You may have seen article spinners and content generators that take existing web content and twist the words around to create “new” content. Often these autoblogging products (which you may have paid quite a penny for) simply run your text through a series of foreign language translators and then back into English where it looks like a bizarrely written article with all sorts of weird phrases. It’s not meant for people to read but for the search engines. Typically I would advocate that you write strictly for humans and not use article spinners for search engine targeted content BUT I know a lot people do use these and here’s a free alternative.

A new Google Labs product called Google Scribe let’s you effectively do the same thing but totally free. What Scribe does is suggest the next word of your sentence as you type. You can see the results of my experiment below, I created two sentences using Google Scribe; the only words I type were the first two phrases “search engine optimization” and “google results” to steer the content slightly. I picked the first word it offered in my cases.

Search engine optimization is an important part of the products named in this section are primarily provided directly by the companies appearing or PR agencies which are solely responsible for the content of their press releases once per week for their annual meeting in San Francisco and then to their children and grandchildren of these two types of information that is not appropriate for all users of the catalogue should also be noted.

Google results for these two groups of subjects were studied in these experiments was to determine the effectiveness of their advertisements and determine which ads are effective and safe in their homes and their lives.

I’d say it worked ok. Scribe sort of took me on a rollercoaster of content, away from the subject I was originally writing about. I think that if I actually typed a few keywords as I go along, it would work better. Let me try that out right now:

Affiliate marketing is the most important thing in the world of making money online without spending anything on the internet. Effective ranking in search engines is the key to successfully implementing a website that makes you money. Earning commissions for every sale made through your affiliate link will be added to the amount of money that you can earn online with affiliate programs.

That worked slightly better. I typed the occasional keyword and selected more appropriate choices from the list. Obviously none of these auto-generated content sentences read like true human generated content but it is a quick easy, free way to generate unique keyword related content that can help you with SEO. That last paragraph took me about 2 minutes to create. It’s not truly automated, it’s almost like a hybrid, but it’s definitely unique content.

Most of the SEO gurus and guides out there tell you to focus on getting your site to the top spot in Google for your keywords. It’s an admirable goal and it’s certainly something to strive for but being on top of the SERPs isn’t everything. There’s more to getting clicks to your site than just being ranked highly in Google. Take a look at this chart I swiped from one my sites using Google Webmaster Tools:

I cut out the search terms on left but this is for a varied bunch of terms that all rank number one in Google. You’ll notice that despite all the terms being ranked first, the click through ratio varies greatly from 100% down to 33%. That is because of other factors in the SERPs beyond just being the first result.

Some of these things you can change. Your onsite SEO is very important, like the meta info and page titles that appear in the results (if you’re using WordPress there are good plugins like All in One SEO that will do this for you automatically). Your site name is a factor- site names relevant to the keywords will be more likely to get clicks. The number and type of ads appearing above the results is a HUGE factor that unfortunately you can’t control without buying ads yourself. Relevancy of the other results is also a big factor; if your site looks like it matches what the searcher is looking for better than the rest of the results on the page (or with a more intriguing page title), you’re going to get the click whether you’re number one or number nine.

Here’s another chart I pulled sorted by clickthrough percentage; I chose a middle of the road percentile for demonstration purposes: continue reading…

I’ve noticed an interesting change in the way that Google gives results when searching with quotes. In the past it was not necessary to close your quotes to get an exact match search. You could use an opening quote only and then type in your search query and the SERP page would appear exactly the same as if you had used both opening and ending quotes like the search pictured above. But now, an open quoted search looks like this:

It’s gone from 1 match to 400,000 matches. While the exact match for this particular search still ranks at the top of the SERPs, note that Google lists many other results as if the query was entered without quotes at all. What’s interesting is that on a particular search I just did (not pictured), the exact match DID NOT appear first in the SERPs.

What does this mean? Well I’m not sure how many people use the no ending quotes shortcut to search in Google (or if there’s even a way to find out) but it’s no longer a viable way to research anything. Any users who do search in that way, will no longer be getting the exact match results they are expecting. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to pursue any strategies to take advantage of it in any way other than to increase your rankings in general (since I’m assuming the percentage of users who are affected is small) but it’s something you should definitely be aware of for your own research if you had been using this shortcut.

Various SEOs started to notice a relationship between search engine traffic and bounce rate. The rumor has it that Google now pays more attention than ever to your bounce rate and rewards you for good quality traffic. For those of you not familiar with term:”Bounce rate”, it pretty much indicates the % of users who left your website after seeing just one page. Arguably you can say that your website was no value to your visitor and they left right after checking it out, rather than staying slightly longer to explore.

What we know

Some webmasters can clearly see a relationship between organic traffic and bounce rate. Have a look at some screenshots by SEO black hat. This is just one example out of many. However you can’t rely on one set of results. In order to have a definitive answer you need to experiment with many more websites.

We also know that Google treats bounce rate quite seriously. Here is what Google has to say:

Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.

and

Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

Thinking logically

Google does not employ idiots. When a change is made there is a genuine, logical reason behind it. So would it make sense for Google to rank based on bounce rate? Why not! It makes a lot of sense for Google to send traffic to those websites that will actually benefit from it rather than those that will scare 90% of the visitors away. On the other hand some websites would naturally have higher bounce rate regardless of their highest quality. For example a dictionary type of website can see a visitor for a few seconds before they grab the word definition they were looking for and go away. Whereas an illegal warez download website with poor navigation can confuse and send the visitor from one page to another for minutes. Why should Google rank second website higher than first?

How does Google know your bounce rate?

Nobody I spoke to was sure. There are a number of possibilities. The most obvious are data from website running Google analytics as well as the toolbar. I assume the toolbar may well work similar to Alexa toolbar even though I could not find much of indication in Google patent information nor privacy policy. In theory Google can even track returning visitors after a certain SERP link has been clicked on.

My experiment

This blog has a very poor bounce rate. It varies day to do but on average it should be between 80% and 90%. I rank well for some boob related keywords so I assume some people come here trying to see some naked pics and end up leaving pretty sharpish in disappointment. I also run Google analytics so this was a perfect opportunity to run a little test. 12 days ago I have decided to remove Google analytics code from this blog, therefore killing a potential “probe” Google can use to establish my bounce rate. The next day I went over my 3 months old Google visitors record. The day after that I had yet another record. I thought I was really onto something there when on day 3 my traffic went back to normal and pretty much remained that way till now.

Conclusion

I don’t think my initial increase in traffic proved anything. The increase did not seem as dramatic as other webmasters have witnessed before. On the other hand my bounce rate stayed the same throughout the experiment. I was only trying to shut one of Google’s eyes. There were still Google toolbar users that I had no control over as well as other potential indicators. I suppose the only proper was of doing this is to actually improve your bounce rate and see if this results to an increase in traffic from Google. I suppose it might be easier to make your bounce rate worse and look for opposite results. I may well try it in the future.

Improving your bounce rate

• Functional website is a must! You need to make sure your website is compatible with different browsers, that your pages load in sufficient time and your design is clutter free and clear.
• Avoid popups/getaways and other aggressive ads.
• Quality and well written content will insure your visitors stay longer.
• Get to know your visitors. Why are they here? Where do they come from? What do they want?
• Improve your ad copy. Whether you are linking to your website or buying ads makes sure your visitors know what they are clicking on and where they are going to end up. Its quality and not quantity. One time visitors will only make your bounce rate worse.