how to improve the seo user experience

March 4, 2015

Improving the SEO User Experience

Mark Munroe

SEORadar.com, Founder & CEO

@markemunroe

searchmarketingexpo.com

@markemunroe #SMX #23C

• Founder SEORadar.com – Monitoring system to warn about site changes with possible SEO consequences. Monitors robots.txt, noindex, redirects, titles, headings, rel-canonicals, links and much more & creates an archive of your site over time.

• 10 + years in-house SEO, including Trulia, EverydayHealth, UsedCars.com, MerchantCircle, SideStep (Kayak).

Background



• “When your visitors are happy with your site, search engines notice.” – Duane Forrester

• “Succeeding in SEO will be the same as it’s

always been if you’re doing it right – give the users a great experience.” - Matt Cutts

Search Engines Notice!



• Make Google happy = make Google visitors happy.

• Google want your site to ‘kill the search’ and

have the user go onto the next search. • Don’t sacrifice the broad user experience at the

expense of conversion!

Long Term SEO Success



• Conversion initiatives often conflict directly with the Search User Experience.

• Over aggressive attempts at pushing

users into the ‘funnel’ may obscure the user from getting the content they were looking for.

Conversion vs. Search UX



What’s the mix? User Breakdown

Customers

Prospects

Drive-by




Customers

Prospects

Drive-by

Typical Focus




Customers

Prospects

Drive-by

What about them?



Conflicting Goals?

Your Customer Google Customer



UX vs. Search UX




• Delivering a great user experience is more critical than ever to succeed with SEO in the post-panda world.

Visitors form Search?



• Interstitials are an example where where the focus on conversions satisfies a few at the expense of the many.

• Google – not a fan!

“There are many implementations … that may be too disruptive to the visitor's usage of the site”

Interstitials



“Homes for Rent” Search Example

User thinks they

will be landing

on a page full of

home rentals.

Instead they land

on interstitial

obscuring their

intended

destination.



• Installs go up (the conversion metric).

• But what about every one else?

• Quick abandonment and bounce back to Google? (And there is nothing worse than an interstitial bounce).

• Ultimately, can be damaging to SEO.

The Result?



Good Compromise

User still sees the content

they are looking for.

App still gets the

upsell.



Objective: – a process that improves the user experience across the majority of users who come to your site!

Improving the Search User Experience



Why are these people coming? User Breakdown

Customers

Prospects

Drive-by

Who are they

anyway?



How are we doing?

• Click path

• Bounce rate

• Time on site

• Conversion rate

What users do

• Comments

• Feedback

• Surveys

What users say



• One way to find out is to ask!

• Surveys!

How are we doing? Let’s ask!



“The Net Promoter Score (NPC) is an index ranging from -

100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to

recommend a company's products or services to others.”

Is this a good way to measure Search User Experience?

What about Net Promoter Score?



What’s wrong with NPC?

A CEO for a startup told me his site lost 70% of his traffic. Analysis clearly pointed to Panda. “What do you mean we got hit by Panda. Our customers love us. We have a Net Promoter Score (NPC) of

65!”



Who did they test?

• They emailed their subscribing customers. • To put it differently, they asked the 2% of users.

who liked the site enough to subscribe. • What about the other 98%?




• Jakob Nielsen published an article analyzing the data from an IBM study http://goo.gl/L8qUNZ.

• The first 10 seconds are crucial with the highest drop-off rate. The second 10 seconds are nearly as crucial (when the true determination of the site is made),

• Coming from Google, people quickly making this

assessment. - Will this site answer my question? - Should I trust it?

The first 10 seconds are crucial

http://goo.gl/L8qUNZ

http://goo.gl/L8qUNZ



SEO Search Satisfaction Survey (SSSS)

Survey only users from search and quickly after landing.

• You want to catch the users who bounce at that 10 sec window.

Create surveys specific to landing page types.

• Different pages type will get different types of users and need to be addressed distinctly.

• Turn off survey as soon as you hit statistical significance (100-150 results).

Just a single question! (plus comments)

• “Does this site have have what you were looking for on Google”



• I worked for a company with an informational site.

• We purchased one of our affiliates which had a near duplicate of our main site.

• They had amazing conversion, but had been hit by Panda. • I ran the satisfaction survey on both sites.

Panda Example



“Does this site have have what you were looking for on Google” Panda site 32% Positive (and the comments were brutal) Non-Panda site 58% positive

Search Satisfaction



How do we improve?

We use surveys to understand why users came from Google?

We solve their problem/answer their question.

User testing to iterate and perfect.



Different pages, different experience



Why do people land on a hotel page? • Intent to book • Info question (directions, parking …) • Planning stage (looking for reviews) • Share an experience (write a

review) • Interested in the hotel restaurant.

Hypothesis for each page type



• Create a survey based on your hypothesis.

• Keep one opened question to catch what you missed.

• If missing something important, adjust and

restart the survey.

Create the and run the survey



Do this for all the major page type SEO Traffic Breakdown

Hotel Page

Airline Page

Home Page

Vacations Page

City Page

All Other

Blog

Fictional Travel Site



What to do if there is a disconnect …

Site Type User Need

Real Estate User lands on home for sale, but they want to

rent

Business

Directory

User wants reviews but you have few

Electronics Users want product manuals

People

directory

Users expect free data but you charge

Flight

booking site

Users want departures times



• Fill the need … or

• Send them someplace else to fill there need … (keep pushing the user on their journey).

• Remember “When your visitors are happy with your site, search engines notice!”

If there is a disconnect …

how to improve the seo user experience

Marketing

search user experience

c whats

c founder

c interstitials

c homes

c installs

c objective

c good compromise user