For someone new to the world of online marketing, there can be an overwhelming amount of information on the web about SEO. You can read articles from everything to content marketing, keyword density, site architecture, and even code tricks to help you rank better.
However, many of the topics that you’ll read about will generally have another article, written 6-8 months after, that will completely contradict what you have learned previously. It’s normal to wonder why there seems to be so many conflicting pieces of information out there.
The reason things change is because Google and other search engines are constantly trying to refine their search results to be more useful to their users. So, if you’re looking to do Internet Marketing, and want to make every single dollar work for you, the key is to forget most of what you read about search engines, and concentrate on the end user.
Search Engine Motivation
The first step to sustainable Internet Marketing is understanding why there are so many algorithmic changes to the search engines. Without getting wildly technical, the reason is that there are many people on the web that are looking to make a quick buck, and would rather exploit a system, rather than master it.
Have you ever been to a website that generated pop-ups, and when you tried to close the pop-up, another spawned? There, you see an example of some of the most basic techniques that people use to “game” the system. To combat these tactics, Google and other search engines update their bots to check for the newest and sneakiest ways that people are being trapped on websites.
But why does a search engine care? Simply put, it all comes down to Paid Search Advertising.
All search engines make the vast majority of their money by serving paid ads. Businesses can purchase a space on the first page for a particular keyword, and they get charged when someone clicks on it. If search engines showed many useless results, then the average user would shy away from the engine, and their revenue stream would be crippled.
Using That Motivation for SEO Success
If search engines need to have valid results to promote their Paid Search capabilities, we can deduce how to best approach internet marketing for sustained results.
The way to stay on top of search engine result pages (or SERP for short), is to concentrate all of your online marketing efforts on the customers that Google may send to your site. Think of how a user enters your site, and what you are hoping that they accomplish. Then, create a logical, clear, and easy way for the user to achieve that goal.
How Exactly Can I Do This?
Hidden among all of the get-ranked-fast schemes and over-complicated methodology on the web is a very concrete set of best practices to follow to success:
1) Site Navigation - Have your site navigation on the top, or left side of the page. Not only do search engines like it better, but the human eye has been trained to look for the navigation in these two places since the dawn of the internet. The only websites that would want the navigation on the right side of the page are those that cater to cultures that read right to left. The rule of thumb here is to model your navigational design off of how the eye naturally flows.
2) Important Content Up Top – When a user comes to a page on your website, summarize the important information on the page near the beginning. Simply put, most users of your site are not going to read every word you write. Studies have shown that you have between 10 and 30 seconds on any given page to capture and keep their attention. To keep users on your site, consider summarizing the page, or having a quick bullet list of the important pieces of information right at the top. If a user feels that you’ve attempted to make their life easier, they will stay and read more.
3) Calls to Action on the Right – This is a continuation of the idea that you want the eyes to be able to flow naturally across the page. If you’ve implemented the previous two points, your ideal page would look like this:
Easy-To-Understand Navigation -> Summarized Content -> Call to Action
This way, you take most of the burden of communication and put it on yourself. You don’t want to make your user work for the info they seek, and then hope they want to convert. Make it as easy as possible.
4) Simple Graphics & Video – Whenever possible, instead of asking a user to read tons of writing to explain a point, consider using a video or an info graphic. Again, it is imperative to place the burden of explanation on you instead of the user.
By following these steps, your website will be well on its way to attracting new customers and keeping them. If you’d like help with your website redesign, or would like an SEO Audit, please Contact RumbleLink.
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