Hello Mozzers! I'm glad to be here for the first time! Well, as you all may know, SEO is conversion and conversion is money, baby! If you have a great SEO work on your website but a bad usability, you'll have bad ROI. If you have a great SEO work plus a great usability you'll definitively have faithful visitors and great ROI. Period. What everyone needs to understand is that SEO doesn't end on the click. There's always more than just that dreamed Google rank. And, in my humble opinion, the key is on the page and how users see it. So, let's take a look to see how we can marry SEO to good usability.
SEO + UX. Let's get it started. The best to do is to start the project thinking about usability, but if you didn't, after doing all that great SEO stuff like on page, link building etc., and get a good rank in the SERPs, you'll need to start thinking about users clicking on your link. How are they going to act being on your site? Are they going just to click and leave? Are you able to hold them there? Are they really going to convert? When we think about conversion, lots of things can come to our minds: link building, PPC, content, colors, etc. But, before all of these stuff, the first thing you need to figure out is what your visitors want.
1. Questioning
- What's the goal of your website?
- Who's your audience?
- Is your website useful?
- Are your visitors able to find what they need?
Remember: if something is easy for you, it doesn't mean it is easy for everyone! So, you do need to research, run surveys (be personal! sell it like if you were selling your products!), usability tests, etc.
2. Know your Analytics Data You also need to know who your visitor is, where he is from, what kind of technology he is using, etc. To define goals and funnels will definitively make your life easier!
3. Gather your data After doing your detailed research with your visitors and analytics data, it's time to put everything together and have fun! My first tip here is to create a word cloud with the main terms you got in your research. A great tool is wordle.net.
4. Prepare your landing pages In SEO, any page on your website can be a landing page. You must be prepared for it. Scott Brinker has a really good concept about landing pages and I think it can be applied for our reality here. It's the R.E.A.D.Y. framework:
- Relevant
- Engaging
- Authoritative
- Directional
- Yield optimal
It really summarizes how the perfect landing page is!
4.1. Design
In times of Google Instant Preview you must have a good design!
- Pattern - use the same colors, logo etc. in all your campaigns (email marketing, offline, website, ...)
- No errors - make sure there's no code and style errors or incomplete content on your landing pages
According to the Kiss Metrics Color Psychology Study, 42% of users base their opinion about the website on overall design alone and 52% don't return because of overall aesthetics.
4.2. Website Speed
Check the loading time of your website to make sure it's not too slow. Users are not patient! So, make sure they can finalize their purchases or load your infographics, for example. The faster your website is, the more you sell.
And don't forget: page loading time is a very important Google ranking factor!
4.3. Message
Relevant content is always important. Be unique, specific, up-to-date, talk in such a way that your visitors can understand you!
Use numbers, table data, infographics etc., to justify everything rationally (but be honest!). You can also show credibility on details like images of your products, benefits, testimonies, etc.
4.4. Call to Action
Always show your final goal in every page and also use descriptions explaining why that action is good to be taken.
In case of forms, remove unnecessary fields and make it not too long. If needed, separate it in steps, showing to the user where he is.
The message on your CTA is very important too. Make it clear, unambiguous and, as the name says, a REAL call to ACTION! Not like those boring "go", "submit" or "subscribe".
The design of your CTA button needs some "treatment" as well! Abuse of white spaces to make it clear and noticeable. And the button color... oh, the button color... there's always many viewpoints regarding it! Some people say green is better, some say orange... But my opinion is: use contrasting colors and you'll get a #win! lol
Some tools to help you start
Remote Usability Tests:
- UserTesting.com
- WhatUsersDo.com
- GazeHawk (with eye-tracking)
- Verifyapp.com (low cost usability tests)
- Headline Split Tester (Wordpress Plugin for A/B tests)
- Google Website Optimizer
Surveys:
Analytics:
- Google Analytics
- Crazy Egg (for heatmaps)
- Heatmap Wordpress Plugin
- ClickTale (mouse move heatmaps and visitors recording)
Conclusion
In conversion-oriented SEO, content is still the king, but the usability is the queen!
The big secret is: there's no rule or tricks! You must test everything on your website and, when finished, start over again!
Hope you like it! =)
This is a great topic to discuss because in my experience continues improvements to websites can get lost in day-to-day maintenance and feature requests.
I don't think we can say enough about testing. Once a site is live, I'm a big believer in incremental improvements through split testing. Here is an example. For the longest time we used to use the phrase 'download now' as it made sense. Our visitors download games. Then, we finally stopped and thought, "I wonder if download is scaring our customers (who skew older) away?" So, we tested 'try now' and saw immediate improvements in conversions.
Another way to think about a site is in terms of friction. How much friction do visitors have to endure to convert? Do you offer a guest checkout solution or do visitors have to create accounts in order to make a purchase? How many distractions exist on product pages?
You are absolutely right to highlight "Call to Action". This is so important and again, can easily be overlooked as it often is added toward the end of the design / development process.
Nice first post!
Yes, Ryan! I definitively agree with you. There's lots of "guides" and good practices to UX, but if you don't test in your OWN reality you'll not reach your visitors and improve your conversions.
That's why I said: Test Test Test! That's the key!
Thanks for commenting! =)
'Try now' vs 'Download now' is interesting. I'm surprised that you got that result, since 'Try now' suggests a limited free trial to me. Just goes to show it's worth experimenting. - Jenni
That is true! I always think about "try now" for something related to a free trial or similar! It's a really interesting niche test!
"Play Now" might be a good option....
Jenni, renatatr, and jsteele823 - I should have been more clear!
Our business model is 'try/buy'. What I was speaking about was our 'try' option where you get the complete game, but only for 1-hour.
Great Post! Sometimes SEO's have to take responsibility for bad conversion and high bounce rates. UX and SEO have to work as a team to increase the ROI. Sadly this not always happens and SEO's have to work with websites done by other companies...
Much agreed - If you don't take ownership of the high bounce rate you are begging to lose rank.
WowGreat article!
SEO it's all about users not only search engines.If real people doesn't like your content soon or later you'll drop positions.
Excellent post! I would like to add a third leg: CRM.
If your site is just selling candy bars, CRM isn't that important. People plunk in their CC number and the candy ships.
But if your sales cycle is longer, follow-through is just as key.
I have a client that sells houses...hardly a quick sales cycle. The leads pop in quick but the sale could be years down the road. Agents don't want to be bothered so they don't respond in a timely manner. Because they don't respond quickly, the lead dies. It is a vicious cycle.
In fact, you just inspired me to pull up an old graph and fire off a quick blog post. Thank you!
https://alterimaging.com/blog/response-time-matters/
Great contribution, Ammirato! This is a really interesting point! Thank you so much!
Like the article!
I'm actually curious to see data on how Google Instant preview alters the users choice when selecting which website from the results to visit. I guess that would be pretty hard to track because there is no real way to determine if the users is actually even looking at it or not.
Hard to track but not hard to make an intelligent guess. Don't clutter the page. Keep it clean and beautiful.
Definately agree, generally if you have to question if your page is too cluttered... it probably is =)
Okay first, let me say great first post.
This is the thing that seperates a good SEO vs. a $99 a month guy. We look at the entire picture. So many people just want "traffic" and "keyword ranks". If you're an ethical SEO you will do everything you can to convince them that it's better to have 1 person buy then 100 people look(in some cases this isn't true, but for sake of argument let's assume you know what i mean).
I have had clients get a 40% conversion rate and still say "...but my traffic is down from last week". But when you show that of the 40% that converted - 35% came from search and the bounce rate was only 20% they calm down a bit.
I am a proprietor of conversion seo, let's put these $99 a month guys out of business. They are bastardizing our industry.
Extremely helpful Post!!! As Per new algorithm SEO is not enough stuff.SEO + UX= conversion-oriented SEO
This is very detailed, I was thinking and researching about this topic with reference to ecommerce websites but this is about over all website. I do believe that Usability is very important (if not most important)
Unfortunately! With small business they started to focus on content and link building but they think this is enough so they don’t focus on website design, color, structure and other factors that actually stops users on the website and force the visitor to continue its journey on the website (Thanks for the KISS metrics color Psychology Study)…
I wanted to add one more point that is site architecture; the complex site architecture will not allow users to 1. Complete their goal and 2. It will destroy the user’s experiences and it is very much expected that the visitor may not come again on the website.
Great Article!
Very true, and not often pointed out often enough. Post-click behavior paints a story about user experience. And I think as consultants or experts we can provide a lot of value to our clients when we can clearly communicate the value of UX to our clients.
I've seen conversions go way up with good site redesigns, but I think it is hard for a client to recognize that until they've actually done it, and can compare the before/after results. Sometimes I feel like I might as well be selling the new miracle weight loss drug, because clients are so incredulous about how much of an impact good site experience has on their bottom line.
"In conversion-oriented SEO, content is still the king, but the usability is the queen!" ... I like that! Thanks much for the excellent Post. Great Info!
I must say, you just nailed it on the head!. UX and SEO should work together very very closely.
I personally use seevolution, clicktale, Google analytics and Omniture according to the needs.
I think that testing the UX on a small PPC campaign doesnt hurt. You can track behavior of users with that dataset and then apply it to SEO.
Congrats on your first post, the timing is right for UX. We have been working on some
testings that shows an increase in conversions when utizing best practices for UX, web design, and on-page seo.
Again great stuff!
Thanks for the mention of my blog!
Definitely a big fan of cross-pollinating ideas from different disciplines in marketing. Great piece on the intersection of conversion optimization, UX, and SEO.
Thank you, for your great colaboration! And I really love the READY framework! It just summarizes everything about LPO in one word!
Intresting tile & nice post. It reminded me of the time when I read "Dont Make Me Think" by "Steve Kurg" I always usability approach to SEO, as I think SEO will rank your website well, but if your website usability sucks your conversion rate will still be low.
Thanks for sharing the useful usability tools, Definately Thumbs Up for this post.
Your four opening questions...
...should be in everyone’s playbook...the number of times I have asked these of clients and received a blank stare always makes me smile...and yet when we have worked through the answers with them you can see the light switch on and clients start to “get it”...
Great post and resources – a couple of which have clearly lifted their game of late and well worth revisiting.
2 questions that I like to ask clients that almost always get returned with a shrug.
Congrats for the nice post, dear. Very objective, clear, and loaded with useful tools´ references.
Search and Design is the new 2+2=5.
Thank you, Amarred! =)
It's totally true: SEO without UX dies!
I normally don't blog about seo but have a little choice today. I just discovered that I am part of a conservative censorship group on mozseo that has been first time ,and I am pritty happy to know more about seo,it's just like a cup of coffee which needs everyday......
thanks
I think UX must be UX only and then get the best out of it as far as SEO. If you try to find a middle ground you will end up with half potential for both.All people around here are mainly on the seo side and i can understand the tendency to marry the two (UX and SEO) but if it's a marriage of interest it won't stick.
"Some people say green is better, some say orange... But my opinion is: use contrasting colors and you'll get a #win!"
So true! I've actually done some testing and when I made a simple switch from a blue colored button to green button the click-through rate increased quite a bit and seemed pretty consistent.
Good article btw!
Design is important, as you mentioned in the time of Google instant preview. When designing your site, aim to keep it simple, look at it from a general customers view. The more simple the site is, the better the site will perform overall, performance, and in conversion. This doesn’t mean you cant have a good design, yes the design needs to be cleverly done, so that it is appealing to your audience, but at the same time user friendly.
Sometimes having just one call-to-action can cause huge failure of a page.... especially those that trail down below the fold.
I find it is always a good idea to have a clear CTA above the fold, and then again below if necessary.
Thinking you can only have one per page is a bad idea.
I always tell my clients that SEO and user-experience go hand-in-hand. The greatest SEO campaign in the world doesn’t mean anything if when visitors come to your site, they can’t find what they are looking for. Vice versa, the best designed site ever created won’t get noticed without the help of SEO. The two need to work together to develop a really successful site.
Great post - really well put together - am loving some of the tools you've mentioned, will add the Heatmap Plugin to my Wordpress blogs and the usability tools are really useful. Thanks.
Great post! Too many people forget that SEO is more than just rankings and website visitors - it's about generating conversions! Too many people don't pay enough attention to UX and good design!
Excellent post on the importance of conversions. Even better, I can't wait to try out some of the testing tools.
Excellent post. This is why SEOs need to have more authority especially over design. This goes for SEOs working in house on a website.
SEO and UX go together and they can even feed each other: If better useability increases your conversions from your click throughs, it also increases the chance that your users will have had such a positive experience that they link back to you or mention you in social media and increase your SEO for more visitors!
Yes, Joshua.
I think if you are good for the user, not only for search algorithms, users will not just come back but also spread your word through social media, their blogs, friends, etc. =)
Great Post!! Thanks for all the info!
Great post! Love the tool recommendations. Very helpful.
Nice post as well as helpful too for someone like me, who are new in this sector. Thanks for your nice post.
Great first post - I love to see the difference in conversion via a/b or multivariate testing. Some good tips there!
SEO is useless without thinking about UX. Thanks for the nice reading! :D
Hi Renata, what a great post!
I am very happy that someone touched that important theme - and always if a woman makes such a great contribution!
great post!
thnx.