Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Optimization’
The Mind of the Searcher
Intention – before a person searches, she has an intent: intent to buy a pair of shoes; intent to learn about zanzibar; intent to determine the health benefits of a Blooming Onion; and so on. Some sort of information need driven by intention motivates her to search. When we start a search marketing campaign for a business, we begin by defining personae we intend to target with the campaign. The personae represent categories of intent. For example, shoe-shopping personae might include fashionistas and pragmatists. Fashionistas want to know what’s hot, pragmatists want a trustworthy vendor with a good return policy. We tend to organize our campaigns around the personae we define.
Search – once the person has translated intent into an information need, e.g. “I want a new pair of shoes” -> “where should I buy a pair of shoes?”, she turns to a search engine. While this step in the process garners a lot of attention among marketers, it is largely procedural in nature. Search listings do not address the searcher’s intent (you can’t wear them, for example), nor do they meet her information need in any real sense. They are merely pointers to information. The searcher quickly scans search results, looking for cues that indicate her need will be met by clicking on a listing. The right cues to include are a natural consequence of the personae we’ve defined. We also have to be mindful that there is a lot of information on a search results page. We can provide the right cues, but if our listing is boring or far down the results, it may never get evaluated.
Consideration – after clicking on a listing, the searcher evaluates the content on the landing page. Does it address her information need? She has criteria, conscious or unconscious, with which she will make a quick decision and either move forward or back up. The important thing here is to make sure that the landing page aligns with her original intent and is easy to digest. Too much information and she is likely to back up and look for a more suitable source. Too little information and her criteria can’t possibly be met.
Action – lastly, as marketers, we want the searcher to take some form of action, whether it be to call a number, watch a video or buy a product. Again, it is not a good idea to overwhelm the searcher with too many options, nor is it a good idea to present too few. Some people may be uncomfortable calling and prefer to communicate via email. Some people may want to read technical specifications before buying a product. The main thing is to decide what actions you want to emphasize, and make them as frictionless as possible.
This model bears a lot of similarity to the classic purchase funnel found in many marketing textbooks. It can be viewed as a specific instance of the funnel, applied to search marketing. I find it helpful, but the main point is that different types of keywords and search phrases belie different kinds of intent. When focusing on one stage of the process independently, it can be easy to lose track of that fact.
Nico Brooks is a data geek who struggles to get his head around marketing problems, but he always enjoys the struggle. Two Octobers is an internet marketing company that provides marketing services and strategic consulting to businesses selling to local markets.
Seeing What a Search Engine Sees
Make sure you can be found: seeing site content and navigation from the point of view of a search engine.
I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog how compelling content and links from other sites are the most important factors if you want to show up in search engines. That’s true, but they matter little if a search engine can’t even find the pages on your site. This may sound obvious, but all too often I look at a web site and find that the navigation is actually hindering or preventing search engines from getting around. I could go into a long-winded explanation of how search engines crawl sites at this point, but thankfully there is a much easier way to demonstrate. There are a number of tools available that give you a view of how a search engine sees your site. Once you’ve seen a site the way a search engine sees it, it all becomes pretty clear. The simplest, most accessible tool is provided by Google itself. To use this tool, search for a page in Google. As an example, I will search for one of my recent posts by copying its URL into the Google search bar: http://twooctobers.com/2010/03/rocky-mountain-viral-3282010/
Here is the result in Google. The next step is to click on the “Cached” link to the right of the URL in the listing.
Once there, click on the “Text only version” link in the grey bar at the top. Voilá! You are now seeing the page pretty much the way Google sees it. Here is the text only version of my post:
Search engines have a pretty boring view of the world, huh? Overall, this page looks good in terms of how the content is laid out. Things to consider when evaluating the search engine’s view:
- Does the page include links to other important pages on your site? The links on the page are like signs telling search engines where to go. Just as highway signs list major landmarks, your navigation should point to the pages you most want found.
- Is it obvious what the page is about? All too often, sites include boilerplate content at the top of pages, or try to tackle too many things at once. Pages that have a clear focus tend to rank better. If you have to scroll down to find unique content, you have a problem.
- Is anything important missing? Page elements such as forms, Flash, JavaScript and iframes can hide content from search engines. You don’t need to know what all of this means, but if there is important content missing from the search engine view, you need to talk to a developer.
If you find yourself wanting to see a search-engine-view of a lot of pages, using the method described above can get kind of tedious. I use the Foxy SEO Tool Add-on for Firefox instead. It is free and has a lot of great functionality. In particular, it has a “Search Engine Spider Simulator” that enables you to quickly switch to a search engine view of any page.
More on Navigation
To the right is a sign that sits outside of the Rock Rest Lounge in Golden, Colorado. Can you imagine having to find your way around if all signs looked like that? At the opposite extreme would be a post with no sign at all. The first would be so confusing as to be useless. The second would be just plain useless.
This is what we often put search engines through. Search engines use links to find content, and as an indication of what is important. Too many links and a search engine can’t tell what matters. Too few and it can’t get around.
Also, search engines look at the text used in a link as an indication of what a page is about. Imagine if road signs just said “city” or “big city”, instead of “Colorado Springs” or “Denver”. You’d have a hard time finding your way around. Or imagine if you were crossing the border into Utah and saw a sign that said “Sigurd 200 Miles”. Sigurd is about 200 miles from the border, but you probably don’t know or care what Sigurd is unless you are one of the 400 people that live there. From far away, it is much better to signpost major landmarks that everyone will know. Conversely, what if you are in Denver and trying to get to the Rock Rest Lounge in Golden, and you see a sign for “Salt Lake City 535 Miles”? Maybe you know that Golden and Salt Lake City are in the same direction, but still not a very useful sign. When smaller towns and cities are close by, it’s good to include them on signs.
Think about navigation on your site like road signs for search engines. Link to your most important pages from all over, and make sure the links clearly describe the content they are pointing to. Link to more specific content from close by, again using descriptive text. And don’t put too many links on a page. There is no hard-and-fast rule for how many is too many, but more than one hundred is definitely too much. For most kinds of content you should try to keep it well below that.
Lastly, look at your pages the way a search engine does: a colorless world where text is all that matters. It may be a bleak view, but the view is even bleaker if you can’t be found.
A Small Business SEO Analogy
Building a Restaurant as an Analogy for Constructing a Search-Engine-Friendly Web Site
The topic of how to plan for search engine optimization (SEO) often comes up when I am talking to small businesses and has been the topic of several discussions in just this last week. SEO is a very complex subject, but I like to frame the conversation with a high-level paradigm for how to think about and plan for ongoing success. With that in mind, here is an analogy:
Imagine you are opening a restaurant in an ordinary town on an ordinary budget, but you want your business to be an extraordinary success. Let’s look at three steps to achieving that success:
- Building the Restaurant
- Creating the Ambiance and the Menu
- Promoting the Restaurant
Building the Restaurant
Since we are making the analogy to building a web site, we will assume that you are building your restaurant from scratch. Will you hire an avant-garde architect who specializes in hay-bale construction, or stick with standard building materials and a straightforward design? Unless you are not concerned about budget, you will probably choose the latter. Building a web site is similar. At this point, there are a number of established content management systems (CMS’s) that provide all of the tools necessary to build a solid, feature-rich and search-engine-friendly site. I have been involved in web site projects recently that built upon WordPress, Joomla and Magento – all well-documented platforms with templates readily available that get the search engine basics right. Be very wary of a web developer who wants to build a site without leveraging one of these or a similar standardized tool set. In my experience, a web developer with self-described expertise in SEO will almost always do a worse job than what you would get with an unmodified WordPress template-based site. That is not to say that you can’t do well with a custom-designed site, but this advice is written for someone starting out and on a budget.
And as with the restaurant, getting the construction right will have little to do with your ultimate success. If you don’t follow standard design practices, or even worse if you don’t follow building codes, you are starting off on the wrong foot. But getting those things right just puts you on level ground with most of the other businesses in town. Using a platform or technology that follows search engine best practices will position you for success, but the content you create is what is going to attract visitors.
Creating the Ambiance and the Menu
How your restaurant is laid out and decorated will start to differentiate you from the competition. And even more important is what’s on the menu. Creating an ambiance that is pleasant and inviting will make visitors feel comfortable and encourage them to come back. And an interesting, original and well-executed menu is above all else what gets people interested in the first place, and it is what is going to get word of your restaurant to spread. The analogy here is to user experience and content.
Using one of the standard platforms I described above is the first step towards providing good user experience, but choosing where content will go and how users will navigate your content is a critical part of your success. When laying out your site, think about how people search for and find what they are looking for. For example, labeling a section “grub” rather than “menu” may sound cool, but by doing so you are asking people to think. People don’t want to think when they navigate, so make things as simple and obvious as you can. This reflects how search engines will evaluate the site as well, since few people search for “grub”, but many search for “menu”. Words on your web site are like ingredients to a restaurant. Get too weird and you will have a very small audience.
Your content is like what comes out of the kitchen. Make it interesting. Make it original. Make it so that visitors will want to tell their friends about it. Most importantly, don’t rely on an SEO consultant to develop your content for you. You know your business and you are passionate about what you do. It’s good to get the advice of someone who understands how search engines work, but get in the habit of creating and updating your own content. That isn’t to say you can’t hire a chef – but that person should be part of your business and share in your vision.
Promoting the Restaurant
Last but not least is getting out there and making sure that people know you exist. How many restaurants with great food have failed because people didn’t know to try them out? SEO is very much the same way. THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR in search engine ranking is the number of quality links you have pointing to your site. And keep in mind that the context and authority of the source of the link matter a great deal. Just as a restaurant review written by a random blogger matters less than one written by the local paper, you want to get links from authoritative sites in your subject matter domain or geographic area. If you sell running shoes, get out there on the top running-focused sites. If you sell accounting services, make sure the most popular local business-resource sites link to you. Good content is key to this process. If you have interesting, original content, people will want to link to it. If you have thin or boilerplate content, you are going to struggle to get every link.
I have simplified things quite a bit, but I believe that small business SEO is not all that complex. Some people like to make it complicated because it serves their personal interests. Search engines put a colossal amount of effort into determining who genuinely has the best content to match a user’s query, and for the most part do their job well. But I won’t deny that there is benefit to understanding the minutiae. There are a number of great sites dedicated to the details and latest developments in search engine optimization, including several of those highlighted in my blog roll to the right. I recommend that you check those out if that’s where your interest lies.
To recap, here is how you can position yourself for ongoing success:
- Start with a standardized, well documented platform (Building the Restaurant)
- Lay out your site so that it is easy to understand and navigate and fill it with original, interesting content (Creating the Ambiance and the Menu)
- Get authoritative, local and topical sites to link to you (Promoting the Restaurant)
