Who is your website built for?
When building a website, it’s important to ask the question ‘Who is my website built for?’
Google? So that it ranks well. The boss? So you can keep your job. Or for who it is meant to be for… your visitors.
The Power of Kindness
When we talk website marketing, we generally talk SEO. Search Engine Optimisation is essential to drive organic searches to your website. You want to make sure people searching for what you do can find you, so that you can convert them into a customer.
Something that is often overlooked is how your website makes the customer feel. If you don’t make the visitor feel like you’re on their side, and that you value them, SEO work could be wasted.
A Wise Matt… Man… Once Said
To have a high converting website, we need to think back to marketing basics. People buy the afters. Theodore Levitt said in 1947 “people don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole”. In my presentations on how to have a successful marketing strategy, I like to remind everyone that “people don’t want toothpaste, they want clean teeth.”
For Example:
With this in mind, let’s look at how some SEO techniques can harm your websites’ chances of performing well.
Let’s take a headline for a made-up mattress company based in Surrey. Which one makes you want to contact them?
Mattress company in Surrey
Or
Welcome to the best sleep of your life
Now I completely understand the reason behind the first headline. In fact, it’s a good H1 heading (the most important heading!) to have on your webpage as it helps tell Google what the page is all about. However, it doesn’t need to be the biggest, boldest text that your customers read first. It’s just not exciting!
Subheadings are Important Too!
A big pet hate of mine is when the subheading tries just as hard to win the SEO battle! I often see the first heading example followed by something along the lines of:
“The number 1 supplier of mattresses in Surrey. Bed mattresses for all Surrey beds, helping Surrey customers get a great bed mattress in Surrey”
You may think I’m exaggerating, but I promise you could probably start a tally for SEO words in headings on most websites! A better example of a subheading you could use is:
“All thanks to a mattress from your leading surrey mattress retailer”
It still gets an SEO term in the heading, but with text that reads like it is written for the visitor.
The Importance of EATing
You may be asking yourself how reducing the number of keywords can still get your site to rank, and I understand your concern, but it’s important you write your website content for a human, not for a robot.
Google is becoming more and more clever every day, and there is now a huge emphasis on Expertise, Authority and Trust… EAT! For now, I would highly recommend looking at how you can improve your EAT score, rather than just trying to fit as many keywords on your webpage as possible! Do this, and you won’t just win the SEO battle, but also the battle of converting your website visitors into customers.
