Last week the SEO world was rocked when Google announced its plan to remove the author photos from search results. In the past adding authorship and the image in search results had proven to increase the number of clicks exponentially. The question remains, why did Google choose to implement this change that had only been in place a short while?
If you had an author pic associated with your Google links, then you had a distinct advantage. Having a picture associated with an article automatically conveys a certain sense of authority. Not only did this get you a boost in search ranks, but it also got you more clicks than people who didn't have author pics for their links.
Without these pics, marketers and developers may quickly find their hit counts going down. For people who rely on Adsense or other sorts of monetization, this could be devastating. So what do you do if you've lost your author pic in Google searches and know that it's adversely affecting you? You're going to have find other ways to focus your SEO efforts.
Studies have shown that users are drawn to pictures and search results that contain pictures find that their CTR increases at an astounding rate. In some cases the change is over 150%, and even in the lowest range a change of 30% is very impressive. This means that ads, even if they occupy the top three search spots, would be far less valuable.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the change, the fact remains that one well kept SEO secret is now a thing of the past forcing marketers to find traffic elsewhere.
The recent announcement by Google regarding the end of author pictures in search results took the SEO world by storm. This seemingly insignificant feature was actually a gem for online marketers that could raise their CTR by up to 150%. The question on everyones mind has become why did google implement this sudden change, and where do we go from here.
If you had an author pic associated with your Google links, then you had a distinct advantage. Having a picture associated with an article automatically conveys a certain sense of authority. Not only did this get you a boost in search ranks, but it also got you more clicks than people who didn't have author pics for their links.
Without these pics, marketers and developers may quickly find their hit counts going down. For people who rely on Adsense or other sorts of monetization, this could be devastating. So what do you do if you've lost your author pic in Google searches and know that it's adversely affecting you? You're going to have find other ways to focus your SEO efforts.
Studies have shown that users are drawn to pictures and search results that contain pictures find that their CTR increases at an astounding rate. In some cases the change is over 150%, and even in the lowest range a change of 30% is very impressive. This means that ads, even if they occupy the top three search spots, would be far less valuable.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the change, the fact remains that one well kept SEO secret is now a thing of the past forcing marketers to find traffic elsewhere.
The recent announcement by Google regarding the end of author pictures in search results took the SEO world by storm. This seemingly insignificant feature was actually a gem for online marketers that could raise their CTR by up to 150%. The question on everyones mind has become why did google implement this sudden change, and where do we go from here.
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