SEO Training

It can seem like an impossible choice. SEO or Usability. Where is the compromise?

SEO is vital to the success of any website.  After all, if you can’t get found, then you can’t give your message.  However, once you have been found, it would be nice if people actually stayed on your site and read some of your content instead of clicking off somewhere else within seconds.  Content writing skills are extremely important.

Why are SEO and User Experience often opposites?

It all comes down to how the human mind works and how algorithms work.  Take pictures for example.  Google can’t “see” your graphics in the same way as humans do.

Despite huge improvements in search algorithms, the bottom line is that they still place a massive emphasis on original text content.

This contradicts what humans like to read.  We are the exact opposite.  We don’t really like reading online.  We like pictures and lots of them.

Heuristics – what have they ever done for us?

Jakob Nielsen is regarded by most as the father of usability heuristics (heuristics simply means that the rules are only loosely defined rather than strict).  It is worth reading through them.  What usability heuristics do is give us a rough template on how to not annoy users of both applications and websites (websites being a type of application really).

Keep Visitors Longer

By sticking to heuristic principles we have more chance of keeping our visitors for longer on our site, and of giving them an experience that in all probability they don’t particularly notice.  Not getting noticed in this case is a good thing.  We have all been frustrated on websites by not being able to simply navigate to where we want to go.  Mostly we just look for a new site when that happens.  This is the converse of heuristic principles.

This eye tracking study shows how we tend to read in a vaguely f shaped pattern online. This shows the importance of top google ranking too by the way.

How humans read web pages

We, as humans, read web pages quite differently to how we would read a book.  Broadly speaking, we scan down the left hand side of a web page, reading headings and only some of the words in the paragraphs below them.  How much depends on the level of interest the headline and the first few words invoked.

Thus, the way I wrote that last paragraph was not ideal from a heuristics point of view, since I essentially repeated the heading in my first line.  However that was ideal from an SEO perspective.  I train people to write like that.

Humans like short and snappy text, preferably backed up with pictures.  Google likes text, text and more text.  This is why content writing is such an artform.

How to please both humans and search engines with your content

I was recently working on a site relaunch for a recruitment agency specialising in Medical Jobs.  The website ranked really well for their chosen keywords within a very competitive niche market (no prizes for guessing who does their SEO!). However, the front page had a LOT of text on it that 99% of visitors would never read.

For the relaunch user experience was high on the list of priorities.  But we were faced with a problem.  A good user experience and lots of text on the front page do not good bedfellows make.

The solution was to turn to javascript and make the front page into a slideshow.  Not any javascript will do, and Ajax will not do at all.  The key to this is to make sure that when you view the source of your page, all the content is visible.  This means that search engines get to read all of your text.

Users get movement and interaction (which are plusses) while having the information broken down in such a way that they are more likely to read more of that text.

Did making a slideshow help keep visitors?

Yes it did.  Putting the information into a slideshow increased the average time on the front page of the site by 16 seconds straight away.  This means that people are actually staying to read the information, which is what you want if you have a website.

Benefits of Heuristics to SEO

Google take things like bounce rate and time on site into consideration for SEO too.  So, by providing a better user experience and keeping visitors longer through the use of heuristic principles, you are also improving your standing with the search engines.

How do I know if I should break up text on my page?

It is not always the case that text needs to be broken up for humans to appreciate it properly.  It is very simple to find out if your page needs help.  Use your analytics.  The key factor here is the amount of time spent on the page.  If it is really low on a page that has a lot of text then it stands to reason that your users are not reading it.  If that doesn’t upset you it should.  The only reason it would not upset you is if the content is really only there for the search engines.  In other words it’s spam content.  There should be nothing on your website that you do not want people to read.  Spam content can be recognised by search engines simply by measuring the time your visitors spend on your page.  If it’s too short for the amount of content, then the quality of the writing must be really bad. Thus at the very least, the page does not deserve to be ranked highly.

I don’t like slideshows (other ways to break up text)

If you have a lot of text on your page that you realise could not possibly be read in the time your analytics say people are taking to read it then you need to make some changes.  The following are ways of breaking up text in a page to make it more accessible…

• Lists.  Put your content into lists.  They are easier to read than straight paragraphs.
• Plenty of headings.  These hugely increase the chances of people reading more of your content.
• Boxes.  Place your content into bite sized individual boxes.
• Pictures. Pictures and picture captions are about the only thing that will distract us from reading down the left hand side of a page at the speed of light.  We love images.  However, stock images that we have seen before tend to be ignored.  Your pictures have to get attention too.
• Ruthless editing.  Big long sentences are bad.  Get rid of your verbose ramblings and stick to the point. (I could do with remembering that one).
• Highlight text. Using bold or italic text helps to get pertinent points noticed.

As always, remember that keyword stuffing is really annoying to users.  I don’t want to read about seo training in the latest seo training article on this seo training website.  Neither do search engines.  It may work to some extent, but it’s effect on users is to make you look bad, so don’t do it!

When starting out on an SEO campaign where do you actually begin? How do you organise and prioritise? What is more important: social media, link building, content?

These questions are valid for everybody. They are particularly relevant if you have been charged with your company’s online marketing and are not 100% sure exactly what to do in order to get results that will get you a clap on the back.

Your SEO campaign needs planning to make you look good.

It all has to start with SEO analysis.  My granny used to knit a lot.  The house was littered with knitting patterns.  Try building a house without blueprints.  The same is true for online marketing and SEO.  Without a clear picture of what has to be done you will end up with a proverbial one armed jumper (an itchy one at that) or a house with architectural properties similar to that of my own (and the builders actually had plans!).

SEO analysis allows you to work out exactly where you stand right now and provides pointers for where you can achieve that all important traffic and Google rankings. Think of an SEO analysis report as an SEO blueprint.  A good SEO analysis report will tell you:

• What keywords am I using currently?
• Is my website standards compliant? (good code base)
• How can my site structure be improved? (for ease of use and for SEO)
• How does my site compare to that of competitors for SEO?
• What keywords are competitors using?
• What sites link back to my site?
• What sites link to my competitors sites?
• What are my sites Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, Threats? (SWOT analysis)

A really good report will also bring in social media and assess what can be done there too.  It will also explain the effects of these different aspects on your websites online performance.

Webshed offer a SEO Health Check that incorporates these features.  That is because it is the essential building block of any online campaign.

If you are about to start an SEO campaign, do not go into it blind.  Have a clear plan based on facts and your life will be made that much easier and there is less possibility of spending lots of time on little return.

Online Dating is becoming ever more popular in Ireland.  There are absolute parallels between those seeking partners online and those who are potential customers for your business.

They are all looking for something that attracts them.  Think of an online dating site as a shop.  Some of the products have pictures (and according to Jill McGrath over at MaybeFriends.com, these are the ones that get most attention).  If you are looking for a potential dating partner online, then you are most likely to click on a picture of somebody who is attractive and has a nice picture.  Translate that back to your business.  What can you learn from that?  It’s simple.  Good product pictures are essential to boost sales of that item.  I have seen far too many sites that use pictures they have taken themselves under bad lighting conditions.  Even the most lovely packaging is going to look shoddy if the lighting is bad and the background is not clean.  Get pictures from the manufacturer, or invest in hiring a photographer for product shots.

Same product, but if you were buying speakers which picture would you click on? The professional photograph or the one I took using my mobile phone on my desk?

What about if you sell a service rather than products?  Pictures are still important.  In fact, the links between online dating and selling your business can be even closer here.  People are attracted to people.  Getting stock images of attractive people to associate with your product makes sense, and costs practically nothing.

Back to our online dating analogy.  Once a hopeful browser has clicked on somebody they like the look of, what comes next?  (slow down, slow down).  Next comes finding out more about that person.  This is where text comes in.  In the case of dating, this is the text that somebody writes about themselves as a profile.  It is where the person has an opportunity to sell themselves as a person to a potential partner.  There are two ways in which this can be approached.  You can just put in your information, or you can actively sell yourself.  Indulge me for a moment while I give an example:

Bare Information: My friends say I am attractive.  I am easygoing, have a good sense of humour and like nights out and nights in too.

Selling: Thanks for clicking on my picture!  I’m a passionate about music, and love my nights out clubbing or going to gigs.  When it comes to romantic nights in, I like to cook with soft music playing in the background , and if it all goes wrong I know some good take-aways!

I think the difference is fairly obvious there, and the same goes for products / services…..

Bare information: Desktop speakers with volume and tone controls

Selling: Discreet desktop speakers that provide surprisingly good sound quality worthy of much higher end speakers.

Of course, from an SEO perspective, both contain the keywords “desktop speakers”.  Selling does not mean forgetting your SEO… it is about increasing conversions from visitors to sales.

Here is the difference between online dating and selling products or services: If you are on a dating site, and you have not put up a picture, and your profile does not sell you, it is not necessarily the end of the road.  You can still contact people, and possibly overcome the bad first impression you gave.  If you are selling a product, that’s it… you’re out of luck.  It is sale or no-sale time, and if you have not done it already now, you are never going to sell to that customer.

Just as dating is about getting to know someone, learn to trust them and developing a bond, before the sale goes through of your product online, you will probably need to earn some trust too.

If you are getting to know somebody you like and they seem to be holding back things, then you are going to be wary of them.  Likewise, if a customer cannot find your contact information, privacy policy, returns policy, registered business number or delivery information, they are less likely to trust your site.

First impressions last.  If you meet somebody you have met online, then how they present themselves on that first date will form a lasting impression. the same goes for your website.  If it looks even slightly less than professional then that is the lasting impression you are giving of your business.

This may all seem a bit far away from SEO training, but SEO and Online Marketing are linked.  There is no point having a site that ranks well if it does not appeal to your target audience.  Your customers come first. Those who forget this in the pursuit of SEO alone run the risk of becoming the internet equivalent of the old cat lady! (I’m not sure exactly what that is – suggestions in comments please).

Design your Website with SEO in mind. It is childs play really. . . . honest.

Web design and SEO should be symbiotic. After all, there is no point having a wonderful looking site if nobody can find it.  This site, by contrast, has no design whatsoever.  It can however be found.

Am I saying that SEO is more important than Web design?  Not really.  A good web designer will incorporate basic SEO into a site as they build it.  Not having any design (wordpress default style) is not a good thing though.  While the content on this site is good (or at least I try to make it good) a lack of design leads to me losing traffic.  This shows up as my bounce rate which is high enough for me to be embarrassed to print it here.

Of course there are other factors.  My writing style could do with an overhaul most of the time for starters.  There is no getting away from the fact though, that the first impression of this site is that it is unprofessional.  Nothing could be further from the truth in reality, but it is not a warm, inviting, friendly site.

This is not because I am not a warm, friendly or inviting type of person, it is purely down to how the site looks.

SEO will get a site noticed.  It will get visitors.  Keeping those visitors requires a little extra though.  Both Web design and SEO are extremely important.  The reason this site does not have any design is because I wanted to see the effects of bad design. The wordpress theme is not necessarily bad, but it gives an impression of little effort.  It also firmly aligns itself with spam blogs (splogs) by not altering the theme.  This is because the majority of splogs do not bother altering the theme either.

When I change the theme I expect to see a change in my stats.  That will not be for a while yet though.  I am not finished collecting data on the current setup.

For me, SEO is more important than design, but it is a mistake to ignore web design.  Equally it is a mistake to ignore SEO.

Of course to really market your web site online, holistic SEO is the way to go.  Do not look at the web in terms of SEO vs Design, Adwords Vs SEO or Social Media Vs Adwords.  Look at it in terms of a marketing medium and bring in everything.  There is no more cost effective medium for marketing.  Use it to its full potential to sell your business.

I've heard of a fire engine, but what is a search engine?

The difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation while SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing.

Strictly speaking SEO means targeting just search engines.  It is concerned with getting your site as far up the Google, yahoo and Bing rankings for chosen keywords as possible.  Achieving that is done in many ways.

SEM on the other hand has several meanings in regular use.  Some think of it purely as PPC (pay per click) advertising campaigns.  These are the ads you see on the right of the search results in search engines, and occasionally occupying the top slots.  I like to think of it as much more than that though.

When I think of SEM the word marketing takes priority.  I like to think of Search Engine Marketing as encompassing SEO but taking into account the user experience.

Let me expand on that.  A site may be extremely well optimised from an SEO perspective, ranking well in the major search engines, but that does not mean that the site is a good user experience.

It is a mistake to put SEO ahead of user experience.  I’ll give you an example. The following is SEO optimised text

Car washing by the car washing experts.  At Car Washing Ireland we wash cars all day every day.  When it comes to car washing we are the number one car washing company in Ireland.  If your car needs car washing then you have found the right site.  Contact us and one of our mobile car washing units will be dispatched to you and one of our car washing experts will have your car gleaming.  You will be so impressed with our car washing that you will return to car washing ireland again and again.

Actually, that is terrible SEO.  I have exaggerated it hugely.  The point is that SEO optimised text is not necessarily particularly readable text.  If the quality of English is high, then you use different words or phrases to describe the same thing.  This is at odds with SEO, where you want to repeat your key phrases.

The object is to achieve good legible text that a user will read, while retaining a keyword density that is reasonably high (though not much above 5% of total text).  It would be entirely better for both SEO and the user experience to write the above text with far fewer instances of “Car Washing”.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is all about S......elling!

SEM is more holistic.  It encompasses good SEO techniques for on page content (but not at the expense of the user experience).  It also covers Social Media as well as PPC advertising and even banner or button advertising.  Search Engine Marketing is about selling your site online.

A lot of SEO’s make the mistake of using the meta description purely to put in keywords.  Same goes for the page title.

In the case of the meta description it is fairly likely that google does not include that text in any meaningful way in its ranking algorithms.  I am not saying that you should not put keywords into the meta description or page title, but use them to better effect.

Better effect means using them to sell.  To stick with our car washing example, The title can be “Car washing Ireland”, the meta description could read “Get your car washed at home or at work.  We come to you.  Discount for online booking”.  No key words.  Just good descriptive text that helps sell the service.

The whole reason for this post was because I am writing about Social Media and somebody asked me “what has social media got to do with SEO training?”.

Well these days you can’t market your website online without at least paying lip service to social media.  And if you know your stuff (or get Social Media Training) then you can really make it work for you in a big way.  Look at what happened with the Susan Boyle clip on You Tube.  She became an overnight, international sensation, from a clip of an audition!  Wow.  That just does not happen with traditional media.

Why do companies invest thousands of euros in SEO training?  It’s all part of their marketing mix.  SEO is marketing.  Therefore, SEO is SEM and SEM includes SEO.  By the way.  I’ve just broken a rule there.  I’ve overused the phrases again (my site may pay for all this bad SEO!).  I was only playing with words, but be careful.  Remember we are dealing with dumb machines (no matter how good the algorithms are).  They do not see a bit of word play, but rather an attempt at keyword stuffing, which can hurt your ranking.

So, SEM is all about selling.  SEO is just about trying to get better ranking on Google et al.

One of these days I’ll learn to write short concise posts, but I hope that I’ve cleared up the difference between SEO and SEM somewhat.