In another big shift towards digital publishing (e-books), the WSJ has just announced that it will work with Nielson BookScan to add e-book rankings to it’s bestseller list. This is an exciting change that will further increase the prestige of e-books. It also serves to better align the bestseller list with total books sales. The two were becoming increasingly misaligned as more and more e-books are being sold with e-book sales recently exceeding paper books.

Here is a link to the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/wsj-best-seller-lists-e-books-113928679.html

Having a web site and being able to be found on the Internet, especially through the number 1 search engine, Google, is key for marketing your books and yourself as an author. But, it’s getting harder and harder to attract attention this way, likely because so many interesting (and not so interesting) online venues compete for attention.

A recent study found that only 52% of viewers will click on a result on the first page of their search results on Google. And how about for the number one search result? The position everyone spends large amounts of time and money trying to reach? The number 1 position garners only an 18% click through rate. The number 2 position has a 10% click through rate. These numbers don’t seem that impressive for enormous time, effort, and, often, money it takes to reach these coveted spots.

Of course other potential explanations exist. It’s possible that searches aren’t categorizing items well. Thus resulting in the top search results not addressing the searchers needs. I have had this experience sometimes myself, especially when trying to pull out complex concepts or conversely not having narrowed down my search enough.

Given the complexity of searching, it seems most likely that there are several factors acting together to result in fewer people clicking on top search results. It would take a detailed survey of users to try to tease all these out.

As a web site or content creator some things you can do to stand out are to write intriguing but accurate titles and to include key words that truly reflect content. Nothing is more annoying than to get links that have little to do with your search terms just because someone crammed in a bunch of irrelevant but common key words.

Here’s the link for more detailed reading:

http://searchengineland.com/organic-click-thru-rates-tumbling-study-97338