Part 3 of 4 of Building A Search Engine Ready Site
So far this week we have tackled 2 major elements of your site to help it be totally groovy for the search engines; what goes on in between the head tags and making a wise navigation system that’s both good for search engine spiders and your visitors. But what’s the point if we don’t make a site that has content placed in a way that will increase your visitors into conversions? Let me share with you, if you will, my own personal collection of learning experiences that I like to call;
Oh My God, WTF Was I Thinking?
That’s the phrase I would mutter to myself in the privacy of the parking lot as I smoked what I assumed would be my last cigarette before my boss would come out and fire my ass for not producing any kind of an ROI from a new site. He never did fire me, but he gave me hell. Afterwards I would drag my feet back to my computer feeling like a schmoe, ready to figure out what I can do to improve my mess. Ah the joys of being a dumbass.
And I do consider those days of dumbass-ness the stepping stones to understanding visitor behavior from 2 vital points; usability and what I like to call the “bling factor”.
Bling It On!
The bling factor is all about eye-catching and inviting grapics, colors or words that capture attention and encourage visitors to follow through to the destination of your choice. This is also more commonly known as a “call to action” or a hotspot. Never ever under estimate the importance exactly where you place your hotspots and for the love of Bob Saget don’t flood a page with 19 hotspots. Yes, I did just say Bob Saget.
Remember when I put up the 2 most common navigation layouts (pretty little pictures)? Well they’re back again but this time with something useful about them. From my own experimentation with layout and traffic flow, here is what seems to be a solid way to place your primary hotspot on a page.
Top Navigation
Side Navigation
The dashed line represents “the fold”, aka what’s visible on-page without having to scroll down to see the rest of the page. Which leads us into the marriage of usability and SEO.
Hold Their Hand
Visualize your home page right now. Think about the one thing you want your visitors to click on the most. Now go look at this, and tell me if you think you put it in the right place. Or better yet, go find someone else to look at it and grill the hell out of them about all manner of things; a fresh set of eyes so to speak.
The point is, you’re looking for 3 things in particular here;
- 1 - did they see your call to action within the first 5 seconds of looking
- 2 - did they see your menu within the same time frame
- 3 - where did they leave their mouse pointer?
Point 3 isn’t super important, but I’ve learned a little sumtin sumtin about the psychology of my visitors by where they leave their mouse pointer on my page; this is probably where or what they were about to click. So, does point 1 from above fall under or nearby the mouse pointer?
Some General Rules
I live by these ideologies when it comes to getting conversions or desired actions from my visitors. 1 out of every 100 visitors converting is acceptable and standard. All important elements of my page need to be placed above the fold. Getting a professional looking logo on my page helps to instill visitor trust. Make my graphics small in file size but crisp in appearance for faster page loads. Remember my heading tags to clearly define the page structure for the visitor to follow.People are finicky about what they will click on and what they won’t, so we’re tasked with understanding what really works for our visitors and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to look at the big boys and see what they’re doing with their call to action spots and see if you can do something equally as inviting to your visitors.
What’s Next?
Part 4: Final Exam
