Is Personalization Changing Your Game Plan?
The Web is changing. Big surprise, right? Well, it might be for those who aren’t prepared or fail to see what’s going on.
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In recent months, Google has introduced social and real time results to its regular SERPs in addition to an increase in personalization. With more and more people out of work and bending under financial strain, new websites and competition are popping up everywhere. The big question is what are you doing about it?
In terms of basic SEO, there isn’t much besides keeping up with the changes and doing what you can. Social Media is definitely starting to play a much larger role in many marketing plans. In fact, the latest study suggests 66% of government agencies have even got onboard. But what about your marketing plans and the strategies you create for others? Are they changing with the introduction of personalization and an increase in competition?
The Internet Marketer’s Guide to Battling Personalization?
One thing is for sure, sites that don’t cater to the user are going to be left behind, if they haven’t been already. Site owners need to start considering how they’ll go the extra mile in order to make the user feel at home and become a favorite. On the other hand, webmasters also need to keep it profitable. No easy task, for sure.
Usability
Usability has become almost a trend word, but there really is something to it. After all, the more easily I can navigate your site and find what I want, the more money I’m likely to spend. You might be thinking your website is already quite user friendly, but like someone who smells his own body odor for too long, it can be hard to spot the obvious.
Having a usability expert is one way to fix this. And, if you choose a good one, you’ll find that he or she has the uncanny ability to spot things that most of us don’t think of until they’re fixed. If you can’t afford one, but would still like to make improvements, talk to a partially technologically-challenged person and have them test your site.
Sit down with them at the computer and watch as they go through your website completing various tasks. This could include purchasing an item, signing up to your RSS feeds, finding specific information, and many other seemingly simple actions. Take note of how long it takes them to complete each thing, where they look, and the items they click on. You’ll find that doing this with a few people will help identify trouble spots. (Bonus tip: When they first open the site, ask them what the site is about and what they see first. This can be extremely powerful information!)
Conversion Optimization
Often confused with usability, conversion optimization can be a long, drawn out process. Experts in this field use analytics, live tracking, and many other components and tools to figure out what types of visitors use your site, what they’re looking for, and where they’re going. From there, they will create defined paths customized to meet the needs of each type of (profitable) visitor in order to boost conversions.
While this is no easy feat, there are steps you can take on your own to improve conversions. Site testing, analyzing your own analytics by creating custom events, and using tracking codes to find out what your customers are up to, what they like, and what they don’t like. Then, you can make the appropriate changes and test it out.
Site Optimization
While this is technically part of usability, SEO, and conversion optimization, I think it’s important enough to deserve its own category. This covers the technical side of the website and makes it work more efficiently and more accurately. In my eyes, this breaks down into two areas:
Data Optimization — This is a big one for sites with large amounts of information that are accessed by the user (For example, online catalogs, complex structures with numerous departments). These techniques use various structures and code systems to organize this data, recall it faster, and more accurately.
Web Design Optimization — Techniques such as combining or separating images into PSDs, improving the focus on particular elements, and improving the loading of the CSS through Javascript make the site faster, improve usability, and boost conversions.
These things might not help you overcome the effects of personalization and an increase in competition, but they can certainly help. If nothing else, you’ll be able to make the most of the traffic you do get.
So, what are you doing to help counteract personalization and improve the performance of your site?
Marketing | 4 comments
The Modern Version of Customer Service: A Note to SEO Naysayers
The entire concept of people squabbling over the death or validity of SEO is absurd, completely ridiculous, and a waste of valuable time on all sides. If I hear someone tell me ‘they don’t use SEO because it’s evil and the Google gods will smite them and wipe them from existence if they use it’ one more time, I’m going to need one of these:
You know what? If you own a website, you’re already using SEO. It might not be using the most effective tactics on the planet or be one of the worst methods to ever hit the WWW, but it’s still SEO. Don’t believe me? Answer these questions and assign one point for each ‘yes’ answer:
- Does your website have a URL?
- Does your site contain text?
- How about images? (one point for each pic)
- Do you give visitors the option to explore your site via navigation?
- Does your site contain any links to any other internal or external page?
Here’s the deal, if you scored ‘1′ or more on this test, you’re using SEO. And if you own a website and you’ve called SEO evil, denounced its existence, or said it’s dead, you’re an idiot. Congratulations.
URLs, text, images, navigation, links and many other features are all part of SEO. They’re just done well, poorly, or disgustingly.
SEO isn’t about title tags, anchor text, or what color hat you wear. It’s not dead because, last time I checked, it isn’t breathing, it doesn’t grow, and doesn’t have life. SEO isn’t about how good your buddies think you are, or whether you made it onto some list somewhere as the biggest marketer on the planet. Let’s knock off the bullshit and just cut to the nitty gritty shall we?
SEO is about usability. Period. It’s about making your website, content, ad, or whatever easier to use for both crawlers and humans. It’s about getting found for the right things and providing ‘good customer service’ from the moment finds your site until they leave. It’s no different than keeping the isles of your store clean, the shelves and racks neat, and someone at the cash register.
Got it? Good! So, now that we’ve got that sorted, let’s look at the two basic ‘rules’ of SEO.
If something makes your website more user friendly, easier to explore, and more effective, do it. If it makes the site impossible to identify, difficult to use, complicated, and just plain nasty, or if it clutters up the Web and becomes a pain in the Equus Asinus, it’s a bad thing. Don’t do it. No! Don’t! That’s enough of that silliness.
Now, I know this has been harsh, but it’s for your own good.
If I can’t use your site or have to fight with you to sell me something, I’m just going to go elsewhere and so will everyone else who might happen to stumble across your site while searching for ‘pink and purple polka dotted squirrels with eating disorders, bald tails, and bad attitudes’. (If your site provides information on pink with purple polka dotted squirrels with eating disorders, bald tails, and bad attitudes, you’re in luck.)
Whether you like it or not, you have to cater to your customer regardless of whether it’s a human customer or a bot.
I think most would agree that SEO is constantly evolving and changing. It needs to in order to continue to serve visitors of all kinds effectively. But, so long as websites exist, it will always be there in some way, shape, or form.
Done deal. Can we get on with it now?
SEO | No comments
