In the Weekly Shop this week…more search news from Matt Cutts, the importance of differentiating between content marketing and content for links, how reviews and trust signals can double your conversions and some updates on the EU Consumer Rights Directive.
How trust signals can double your conversions
As we mentioned last week, the role customer reviews are playing on the conversion landscape is increasing significantly with more and more shoppers looking for guidance on their purchasing decisions. This article from Econsultancy looks at how reviews and other trust signals can reassure your customers that they are safe when shopping with you and help to double conversions.
The EU Consumer Rights Directive: should etailers be worried?
You’ve probably heard murmurs of a new EU directive, which has implications for UK retail. It’s called the Directive on Consumer Rights and aims to improve consumer protection when shopping online. There are some good points in the directive, but also some that may concern retailers which this article from Econsultancy explores.
This next article explores the importance of differentiating between content for links and content for customers and how the wrong answer could be costly in terms of risk, return on investment and performance.
Study: 34% Of Google Search Results Have Rich Media, 9 Organic Links & 9 Search Ads
Moving onto some search news, a new study has been released that showed that there was rich media on the search results page 34% of the time. The breakdown of rich media showed images appear on 28% of search results pages, news 9%, and shopping 1%. Head over to Search Engine Land for more details of the findings.
Google’s Matt Cutts: Don’t Try To Build Links Through Article Directories
Matt Cutts has popped up once again this week encouraging webmasters not to use article directory websites with the goal of building links. He also tweeted his thoughts on his and you can view his video answer here.
Google & Bing Agree: Past SEO Success Guarantees You Nothing Today
Matt Cutts has also released a new Google webmaster help video which addresses the topic of what an older site can do to maintain its ranking over time. Some useful tips here if you have an older website.
And to finish off, here are six SEO predictions for 2014 from Search Engine Watch.