Even the best SEO techniques can’t take into account the one factor that can “fudge everything up” – humans. At the end of every search query, at the end of over click, there is a human who is controlling it all. It is fascinating at times to watch how we behave, and to try and apply some reasoning and logic behind why we do everything that we do.
There are certain things I’ve noticed over the years when it comes to people and how they behave on websites. This information I’ve put to use in different SEO projects and I thought I’d share it with you all to help you gain some insight into how SEO firms can use human behavior to help them design better sites.
When we humans find something familiar, we tend to stick with it.
We tend to like to find patterns in things; it’s just part of how our brains operate. Knowing this we can design anchor text and link bait more effectively by trying to incorporate a surprise or some element of mystery. Surprise is one method of passing along content – the phrase “did you know?” has a unique ability to raise linkability.
Experience Drives Current Behavior
People tend to put more weight on personal experiences and recent events. In the SEO world this can be used to get people to link or buy something from your site. Perhaps make the site look like another famous site that people tend to visit, or if you are trying to build links why not mention a link on the target site that they already have that is oddly familiar to the one you are promoting. You’d be surprised how well this works!
Optimism and Confidence
People tend to be overly optimistic about their personal futures. The big takeaway here is when dealing with a client engaging your SEO services keep in mind they tend to think that their project somehow is going to always defy all the rules and outperform everyone else. It’s up to you to make sure you keep their expectations in check.
We Like Things The Same, Day In, Day Out
People don’t like to lose, and conversely people like things to stay the way they are if given the choice. The “status quo” is good enough for many of us.
If you can get someone to sign up for a recurring service, a newsletter or a yearly subscription the chances are high they will stick with it. Once you’ve Human behavior can be tricky to understand, but by observing how we behave we can actually learn some pretty useful SEO tricks to take advantage of human nature.the status quo will benefit your site. Give visitors to the website as many chances as possible to convert, purchase, subscribe, etc.
Prime the Pump
If you ask someone a question about something, and then follow up with them within the next day or two about the same subject chances are if your follow-up requires a choice, people will make the positive choice – be that purchasing, donating, etc.
Start relationships with your visitors through surveys or newsletters and then always follow-up with those that participate a few days later. You will see much higher conversion rates for those you follow-up with in a timely manner versus those that you come back to weeks later.
Tue, Sep 1, 2009
Search Engine Optimization