The Long Click

Written by: Gary Horsman

The Long Click

Do People Like Your Content?

Here is an idea that goes hand-in-hand with content marketing, the idea of creating content that delights your audience and achieves high search results. You can improve your position is search by improving the onsite experience of your visitors. In search it is called the long click.

The effect is not well documented but we know that the Google Panda algorithm is designed to push low-quality content and low-quality websites down in the search results that Google displays. Google has no interest in presenting low quality content high in its search results – it bad for their business. It also makes a great deal of sense that Google would measure the satisfaction level of their customers (the searching public) as their customers click on the search results that Google presents.

We know that Google rates the quality of the ads in their Adwords program and gives them a “quality score” and that the bid price is not the only factor that determines the position of an ad in the PPC display order. A quality score for an ad is defined by whether people click through and stay on the site associated with the ad. Google may move an ad up or down in the PPC display based on the quality score and not exclusively on the PPC bid. Why would Google not apply a quality or satisfaction factor to determine the position your website or blog in its organic search results?

Google can see how satisfied a searcher is with the search results. If a searcher clicks on a search result (which from Google’s perspective would be the top one) and does not return to Google then Google can conclude that the searcher was satisfied with the result. It makes a great deal of sense – so much that we can expect that it is true.

This brings up another important point. We all know how valuable links are in determining the position of your website in search. We may conclude that if you have enough links to be one to the top five positions that you have enough links to be #1. You now need to have a quality score based on click through and the long click (meaning the searcher does not return to Google to search again).

Look at the search results below. Someone who searched for “SEO Notebook” is presented with my SEO Notebook Blog at the top of the results. Google now observes whether people click through and stay on my blog.

If searchers click through but then quickly return to Google to search again then Google may push my blog lower in the search results. If my blog gets pushed down then something else has to be pushed up. Google will make a connection between whether there is delightful content on one site versus another based on the staying power of the site (whether people stay on the site). If the site has no staying power then positional loss is likely.

If most everyone clicked through to my blog and then did not return to Google to search again Google could conclude that they are presenting a worthy result in the #1 position. This would be a valid conclusion and my blog will remain in the #1 position.

Conclusion: Create depth and variety of content. Create content that delights. You will be rewarded with a higher search position as a result.

Content Marketing is a very important aspect of your marketing. The search engines reward sites and blog with delightful content by positioning them higher in the search results. Delightful content also gains more links naturally, again, boosting search position.

If you want to learn more about the value of content marketing I invite you to view any of our content marketing tutorials. Here is a link to the Content Marketing Introduction Tutorial.