In 2014, Mediative released an eye-tracking study that looked at how Google's Search Engine Results Page (SERP) has changed over the last decade, and how searcher behavior has adapted as a result. We learned that:

1. Top organic results are no longer always in the top-left corner, so users look elsewhere to find them.
2. Mobile devices have habitually conditioned searchers to scan vertically more than horizontally. Searchers are looking for the fastest path to the desired content.
3. People are viewing more search results listings during a single session and spending less time viewing each one.
4. Businesses that are positioned lower on the SERP (especially positions 2-4) see more click activity than they did several years ago, making this real estate much more valuable.
5. The #1 organic listing still captures the most click activity (32.8%), regardless of what new elements are presented.



On a desktop, the #1 organic listing is shifting further down the page, opening up the top of the page with more potential areas for businesses to achieve visibility.

The way website listings are presented on a mobile search engine results page is significantly different from how they're presented on a desktop. The decrease in available screen size means there are a limited number of listings immediately visible to searchers, and competition for the top spots can be fierce.

The 2016 eye-tracking study

In this latest eye-tracking study, Mediative took 49 participants of mixed age and gender, asking them to complete 41 search tasks on an iPhone 5 using Google. We used the X2-60 Tobii mobile device eye tracker to track where they looked on the screen, measuring time to first look, how many participants looked, and how many participants clicked on each listing.



The Tobii X2-60

An example of one of the tasks we asked? "You're interested in taking a vacation to New Orleans. Use Google to find cheap flights from Toronto to New Orleans." Participants were shown the mobile SERP below:



The area highlighted in the image above shows what's viewable on the mobile screen, before scrolling is necessary.

Ultimately, we wanted to know:

1. Where on the mobile SERP do searchers look and click the most? How does this differ from desktop searchers?

2. How important is the location of a listing on the SERP to win views and clicks from searchers?

3. Does the need for scrolling negatively or positively impact the views and clicks that listings further down the page receive?

4. What can advertisers do to ensure their Google listings are seen and clicked on a mobile SERP?

Key findings:

1. The #1 organic listing still captures the most click activity; it just takes 87% longer for it to be first seen on a mobile compared to a desktop.

In cases such as the one shown below, the knowledge panel that appears to the right of the results on a desktop (left image) becomes a key feature at the top of the mobile SERP (right image). Searchers have to scroll in order to see the organic listings that can be seen without scrolling on a desktop. This didn't deter searchers from seeking out the top organic listing, however - it just took longer.





Takeaway:

The relevancy of your listing to the searcher's intent becomes more important than ever as it's taking longer for people to first lay eyes on the organic listing. This provides more of an opportunity for them to be distracted by other brands and features on the SERP that appear before the organic listings.

2. Only 7.4% of clicks were below the 4th organic listing versus 16% on a desktop, and only 62.9% of tasks resulted in a scroll-down.

Takeaway:

Being above the 4th organic listing - whether in an organic, local, knowledge graph, paid position, etc - is critical. Fewer and fewer clicks are going to listings below the top 4 organic listings, leaving less opportunity for advertisers to drive traffic to their sites.

Mobile SEO needs to be taken extremely seriously. However, many businesses don't realize the importance of optimizing their sites specifically for mobile, resulting in ranking lower on a mobile than on a desktop.

* Invest in putting as much relevant content into your SERP listing and use available tools such as Schema to ensure that your listing stands out on the screen, increasing the likelihood of capturing clicks.

* Take advantage of the fact that other elements are presented above the organic listings, where over 35% of the page clicks on mobile were won.

* Track mobile rankings separately so as to optimize specifically for mobile, depending on the results that are seen.

Tips to rank higher in the mobile SERPs:

* If you have an app, ensure it's indexed. More and more, apps are going to be competing with websites for rankings and traffic.

* Remember you're dealing with a reduced space, so ensure your most important information is at the very beginning of page titles and descriptions, including priority keywords in the body of the website content.

* Websites with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) might result in higher rankings. Although not confirmed by Google, the company did reiterate the importance of page speed and the need to improve page load times, of which AMP is one way to achieve this.

3. 11% more clicks went to the knowledge graph on a mobile phone compared to a desktop, and almost 22% less clicks went to the top #1 organic listing on a mobile compared to a desktop.



A heat map showing the views captured by a knowledge graph result on a mobile phone. The displayed knowledge graph is shown to the right.

The introduction of more elements at the top of the page requires significant scrolling before the lower organic listings are reached, and these additional elements took a portion of clicks away from the top organic listings in that time.

When we studied mobile SERPS that only included organic listings, we found that:

* 99% of people looked at the top organic listing vs. 83% on a desktop
* 40% of page clicks were to the top organic listing vs. 34% on a desktop
* 75% of page clicks were to the top 4 organic listings vs. 60% on a desktop

When we studied mobile SERPS that also included paid listings, local listings, a knowledge graph, etc, we found that:

* 78.5% of people looked at the top organic listing vs. 99% on organic-only pages
* 33.2% of page clicks were to the top organic listing vs. 40% on organic-only pages
* 57% of page clicks were to the top 4 organic listings vs. 75% on organic-only pages

Takeaway:

Features on the mobile SERP such as the knowledge graph results have the potential to capture a significant amount of attention away from the organic listings. The major difference between a knowledge graph on a desktop versus a mobile phone is that scrolling is required on a phone to see organic listings. Once again, the importance of a strong mobile SEO strategy cannot be understated. If you find your organic listing is losing too many clicks to the knowledge graph, find other keywords that don't produce the knowledge graph and include them in your optimization strategy.

4. The top sponsored ad is seen by 91% of searchers.

Takeaway:

Mobile screen real estate is extremely valuable. You have two ways to try and earn as much of that real estate as you can: paid search and mobile SEO. Although paid search can't guarantee that you'll always appear at the top of the results, a good paid search campaign can definitely help capture more clicks.

Consider paid text ads if you're looking to improve website traffic, or optimize for local searches if appropriate, rather than focusing all efforts on ranking #1 in the organic listings. As three paid ads on mobile become more common, brands must be prepared to see a drop in traffic from organic listings, and perhaps consider increasing their investments in paid search.

5. 19.2% of page clicks on average went to the top 2 sponsored text ads, compared to 14.5% on a desktop.

Takeaway:

Paid search represents a bigger opportunity for traffic to your site on a mobile compared to desktop, especially if ad extensions are present.

Tips for using paid search ad extensions to push organic listings from view:

* Location extensions ensure the business address is shown alongside the ad.
* Call extensions add the ability to call the business directly from the paid ad.
* App extensions show a link below the ad text that allows people to download your app
* Site link extensions add links to various website pages from within the ad.
* Call-out extensions add descriptive text to your ad to describe more about what you do or offer.

6. 47% more clicks went to the map and local listings when they were above the organic listings.

Takeaway:

The positioning of the local listings, whether below or above the organic listings, can have a significant impact on the views and clicks captured by each of the local listings or the organic listings. With only three local listings appearing on mobile, it's important for your business to be there, especially if your website is struggling to rank in the top 4 organic listings.

Tips to rank in the local listings and capture more clicks:

* Have a complete and accurate Google+ page for every location. Focus on the number of citations and NAP accuracy across third-party sites and local directories.
* Get reviews! The stars in the listing only appear once 5 reviews have been generated
* Ensure your site is full of locally relevant, useful content, with plenty of local keywords used throughout

Measure more than just clicks. Clicks to a local listing from a mobile device can result in a reduction in traffic to the brand's website, as the local listings link to the Local Finder. It's therefore important to measure impression data from local listings as well as traffic to business Google+ pages, as this can contribute to driving traffic to local stores and businesses.

To conclude

There's no doubt about it: being listed at the top of the SERP is critical on a mobile device. People may scroll up and down, but ultimately, with over 92% of clicks going to an area above the 4th organic listing, if your business listing is below that, you're almost invisible on a mobile search. Mobile must be taken seriously, but there are still far too many businesses that don't see that importance and are still focusing all their efforts on desktop.

What's the best way to determine which links to pursue and which to pass up? Columnist Andrew Dennis shares his criteria.

Businesses interested in online growth can't ignore search as a marketing channel - it's too important.

BrightEdge conducted a study that showed organic search directs the majority of traffic online. And links drive rankings in organic search. If search is important to your business - and it should be - links need to be a marketing KPI in 2016.

But not every link is created equal. If you're using links as a KPI in your online marketing, you'll need to be able to evaluate link quality. Pursuing real, worthwhile links is paramount to search success.

Penguin Update Coming (Hopefully) Soon

Google has indicated that the next Penguin update should happen sometime this year.

With Penguin approaching, it's a good time to evaluate link quality, including what's already in your current backlink profile.

Although it's likely too late now to avoid a Penguin devaluation if you have a fair amount of toxic links, the sooner begun the sooner done. Google has confirmed that Penguin will become a real-time algorithm, meaning if you do the cleanup work now, a relatively quick recovery might be possible.

Spammy, toxic links are easy to identify for a variety of reasons. It's pretty easy to look at a site and quickly determine if the links you're getting are manipulative. For example, the linking site may be:

- Irrelevant to your site.

- Clearly lacking audience.

- Devoid of human value (i.e., solely designed for web crawlers).

- Linking to notoriously spammy niches (online gambling, pornography, pharmaceuticals, payday loans and so on)

- Missing central relevance (i.e., links point to sites in every vertical imaginable).

- Overtly selling links.

- It's relatively easy to spot these types of inbound links with a little manual investigation, and if you find them, you should promptly have them removed or disavowed.

However, toxic links can still pass link equity if they haven't been devalued or discounted by Google, and you need to be careful when cleaning up your backlinks to avoid lost rankings. Furthermore, you should replace lost equity with fresh, real links.

There is a bit of a gray area when it comes to link quality, and the difference between mediocre links and problematic links is not always cut-and-dried. Because of this gray zone, any work to secure new links requires quality assurance.

Identifying real links and evaluating link quality will be increasingly important as links are given more value as a marketing KPI in 2016.

Evaluating Link Quality

Links are an indicator of success within online marketing. But this doesn't mean "get as many links as possible" or "X number of links equals success."

Links should be a KPI within your greater online marketing strategy, similar to the more generally accepted KPI (particularly for content) of social shares. Links are not the end goal, but instead a means to achieve the end goal.

In fact, links are more valuable in terms of traffic, with organic search driving 51 percent of traffic versus five percent from social (according to the BrightEdge study). And while quantity is often the goal with social shares, more isn't necessarily better when it comes to links.

Rather, you need to evaluate the links you're securing to guarantee quality and ensure they support your larger marketing goals. Evaluating link quality is much more difficult than spotting spammy links. Within link quality, there is a large gray zone beyond toxic versus non-toxic.

My fellow columnist Eric Ward asks a simple question to determine which links to pursue:

What would happen if all content was known to all people?

This question highlights the fact that if everyone knew all content, people would link freely to the content that interested them and their audience because they would know it exists.

But all people don't know all content. You must promote your useful content to the appropriate audiences - these are the links you want.

Here are three overarching categories to consider when evaluating link quality:

- Relevance

- Human value

- Authority and trust

Each of these factors is complex and involves multiple layers of evaluation.

1. Relevance

The most important factor when evaluating link quality is relevance.

Links without some degree of relevance aren't worth your time (and are likely to be considered manipulative). A good litmus test is to explain the relevance to a colleague or friend. Why would a particular site link to you? If it is difficult to provide a compelling explanation, it's probably time to move on to a new link prospect.

Generally speaking, a link can be relevant in four different ways:

- Domain to domain

- Domain to page

- Page to page

- Link to page

These are pretty straightforward, but you can check out a post by Cory Collins (a content marketing specialist and my colleague) here to learn more about each individual type of relevance.

Determining relevance comes down to trusting your intuition. If you can't explain to another human being why a link would make sense on another site, the relevance likely isn't there.

2. Human Value

Worthwhile links are those that offer real value to humans.

When thinking about the human value of a given link, consider if it would make sense on the page where it's located. Ask yourself the following questions:

- Would someone be happy they clicked your link?

- Would the link take them where they expected to go?

- Would the page provide what they're looking for?

- Would the link take them to something useful and helpful?

A link should contribute to the overall value for the site linking, the site being linked and the person who clicked the link. In fact, if a site owner is willing to link even though it offers no clear value to their audience, that's a red flag, and you probably don't want a link on that site.

You need to examine the linking site's audience when considering human value. After all, if there aren't any actual humans reading the site, there's no human value in a link there. Same if the wrong audience is on the site - you want to be sure the link makes sense for everyone involved and adds value to the web.

It's possible to check audience engagement through a site's blog or forum by checking for comments and questions submitted by readers. Once you've verified engagement, you can use a tool like SEMrush to check traffic numbers and determine audience size.

Links that provide genuine value to human readers are the best links you can secure, and they're the types of links Google wants to count.

3. Authority and Trust

Measurements of authority and trust are important criteria worth examining.

Google's search algorithm is designed to return the most authoritative and trustworthy results for a given query. Google largely uses links to determine trust and authority, and you'll want to ensure you're securing links on sites that send these signals. Plainly stated, links from authoritative sites will pass more authority to your site.

Only Google engineers (and maybe not even them, at this point) understand how their search algorithm measures authority (PageRank) and determines search results. But there are some tools that offer relatively accurate authority metrics.

Here are some potential options:

- Moz - Domain Authority and Page Authority

- Majestic - Trust Flow and Citation Flow

- Check Google rankings for related terms - Ranking within Google is its own signal of authority (You can use a tool like AuthorityLabs).

These metrics shouldn't be your only measuring stick, and context is required. For example, a new page on an industry-leading site will initially have low Page Authority simply due to being new.

Same with a new domain - an up-and-coming website generating positive engagement within an industry will still rate low on most if not all of these authority tests. But it's worth looking at these tools to get a high-level interpretation of authority and trust.

Scrutinize the site's link neighborhood, as well. Avoid any site that exists within a spammy link neighborhood. Use a backlink tool like Majestic or Open Site Explorer to examine a site's backlinks.

Finally, conduct some niche research to get an idea of the site's industry reputation. Do a quick Google search on the site's brand or domain name and see what turns up. Or check relevant communities to see what the conversation surrounding prospective sites looks like. You can also use a mention tool to find brand mentions across the web.

A small amount of industry research can reveal a site's reputation and help determine whether or not that site is somewhere you want a link.

Consider authority and trust signals as you evaluate link prospects, because links are endorsements online, and you should want to be in good company.

Technical Elements

As SEOs, of course we will notice the technical elements surrounding a link. Google's original PageRank patent describes much of this, and there have been updates since.

These technical elements are important to note, but they shouldn't affect whether you pursue a link or not, only how you report it. These elements can affect how Google interprets relevance and authority, or if they can crawl the link at all.

Some of the technical elements to consider are:

- Nofollow

- Alt attribute

- Redirects

- Robots.txt

- Javascript

- Anchor text

- Page location

- Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin covers in depth most of the important factors in this Whiteboard Friday. These technical elements can and will affect the SEO value of a link.

You shouldn't sweat these technical elements too much; the emphasis should remain on relevance, human value, authority and trust. It's much more important to build positive relationships and earn trust from site owners, rather than raise issue with the technical elements of a link.

Conclusion

Evaluating link quality is an essential portion of successful link acquisition and monitoring search as a marketing channel.

As Google works to improve and adjust their algorithm, they are getting better at separating real links from link spam. If you want to earn worthwhile links that will make a positive impact for your site and brand, you must constantly evaluate link quality and ensure you're securing the best links possible. In review, examine these criteria to determine link quality:

- Relevance

- Human value

- Authority and trust

Links represent endorsements online. If you're actively marketing yourself online, you should be sure you're receiving the endorsements you deserve - but it's just as important to ensure they're the reputable endorsements you want.