo-experiments. It's 21 SEO experiments. I read this article back in 2016. It's been updated since then. It's always updated. 21 great experiments. I know that URL off the top of my head because I share experiments from this article so much on this podcast. I think I've shared five or six experiments now on the show. And I've shared them in my videos, in my daily, short form mobile videos for TikTok and Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. I love this article. And if you love it too, or if you're interested in it, it's going to be in the description for this podcast. It's in the description for the podcast. So you can access it there through the description for this episode. Really, this is something I discovered in 2016. I was so excited by this article that I stayed up late into the night. I remember I was living in Williamsburg in Brooklyn and I stayed up late into the middle of the night reading this and just I was so excited about the things that I was learning because a lot of what shared in this article, things about Google that not a lot of people know. These groups of people who are super interested in SEO or practitioners themselves, a lot of them are practitioners themselves. They get together and they do these big experiments and then they write down their findings in ways that are fun and easy to understand. And then they share them. And when you read all these experiments, you have a great idea of how Google actually works. Not how the Google representatives say it should work, but how it actually works. So that's why I love these 21 experiments. I read lots of SEO experiments all the time and this is a great article. So like I said, this is something that is expected. You will not be surprised by the first part, but you might be surprised by the second. In the article, this is section five. The name of the section is number one is not the top spot and what is now. So the article says, in this test, Eric Eng and the team at Stone Temple Consulting set out to measure the change in the display of rich answers in Google search results. Just in case you're unfamiliar with the terminology, rich answers are the in search responses to your queries. They aim to answer your query without you having to click through to a website. We've all seen this. If you Google what team does LeBron play for, you will get the exact team. Just says it right there. You can click through and read more, but it's gonna say it right there and it'll probably even have an image attached. Or if you search time zones in Australia, you'll just get a list of time zones in Australia. That's a rich answer. They are made again, so you don't actually have to click through to the website. So the first study just shows how much rich answers were increasing. It was once increasing at a rate of 9% over seven months. In seven months, there was a seven month period. 855,000 queries were analyzed. Before the seven months, 22% of these queries displayed rich answers. After seven months, it was 31%, went up by 9%. That was the first study. That's not very surprising. We know that rich answers make up a large portion of the search engine results pages. Then there was a study done on just how much it decreases the clicks. This is what it says. When the search engine results pages were just a list of websites ordered according to their relevancy to a query, it was clear why website owners would do anything that they could to gain the top spot. The higher up the ranks, the more clicks you got. According to a study by Optify, in 2011, the top ranking website would receive as much as 37% of total clicks. Even as recent as 2020, a different company, Sistrix, reported in their research that top ranking sites where there were no featured snippet, generated more than double the number of clicks compared to second place websites. So number one position gets double the clicks that the second placed position gets. But rich answers changed all of that. Here's how rich answers affect click-through rates. Sistrix, this company Sistrix in 2020 in their study, they determined that the presence of a featured snippet, the number one ranking website got 23.3% of clicks. That's 11% less than when there's no featured snippet. So it's clear to see how the inclusion of a rich snippet answer in the search engine results pages can affect the overall search traffic to a website or go down. I don't think that is surprising to a lot of people because literally Google designed these snippets to make it so searchers don't have to click through to websites. But this is a part that might surprise you. You might think that these featured snippets are totally worthless now. Turns out they're not. So I have a graph that's coming up on the screen. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see this graph. If you're listening, I'm gonna describe the graph. It's okay. You can continue going for a walk or doing the dishes, driving somewhere, sitting on a flight, wherever it is. I'm gonna describe this SEO graph to you. So this is another company analyzing their clicks. The company's Confluent Forms. They got a rich snippet result listed on their website. They analyzed their clicks and they found that before they were getting a rich snippet, they got a rich answer. And before they had that, they had an average of 65 clicks a day. They got it and then this went up to around 92 clicks. So they gained a lot of clicks from this rich answer. So if you thought that these rich answer snippets are totally worthless, they're not. And then when they lose the rich answer, they go back down to their average, which is around 65 clicks a day. And the article says their clicks went up. Once the rich answer was added, and then the clicks went down when the rich answer was removed. So remember this is what the article says. Rich answers are intended to solve queries from within the search results, yet they can still send additional traffic to your site just as they did for this company Confluent Forms. And now there's a section of how to use rich answers to your advantage. So I'm gonna read this section and then I'm gonna give my take on the advice in the article. So the article says rich answers are generally provided for question-based search queries. You asked a very simple question, Google will try to answer that for you right there in the search engine results pages. Now they'll do this more with AI, but they're testing this functionality, they remove it half of the time, then they put it back in. According to one of the people in the studies provided, answering questions is the best way to go about getting these snippets. So if you wanna benefit from rich answers, here's the advice. Number one, identify a simple question. Make sure the question is on topic for an article. Number two, provide a direct answer. Write in a very simple, clear, and useful way for both users and search engines. That's good advice. I always try to write personally, I always try to write in a very simple way. If you read my newsletter, Edwardstrom.com/newsletter. It's about crazy growth hacks. If you read that, you'll notice that my writing is pretty simple and straightforward. Number three, offer value added information. Aside from your concise response to the question, include more detail and value. This is great advice. Be sure not to just re-quote Wikipedia since that won't get you very far. So don't re-quote Wikipedia, but actually write a little bit more extra information. I'll share what I do in a moment. Number four, make it easy for users and Google to find. This could mean sharing it with your social media followers or linking to it from your own or third party websites. Okay, so I have two thoughts here. The first thought is, I think it's actually just generally a waste of time to go after rich answers. Unless they are bottom of funnel, most rich answers are top of funnels. People ask in questions, just trying to get basic answers, but there's no intention of actually converting. They're trying to learn something, but they're not trying to convert into users or paying customers. That's why I always advocate going after keywords at the bottom of the purchase or use funnel. These are where people know what they want, and they are just trying to find that solution so they can use something or purchase something. That's what a bottom of funnel query, a bottom of funnel keyword is. In this case, you might get a rich answer if people ask, like, what is a good tool for doing so-and-so? And Google might tell you, if you do your SEO writing in a very simple way targeting that specific question, that happens a bunch of times. I've had that happen with me. So the advice to actually write in a very simple and straightforward way, that's great advice. Answer questions in a simple and straightforward way. Very great advice. I love that copywriting advice. Search engines like it, and users and readers like it. Users and readers don't want to read crazy, intense research papers with thick paragraphs and long words, they want to read short words and short paragraphs and quick conclusions. Don't write like a research assistant, write like you're writing to a 10-year-old. My advice, as it always is, is go after keywords at the bottom of the funnel. So you're actually less likely, if you do this, you're less likely to get rich answers. Google might just send searchers to your page, where you have a conversion button. Whatever the conversion is, maybe it's to use an app, maybe it's to buy a physical product, maybe it's to buy services, whatever the conversion is. They might send you to that page with detail answering their question because you wrote it in a very straightforward way, and then they get the form or the button to convert. I think going after top of funnel queries, top of funnel keywords, it's just a waste of effort and time, most of the time. Bottom of funnel is less competitive, has way higher conversions, and because it's less competitive, it's also easier. So I really advocate bottom of funnel also, less likely to be displaced by AI. If people ask a bottom of funnel question where they are looking for a direct solution, Google or Chachi PT or Gemini or Claude, whatever it is, is going to answer with saying like use your brand. It's gonna recommend your brand because you wrote copy answering the searchers question. You found a bottom of funnel question that a searcher is asking, and you wrote copy targeting that. Especially straightforward copy, just like search engines like. Now, if you decide to go after top of funnel, you still wanna go after top of funnel. I'm gonna give some crazy advice here. I'm gonna give crazy advice. All right, you could do the skyscraper technique, takes a lot of work, time intensive, you have to write at least 3,000 words. Who wants to write 3,000 words? With a bottom of funnel article, you could write 415 words. You could write even less. I've seen pages that are 200 words. Rank number one for bottom of funnel queries. Top of funnel, you gotta write thousands of words. 3,000, 4,000, not for all top of funnel queries, but that's typically the advice. Do the skyscraper technique. Write these long articles. They'll rank for lots of different things. And it's true they will. They will rank for lots of different keywords. You will get a lot of traffic from that. But it's top of funnel. So a lot of it's not gonna convert. In fact, a dramatic percentage of it isn't going to lead to anything. It's just people trying to learn something. Most of them will have no intention of converting. Actually, like all of them will have no intention of converting. If you're lucky, you can get some of them to sign up to an email newsletter, and then you can move them into your funnel. But like I said, it's a lot more work than bottom of funnel. But if you go after top of funnel, writing in the way described in this article, the way that I've been talking about two, simple, clear, useful, answering questions in your article, making sure the questions are relevant to the article, adding extra information, that's great. Now I'm going to give you the non-standard advice. The advice that nobody knows that I discovered that I've been talking about, not stop on this show because I'm super excited by it. You can get featured snippets. You can get these rich answers while building a social media brand. A big social media brand. When you post Instagram reels TikToks and YouTube shorts and you put a keyword at the beginning of the description for that video, and then you write maybe, let's say around nine sentences. It's not exact, it could be eight, it could be 12, it could be 15, it could be 20. Whatever the necessary amount of information is, to actually answer the query, you can rank in the rich answer. So I'll just give you an easy example of what I did. This is one of many because I do this all the time now. A few weeks ago, I saw Ryan Reynolds speak at the Forbes Iconoclast Summit. I got all this great video from him speaking. Afterwards, I went to the top of him in a hat and rooftop and I said, "Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy is crazy." That was the hook for the video. That was the introduction. The city of Manhattan is behind me. You've probably seen this video. It has millions of views now. After I say this, the next shot is my face and then I turn the camera to Ryan Reynolds who's in front of me speaking. And Ryan Reynolds talks about his marketing strategy and that's the video. He says that he tries to use storytelling in his marketing strategy. He loves storytelling. So here's what I do. I make this video. I take the transcript of this video and then I think the opening sentence to the description for this video is like, "Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy is brilliant. This is what he does." I think that's the opening sentence. You can just Google Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy. I don't know if I have the featured snippet anymore. It comes on and off. But my video still shows up on the first page of Google for Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy. So I say that introduction. I put Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy at the beginning of the description and then I take the transcript and I just use it as the rest of the description. I take the transcript from the video and I just paste it as the rest of the description. How easy is that? And you know what happened the next day? I have the rich answer for Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy. When you Google Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy, you know, I'll include a picture of it on the podcast on YouTube. So you can see when you Google Ryan Reynolds marketing strategy, there is the description for my video and this happens with lots of my videos. So the crazy thing is you could make daily videos and if you want to do SEO, you can simultaneously do SEO. And what happens if you have an answer that's good enough? People like this article revealed, will go and watch your video and then they might become subscribers or followers. They'll binge on your other stuff. That's a really easy way to move people into your funnel with video. Oh my gosh, it's so good. It's like one of the craziest hacks there is right now. The reason this is happening is because Google is prioritizing user generated content in the search engine results pages because there's so much AI junk out there. Google especially wants video or just any user generated content that has comments and likes and shares. Shows that it's real, shows that people like it. And that's what's happening. So if you want to go after these top of funnel queries and you want to get rich answers, I'm advocating something totally crazy. Do it with video. But if you do decide to do it with a long article, maybe you're doing it with Parasite SEO, a lot of people are doing it with Parasite SEO. I'm not advocating that 'cause it's black hat, but it is very easy. And I've shared Parasite SEO so many times on the show before us. It's pretty easy to do. Not that I've ever done it. Not that I have any experience with it, but it is pretty easy. So maybe you're doing it through that or you're doing it through your website. And if you're doing it just with only writing and no video, this advice on how to get these rich answers is pretty good as well. So that's what I wanted to share with you on this episode of the show. This is another SEO episode. So many people have asked me to make some more SEO episodes and that's what I'm given to you. This is episode 377 of my daily digital marketing podcast. I think I'm gonna green screen myself out after I'm done recording this. I don't know where I'm gonna be. If the lighting is good enough, you're gonna see a magical castle behind me. If it is not, maybe you will see a beautiful field or a nice city or maybe I'll be in outer space. I don't know what it will be. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. And if you listened, thank you so much for listening. I love doing the show. I love that you listen. It's my pleasure to do this for all of you. I will talk to you again tomorrow.
