On average, these video’s wouldn’t have been more than 3 minutes each, and despite some being entertaining, some funny, some educational the rest just plain strange, few of them were compelling enough to keep my attention to the very end.

This surprised me enough to Google some statistics on what could be considered an ‘average’ adult attention span. Knowing how reliable the internet is when it comes to proper factual information, I settled on the following as it seemed reasonable (and to be honest with you, I was distracted before doing any further research):

• Average continuous attention span of a literate adult:8 seconds
• Maximum possible continuous attention span for a literate adult: 30 seconds
• Average general attention span of a literate adult: 10 – 12 minutes

As a website owner, this means you have less than a minute of to get people’s attention and even if you do manage to grab their attention, you’ll only be able to hold it for a few more minutes.

This means it’s crucial to not only know exactly what your potential (and existing) clients expect from your website and where they expect to find it – but to also do so in such a way that keeps them coming back for more.

Here are a few simple tips for how to achieve this:

• As a business owner, you should know the common things that clients ask when they make an enquiry about your products/services. Make sure this information is easily accessible – put it on your homepage, or within one intuitive, easy-to-find click from your homepage.
• Put all your contact information (especially phone number and address) on your homepage. Clients need to feel comfortable that they can easily contact you. Having to fill-in online forms, emails or support tickets might seem like a good idea, but nothing beats the power of a simple phone-call, so make it easy for your clients to do this.
• If you have an online store, minimise unnecessary steps in the ordering process, where possible, remove navigation options and make sure you label how many steps are involved in the purchasing process, so clients don’t feel like they’re on a never-ending quest to reach the final check-out page.
• Direct people to all the important parts of your website through well-placed text-links in your main website content. Having a menu is great, but sometimes if you’re in the middle of reading something and want to find-out more, being able to click directly on the word or phrase you’re reading can be far easier than having to figure-out where the item is in the menu structure.
• Incorporate a search feature on your site as well as a site-map.
• To get people coming-back for more, keep the content fresh and up-to-date. One simple way of doing this could be to add a blog, online newsletters or regularly updated industry-specific articles.

It should also go without saying that the site should at least look somewhat aesthetically appealing. Sure, we can’t all afford to pay expensive graphic designers, but it doesn’t take much to search around for an affordable (or even free) template.

There are lots of other usability tips and techniques that can be applied, but if you try and keep things simple, and employ common sense when it comes to the positioning of information, you’ll be doing a lot better than many of the sites I see on a daily basis.

The easier and quicker users can find what they’re looking for, the less likely they’ll lose interest and end-up browsing else-where.

How to appeal to web users with a shorter attention span than a goldfish

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Basically Ben comments on a thread over at WMW which indicates that social media is a waste of time and doesn’t yield a great deal of SEO value.

I both agree and disagree with this.

But before continuing, it’s important to understand what SEO is and what it isn’t.

In previous years SEO was all about doing keyword research, applying a few tweaks to the site and then getting some inbound links and presto, you’d be
ranking at the top.

As the Internet and search engines have evolved, many companies are now starting to use the web more effectively, (many still haven’t, but that’s really a whole nother post) so competing with such sites requires better quality content (and more of it), an intuitive and easy-to-use site navigation, regular updates to keep people coming back and a site that looks reasonably aesthetically pleasing.

Now I’m not saying that you can’t rank well without these things, but it only takes 8 seconds for someone to develop a first impression and if your first impressions aren’t great, then you’re fighting an uphill battle to convert that visitor into a sale.

As a result of this, some SEOs started encouraging clients to improve their site’s design, layout, content etc. because all of this would make for better conversions at
the end of the day. This extended the craft of SEO into online usability, which technically isn’t SEO, but it helps immensely with the whole process.

The same comment can then be applied to marketers who focus on viral material or linkbait. These types of promotions, if done well, can drive substantial traffic and work wonders for (or destroy) a brand, as well as attracting links in the process. Once again, not technically SEO, but also a useful means of gaining traffic with the added bonus of some links. Now, one could then go on to argue about the SEO benefit gained from such links, and I’ll agree that some social media links aren’t particularly helpful in passing link juice (take blog comments, twitter, wikipedia and everything else that utilises the ‘nofollow’ attribute). But the goal for a viral campaign is really more about gaining awareness on a global scale, so it really can’t be measured using the same metrics as conventional old-school SEO.

Which leads me to using social media for business purposes or to help promote a particular site or product. This also isn’t specifically SEO, and can be a huge waste of time if you don’t do it properly. The whole purpose of social media is to share and connect with others – to be social. The challenging part then becomes – how does one be social, while still trying to promote a website?

Blogging is a great way to share and demonstrate your knowledge in a certain area. Take this SEO blog – I try and discuss various SEO related topics that I think people might be interested in and share tips and information that they can help people improve their rankings. By sharing this information, I’m hoping it also shows I have a reasonable knowledge of the industry and if those readers find the SEO process too challenging, they’ll hopefully employ my services to help them out.

The key is to provide information that is interesting and helpful and written with passion. If you can achieve this, there is certainly a benefit to start blogging. The same then applies to other social media tools.

Take Twitter for example – if you only share information like “making a cup of coffee” or “replying to some emails”… it isn’t particularly engaging, nor does it give anyone a reason to follow you. But if you were sharing info about your industry by making comments like “just read this great article about….” or “new legislation for… what does everyone think” etc. You’ve just turned the tool into another platform where you can demonstrate your knowledge while connecting with others who also share a similar interest.

The problem is that most businesses and website owners will do one of three things with social media:

• they’ll create profiles on all the latest social sites and then think “well, that’s social media taken care of… hey, why aren’t I getting any traffic from it?”
• they’ll create a blog/twitter/facebook account but forget that they created it for business purposes and start making posts about the weather or what they had for breakfast that morning… and then wonder why it isn’t helping them with their branding
• they’ll create a blog/twitter/facebook account and spam the crap out of it by pushing their brand and website to anyone and everyone which just pisses people off

So, to sum-up, I think that all forms of online marketing (be it organic SEO, viral, social media, pay-per-click etc. etc.) all has its place and can be beneficial if used properly. Not all of these are technically SEO, but still important when marketing in the ever-changing online world.

Most importantly though, goals need to be set for each marketing method and different metrics need to be applied to measure the performance of each campaign. If you try and track the performance of social media using SEO metrics, you’ll find that it doesn’t yield brilliant results – but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile – it simply means that social media is different to old-school organic SEO and subsequently can’t be measured in the same way.

The blurred line between what is SEO and what isn’t

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This means that your main aim should not only be to attract more visitors, but to keep them there as long as possible and guide them deeper into your site.

Coincidentally, this is quite similar to the process that managers and professional recruitment firms find themselves in when it comes to attracting and retaining good staff members.

In a HR Whitepaper by local recruitment firm Astor Levin, they state:

The key to attracting and retaining your workforce is to understand the needs of your employees and deliver maximum value in the context of what is feasible within the organisation itself and in relation to the other options employee have available to them within the marketplace.
It sounds simple. However, the 2007 EVP National Survey results showed that only 56% of respondents believe that their expectations upon joining their employer had been met.

If employers are failing at what should be a fairly easy task of making their staff happy, I hate to think how many websites fail to keep their visitors happy.

In most of the staff retention reports and articles I’ve read, money usually isn’t what motivates as many staff as you’d think – instead the culture of the organisation, the structure and hierarchy (ie. how easy is it to do your job without having to go through a dozen managers and how easy is it to advance within the company), and most importantly – how well the company understands the staff member’s needs, wants and desires and how they go about helping you achieve these.

So let’s take a look at some of these factors in terms of a website:

Your site’s culture

Every site has it’s own way of delivering it’s content. Some sites want to appear authoritative, corporate and professional, other sites have a more light hearted approach and joke with you in the content. Some want you to play and click on as many interactive elements as possible. Other sites want to dazzle you with flash, AJAX or other technologies that can look very pretty and impressive.

Whatever you decide your site’s ‘culture’ should be, just make sure it’s inline with the type of clients you want to attract. For instance if you’re users aren’t particularly internet savvy it might be best to avoid all the ‘bells and whistles’ and keep things as simple as possible.

Your site’s structure

How easy is it for someone to open your site and find what they’re looking for? How many steps are required to make a simple purchase? Does it require a dozen clicks just to find your contact page? Just like staff want to get through their daily tasks as efficiently as possible with as few hurdles and managerial red tape as possible, your website visitors want exactly the same. They don’t want to find themselves scratching their heads 20 minutes after adding a product to their shopping cart trying to figure-out how to get to the next step and submit their payment information.

Visitors goals / needs / wants / desires

When a visitor comes to your website, they will usually have a specific goal in mind, which can range from wanting to purchase a particular product to finding a certain piece of information that relates to your products/services/industry (or even something as simple as finding your phone number).

Understanding what this goal is will make delivering on your clients needs, wants and desires a whole lot easier.

If the goal is to make a purchase online, the user will most likely want some sort of reassurance the product is right for them (which can perhaps be achieved through testimonials or product reviews). They will need to know the features, benefits, technical specifications of the product. They’ll also need to know their payment will be secure and that there is some sort of return policy or guarantee in place.

Once you have a decent structure in place, a culture that fits nicely with your ‘ideal’ customers and you’ve delivered on your clients needs and wants… you can then add ‘desire’ through things like value-adds, loyalty programs etc. etc.

Every website, company and staff member is unique in their own special way, so some of the above points may not apply specifically for your situation, but perhaps now could be a good time to review things within your organisation. I’m sure by re-addressing your culture, structure, goals, objectives etc. etc. you’ll see an improvement in your website… or your staff… or even your business as a whole.

How to attract more visitors by keeping your staff happy

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The last time this happened, it got me thinking. This is quite similar to online search.

Your website is your car keys

Without them you cannot drive your car, nor can you drive potential sales to your business if people cannot find your website. The big difference between your keys and your website is that when you lose your keys, you are forced to find them because the majority of us just have the one car – but if your potential customers cannot find your site, they won’t go looking in cupboards, under rugs and in the freezer to find your site (which incidentally is where I found my keys once), they’ll simply move onto the nearest site they find – your competitor – and there goes the sale.

The next thing I realised after I last lost my keys was that when it comes to searching for things – I really suck. Since online searching is a core component of my job, I am pretty good at finding things on the internet, but take away my keyboard and broadband and I’m lost.

Most people aren’t that great at finding things

You’ll always find whatever it was you were looking for in the very last place you look.

This one simple point is quite powerful when it comes to the search optimisation industry – knowing that people will use a whole range of search methods (many of which will be ineffective) to find what they’re looking for.  This opens a whole range of possibilities for ways to structure and promote your website.

Try to cater for things like common misspellings of your products or services in your content. Don’t intentionally misspell things as that can make your site seem less professional, but put a small blurb on your FAQ page about what the correct spelling is and how it’s often mistaken.

Try to cater for different terms that may be commonly used to describe your products / services – for example flip-flops, thongs, sandals, jandals, pluggers and slappers all refer to the same item of casual footwear. By not acknowledging the other terms that some people may use, you’re turning away potential business.

Have as much content as possible on your website because the more text you have, the more variations, options and keyword combination you’re allowing the search engines to index.

The final thing I noticed last time I lost my keys was that my girlfriend was very quick to point-out “why didn’t you just put them on the hook”. This makes a lot of sense, but laziness prevails and the keys never end-up on the hook and subsequently end-up lost.

Knowing that by nature, people aren’t that great at finding things, and what’s worse, they’re lazy – then don’t continue to challenge their search abilities when they do manage to find your website.

Make sure you structure both the content and website navigation in a clear and intuitive manner (remembering that what may be intuitive to you, isn’t necessarily intuitive to someone else – so make sure you ask a broad cross-section of people to help you with your on-site usability testing).

None of this is rocket science, but just like I keep losing my keys, I know that there are plenty of websites that persist in not following these simple rules.

Now… where did I put those damn keys…

I Can’t find my car keys or your website

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I’m not talking about fixing the navigation structure, applying no-follows to certain pages to help sculpt the flow of linkjuice, converting image links to text where possible, tagging and using alt tags on images etc. etc.

I’m talking about things like using meta-description tags. Meta tags haven’t been used to improve search results since the days of Altavista, but having a compelling meta-description can improve click-through rates. Now one could argue that improved click-through rates are one of the many factors that will help increase your ranking, so technically this could still be classed as an SEO technique, but I personally don’t agree that it is. I still tell my clients how important it is to have a meta-description that will make people want to click, but I also tell them that piece of advice isn’t an SEO technique.

Another example was when Gord Hotchkiss commented on an animated banner that spanned the top quarter of a webpage during a ‘website clinic’ on the final day at the recent SMX Sydney. Basically he said that due to the banner changing so frequently, it would detract peoples attention away from the content on the site and that would likely cause an increased bounce-rate.

Now Gord knows his stuff when it comes to eye tracking, and the point he makes is incredibly valid… but once again, taking the image away or moving it to another section of the site won’t improve your rankings with the search engines.

This brings me to the factors that do have an impact in the search results. Things like a well structured navigation menu, the use of a sitemap, not using dynamic URLs, using URL-Rewriting and 301s to avoid canonicalization issues, unique content, avoiding javascript, avoiding flash, tagging images, use of robots.txt files etc. etc.

All of the above (as well as the many factors not mentioned) make it easier for the search bots to navigate your site and index your content. These factors are held with such high importance by the search engines for one very simple reason – it improves the users experience.

So good onsite SEO should really have more of an emphasis on usability than anything else.

Is onsite SEO simply a usability audit?

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