SEO analytics and Drivers of Organic Clicks
A firm’s brand equity is defined by its reputation for quality, service, and recognition increases organic clicks through two distinct pathways:
• Direct Effect: Consumers are naturally more likely to click on the link of a retailer they know and trust, even when it is listed alongside competitors at the same rank.
• Indirect Effect: Search engine algorithms tend to place high-quality, branded sites in better positions because they generate higher click-through rates, creating a cycle that reinforces their visibility.
Position on the search results page is critical but volatile. Being excluded from the first five pages of results leads to a 90% reduction in organic clicks. For those on the first five pages, a 1% improvement in rank leads to a 1.3% increase in clicks for that specific search term. A major finding from previous research is that rank effects are keyword-specific, meaning an improvement in rank for "shoes" only helps that one query. In contrast, brand equity is an "amplification factor" that increases clicks across all relevant searches associated with the retailer. Clicks on organic links are more likely to come from users who are older, wealthier, or conducting searches from the workplace. Brand equity is a significantly stronger driver for higher-income consumers, who place a higher premium on trust and site quality. The presence of a sponsored link (ad) on the first page of results can increase a retailer’s organic clicks by 37% for that keyword. This suggests that ads act as a "backup option" or an advertisement that boosts the perceived relevance of the organic listing.
Key Drivers of High Rankings on Search Engines result Pages (SERPs)
The findings from previous research analysing 50 highly optimized pages from an SEO competition alongside a non-optimized set identify several dominant "Query-Independent Factors”:
• Dominance of PageRank (PR): PageRank remains a fundamental pillar of Google's ranking system. The study found that no page with a PageRank lower than 4 was able to rank within the top 40 of the highly competitive competition set. While a high PR does not guarantee a number one spot, it makes a high ranking significantly more probable.
• The critical role of backlinks: There is a clear declining trend in the number of backlinks as rankings fall. Successful SEOs aggressively attract backlinks to specific pages to build authority, confirming the "off-page authority" concepts.
• Domain age as a trust signal: Domain age is a widely used tactic among professionals. Experts often repurpose old domains (some over 10 years old) for new content to leverage the established "trust" Google associates with older registrations. The study noted that no website in the top 100 for a popular query ("mobile phones") was less than two years old.
• Quality Over Quantity of Pages: While some SEOs attempted to influence rankings by indexing a massive volume of pages, this tactic had limited success compared to sites with fewer, higher-quality pages.
Relevance, Authority, and the Purchase Funnel
The most critical finding from previous research is that content relevance and online authority play different roles depending on the user's stage in the purchase funnel.
• Awareness Stage (Informational Intent): When users are looking for general information (e.g., "blenders vs. food processors"), online authority is the key driver of organic clicks,. In this stage, users value the credibility and trustworthiness of a well-known source over exact keyword matching.
• Consideration/Purchase Stage (Transactional Intent): As users move closer to a purchase (e.g., "best food processors"), content relevance becomes significantly more important,. Searchers at this stage expend more effort to find exact matches for their needs, making content relevance the dominant factor for generating clicks.
• The Specificity and sponsored search ad (SSA) Advantage: Organic clicks are positively influenced by search query specificity (the "long-tail" effect) and the presence of a SSA for the same firm. This confirms that appearing in both paid and organic results creates a reinforcing effect that improves total visibility.
• The Volume-Competition Trade-off: Firms face a constant trade-off between broad queries, which offer high traffic but intense competition, and specific queries, which provide a larger share of a smaller, more niche market.
While rank is a primary objective of SEO, its value is moderated by user perception; organic links are generally considered more trustworthy than sponsored results and account for the majority of SERP clicks.
Recommendations for SEO optimisation and analytics
• Rankings are a zero-sum game; one site can only move up by pushing another down. Managers should prioritize investing in site quality and brand awareness, which are more likely to yield sustainable advantages that competitors cannot easily duplicate.
• Unlike rank-specific SEO, investments in brand equity provide "spillover" benefits into other channels. A stronger brand leads to more direct visits, higher traffic from navigational searches, more clicks on price comparison sites, and even increased foot traffic for physical stores.
• Managers must recognize that while basic SEO (page titles, meta tags, and headers) is necessary to avoid losing rank, it is unlikely to provide a long-term competitive edge in a mature market where all major retailers are performing the same optimizations. The true differentiator remains the perceived value and trust associated with the brand name.
• SEO managers need to identify the "right harmony" between branded keywords (for engagement) and generic keywords (for conversion) to maximize long-term profit.
• On-page SEO (content relevance) is recommended for achieving short-run goals because content changes can yield faster results. In contrast, off-page SEO (authority and link building) is a long-term process essential for competing at the top of the funnel.
• Since appearing on both the organic and sponsored results increases the likelihood of a click, managers should coordinate these channels to maximize search prominence.
• Because searchers' vocabularies and intent change as they move through the funnel, content must be optimized not just for keywords, but for the meaning and context relevant to each stage of the journey
• Marketers should pay particular attention to a webpage’s PageRank or link popularity. High rankings are exceedingly difficult to achieve without established authority, regardless of how well a page is optimized.
• When optimizing on-page elements, practitioners should prioritize placing keywords in the URL first, followed by the page title, and finally the snippet.
• Managers can use simple estimation models to track current changes in Google's ranking algorithm. By monitoring shifts in the "weights" of factors like URL or PR, firms can detect when Google has adjusted its ranking priorities and adapt their strategies accordingly.
References:
Baye, M.R., De los Santos, B. and Wildenbeest, M.R., 2016. Search engine optimization: what drives organic traffic to retail sites?. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 25(1), pp.6-31.
Evans, M.P., 2007. Analysing Google rankings through search engine optimization data. Internet research, 17(1), pp.21-37.
Gudivada, V.N., Rao, D. and Paris, J., 2015. Understanding search-engine optimization. Computer, 48(10), pp.43-52.
Nagpal, M. and Petersen, J.A., 2021. Keyword selection strategies in search engine optimization: how relevant is relevance?. Journal of retailing, 97(4), pp.746-763.
