Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [104]
Clear headings, high-contrast colors, and large font sizes work together to create a string of text that is meant to be more than the rest of the content, thereby making it unique on the page and more important. To the visitor, the call to action and the benefit are visually clear and appealing, matching both the intent of the search and the intent of the action. This is when clear benefit statements work to your advantage.
Using human factors in reading, scanning, and credibility, the search engine algorithm utilizes all of these on-page factors to determine relevance for a page:
Scannable content presented using HTML or CSS markup
Keywords in titles, headlines, page headings, and bullet points
Accompanying key phrases and related concepts in pages
Key benefit statements that are visually appealing
This results in the mantra “Do what is right for the visitor first, and the search engines will follow.” From more than 15 years in managing, promoting, creating, and assessing websites, I’ve learned that time is much better spent improving the readability and salability of the website and the content rather than chasing minuscule search engine changes. Bigger profits are attained by understanding your visitors, understanding the information they need, and satisfying their questions than by constantly tweaking the number of keywords in a headline. Rather than attempt to chase the search engine’s algorithm and adapt to the minuscule or, sometimes, major changes in each search engine, your time is better spent understanding the needs of the visitor and optimizing your content for their ingestion.
Although it is true that the search engines adjust their algorithms frequently, the basics rarely change. The on-page optimization factors covered so far in this text are still the same. There may be a small percentage of changes here and there or some factor that outweighs another by a fraction, but the basics of on-page factors remain heavily consistent. The bulk of search engine changes focus on an accurate judgment of incoming links, which is a primary means of showing credibility and, as such, is generally abused more than other factors. This will be covered more in depth in Chapter 16.
Review and Hands-On
Review your headlines for context. Consider the different audiences and the different methods that people may use to find your site and the information contained, and then answer the following questions:
How do your titles rate? Do they communicate the primary intent of the page?
Are they sufficient in communicating the correct message in a clear and concise format?
Are your keywords properly used and associated with concepts that are specific to the information?
Does your headline stand alone in defining the content of the article or the page?
Browse through the content on your website. Do you have paragraphs of content? Although paragraphs make sense in printed literature, most website users are looking for the important elements of information and will not give a paragraph a first look, much less a second. More paragraphs mean that fewer of your visitors are reading your content, which also means they are absorbing less information and fewer key indicators of relevance.
Review the content on your website to find the large content blocks of paragraphs. Find methods of breaking up large content blocks that are visual “black holes,” and rework the content in order to present a more scannable, objective, and concise resource of information. Reduce the amount of words by at least half, and create more visual cues to key benefit statements, such as bullet points or text boxes.
Review and remove content that contains overly promotional language. This includes overstatements,