The title of this post is kind of ridiculous isn't it? I hope it's at least attention grabbing, especially because a key goal of this post is to talk about the importance of grabbing your potential visitor's attention.
So how is 7 the new 10? Google has been testing only showing 7 results for organic searches instead of 10. The scope of the test is pretty significant too, with a reported 20% of searches showing only 7 results.
Why is Google doing this? Google has mentioned that it is a speed consideration; it's faster for them to display 7 results instead of 10. This makes sense, but personally I believe it's a revenue consideration. If they can reduce the amount of organic results shown, there is a higher percentage of page real estate dedicated to AdWords listings.
Regardless of the reason why Google is testing this, it could be good news or bad news depending on your situation. It's good news for sites who have SEO resources at their disposal and are already ranking well for their top keywords. Only 6% of organic clicks occur past the first page of results. With only 6 other organic competitors on the first page, the top ranking sites are going to get a bigger chunk of the click-through pie.
This obviously isn't the best news for users without a whole lot of SEO resources. When sites could once pat themselves on the back for ranking on the first page in slots 8-10, they now found themselves fighting for that 6% of clicks on page 2.
So what can you do? Of course you still need to focus on providing original content and building quality backlinks. You can do that all day actually, but if your listing doesn't attract the attention of the searcher, it doesn't really matter. This brings me back to my original point; grabbing your potential visitor's attention. You really need to focus on your title tags and description tags. Write interesting titles for your pages and focus on what makes you different from the competition in your meta description.
Do these things and your search listings will stick out from the pack.
