6 Surprising SEO Secrets

We all know quality content and links are keys to organic search traffic.  A few years ago that was enough, but SEO is now so competitive that you need to do more to get the most from organic results. I discovered these surprising secrets while building RealSelf, a site that gets  1.1 million search visits per month, 80% of which are to pages created in the last 3 years. (AverageCostGuide is my personal blog and matches my fascination with how much to pay for services with opaque or variable pricing.)

1.  Rankings Aren't Enough: Optimize Browser Title and Meta Description for Clickthrough.  See what Google suggests for additional keyword combinations and experiment with those keywords in your title and meta description.  Look carefully at SERPs above yours and write your title and description so searchers see the compelling benefit your site offers.  You're not paying per click so you have every incentive to get more clicks.  It may even encourage Google to rank you higher.

2.  Google May Ignore Your Meta Description.  We had this problem from May through July 2010 -- Bing and Yahoo used our meta description but Google thought it was smarter than us and was pulling random user-supplied comments that killed our CTR from Google vs Yahoo and Bing.  We fixed this with a page redesign and the CTR from Google went back up.  Don't just focus on your where you're ranked -- carefully see how your SERP appears for your top keyword combinations.

3.  Title Case Beats Sentence Case.  You're not writing headlines for the Associated Press or the Chicago Tribune.  Even the New York Times uses Title Case.  Google found that Title Case yields higher AdWords CTR but many websites have top-ranked page titles in sentence case.  Those clicks are yours for the taking.

4.  Long Tail Queries Go to Highest Ranked Page on a Site Even When Another Page is More Targeted.  Linking high-ranked pages for head queries (LASIK) to related long-tail pages (How Much Does LASIK Cost) helps both pages get more traffic.  The higher ranked page now matches an additional exact search query, and the lower ranked page will often appear just under the higher ranked page.  Google Suggests makes it easy for users to enter 4+ word search queries, making multi-word queries a majority of the search volume.

5. Allow Keyword Misspellings.  People mistype top keywords (especially brands) and even when Google suggests an alternate spelling people often click on the top results with the misspelling somewhere in the page.  This is one of the reasons UGC helps drive more traffic - if your users can't spell something, a good portion of Google searchers can't either.

6. Allow Visitors To Create Content.  The fastest growing websites (twitter, stackoverflow, how-to websites) have all harnessed the power of UGC.  Comments are a start, but the real secret is allowing users to build full pages that will match long tail searches exactly.  Limit UGC content to plain-text to deter spammers.  Don't require registration until you have enough UGC to be picky.  Instead, do moderation and allow users to flag content.

Thanks to the SEOMoz community for helping websites earn more clicks.  If you found these tips useful please share on twitter

@EricKennedy

Head of Development, RealSelf.com