Make Search Results Sexy: Get More Clicks

In my my Squidoo Search Optimization tutorial, I mention making search results sexy, including a Google Results Optimizer tool to help you do it.

Here’s an example. Note that this is the secondary keyword phrase it’s optimized for; it’s at spot #2 for its primary keyword phrase.

Sorry about the squinchy screencap, but it mimics what an actual user sees: they are scanning VERY QUICKLY for results, and don’t spend a lot of time reading each entry.

With secondary keyword optimization, it’s even more vital to make sure the blurb stands out from the rest. Note what I’ve got:

• Promises to satisfy their query (“how do I build a kite?”)
• Is friendly and has personality.
• Looks like an “easy” answer.
• Summarizes the benefits: “fun for kids.”
• Shows why you should choose result over the others. “There are many kite designs, but THIS one…”

This last piece is vital, because you know it’s going to be in a whole list of results. Saying your page is great is not enough. Why is it better than the alternatives?

Look at the results above mine. The first three all do a good job of targeting the reader: “This is easy, and here are the materials” gets them right into the project. “You could buy it, BUT it’s cheap and more fun to make one” gives them a reason to click. Result #3 offers printable instructions, always a draw. The next two show signs of keyword stuffing and probably have a ton of backlinks. They’ll get more clicks by virtue of SERPs position, but I probably get visitors who skip past them because their search results are boring.

How  many? 59 this week with “build” and “kite” in the query, and that might have some related search benefit. If so, it explains why I’ve got 300+ hits for long-tail searches derived from “make a kite” queries even though the lens doesn’t appear on page 1 of Google (it’s first on page 2) for that more competitive phrase.

Of course, as usual, Google isn’t the only fish in the sea. Some of those hits are from Ask, Bing, Yahoo, even my old buddy Altavista. But the optimized blurb for Google should help with their SERPs, too.