Search is changing. As a 200-person search marketing software company, this isn't just a pithy intro – it's a daily threat to our survival. Being an organic search marketer can be frustrating when even a search like "What is SEO?" returns something like this...
...or this...
...or even this...
So, why don't we just give up on search marketing altogether? If I had to pick just one answer, it's this – because search still drives the lion's share of targeted, relevant traffic to business websites (and Google drives the vast majority of that traffic, at least in the US, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe).
We have to do everything better
The answer isn't to give up – it's to recognize all of this new complexity, study it, and do our jobs better. Earlier this year, for example, we embarked on a study to understand how SERP features impact click-through rates (CTR). It turns out to be a difficult problem, but even the initial insights of the data were useful (and a bit startling). For example, here's the average organic (SERPs with no features) curve from that study...
Various studies show the starting point at various places, but the shape itself is consistent and familiar. We know, though, that reducing everything to one average ignores a lot. Here's a dramatic example. Let's compare the organic curve to the curve for SERPs with expanded sitelinks (which are highly correlated with dominant and/or branded intent)...
Results with sitelinks in the #1 position have a massive 80% average CTR, with a steep drop to #2. These two curves represent two wildly different animals. Now, let's look at SERPs with Knowledge Cards (AKA "answer boxes" – Knowledge Graph entities with no organic link)...
The CTR in the #1