by Chris Silver Smith

As average internet access speeds have improved, many websites have become pretty lazy about paying attention to how fast their pages load, designing bloated content full of heavy images, multiple Javascript and CSS files, and ads or iframes pulling from dozens of sources. This neglect could affect your search rankings, and here’s why.

First of all, Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, stated in a recent Q/A video that sites’ load times are currently not a ranking factor.

However, there are three reasons to believe that site load times could affect search rankings in the very near future:

• Matt’s opinion is that it would be a great idea for a ranking factor! And, he leaves open the possibility that it could be used as a ranking factor in the future. He’s influential within Google and is named on some Google ranking patents, so this is significant. Other significant Googlers also have indicated that this may be a focus area of increasing importance to them. Larry Page apparently stated that he wanted Google to be central to efforts to make the internet speedier, allowing users to get pages as fast as turning pages in hardcopy books.
• Google recently released Page Speed, an add-on for Firefox browsers which can diagnose a number of elements which impact page load times (such as Javascript and CSS files, image file sizes, etc). (This is also likely Google’s competitive response to Yahoo’s similar tool, YSlow, which even Google recommends as a tool for diagnosing speed issues. Combined with these other reasons, I believe there’s cause to believe it’s not just a competitive checklist item, but part of their strategy to speed up the internet experience.)
• Last year, Google introduced Page Load Time as a ranking element in Google AdWords ads.
• Internal research at Google has shown that slower page delivery times will reduce the number of searches users will conduct by 0.2% to 0.6%. While this may appear negligible, it undoubtedly would add up to a lot of lost revenue over time for Google, and it proves their point that slowness has a chilling effect on internet use and traffic.

Based on the above reasons I outlined, I think page load times are very likely to become integrated into Google’s ranking “secret sauce” soon, and that sites which seriously neglect page load time will find themselves at a disadvantage.

Classic Search Engine Optimization (”SEO”) lists of tricks rarely include mention of improving page speeds, but Google has steadily been evolving their ranking methods to reduce the impact of technical code tricks and moving toward more human-centered design factors. In fact, one part of their process already includes having their quality team assess the webpages found in search results for many thousands of sample queries. If one of your site’s sample pages fall into their sample set, the assessor’s rating of the page compared to competitors could result in an average quality score being applied to all the pages on your site.

I’ve believed for some time already that Google applies some automated quality scoring to natural search rankings, similar to how they’ve applied such factors to their paid search ads.

My suspicion is that there will likely be some sort of scale of site loading speeds which might be used to impact rankings in the future. And, I’d also suspect that this factor would be used primarily as a negative ranking factor, as opposed to a positive one. By this I mean that pages from competing sites which have all other stronger relevancy ranking elements essentially equal could drop lower in search results if their load times don’t meet some minimum standard. Load time might negatively impact a ranking, but likely wouldn’t necessarily help it rise above a page which has slightly stronger relevancy/importance factors unless that page had serious slowness itself.

I’d further expect that Google would apply some sort of adjustment to try to assess whether one Googlebot visit ran across just a momentary lag condition, versus a page delivery speed that’s always slow. So, I don’t see any reason to freak out if you have experienced a server or application issue for just a brief period!

Even if Site Load Time were not to become an official member of Google’s list of over 200 ranking factors, load time could still indirectly affect your rankings. Avanish Kaushik at Google has strongly encouraged webmasters to pay attention to Bounce Rate (a factor determined as a percentage of site visitors that only visit one page and/or who only land on a page for a few seconds before hitting the back button).

Google can also easily see if a user immediately backs out of a page they find in the search results, and such a high bounce rate may indicate a poor quality result for a particular query. One prime cause of a user hitting the back key can be if a page is extremly slow at loading. So, if Bounce Rate is a factor affecting rankings, then a page’s load time may impact it, indirectly affecting rankings.

Finally, let’s go to Google’s original point about why this is important in the first place: good User-Experience. Along with faster network speeds, sites need to load rapidly for endusers in order to provide a positive user-experience. Even if this were never used directly or indirectly by Google in rankings, it will still affect how users experience your site, and that can affect your ultimate conversion rates and repeat visits.

But, Page Load Time / Site Load Time will almost certainly be a direct or indirect ranking factor.

So, how to prepare for this important and basic factor amongst all your site’s various optimization strategies? Well, very easily and cheaply, you could get a copy of Google’s Page Speed extension and run it against samples of your site pages to see what speed factors it might recommend for you to improve upon.

Also, note that this browser-based diagnostic tool does not assess a number of factors which can still affect site load times, such as network connection times and conditions which cause sites to buckle under higher loads.

KeyRelevance has long considered site load times to be of prime importance and has included a number of factors affecting page load speeds in web site reviews that we provide for clients. In fact, we even provide clients with improved compression versions of their site images for smaller filesizes. Speed of access has long been important to a site’s overall user-experience, and Google’s increasing focus in this area is now making it of central importance to keyword rankings in search results. So, if you want to be at the top of your SEO game, you need to be paying attention to your site’s page delivery speed — Google is!

by Chris Silver Smith

Earlier this month when I spoke at SMX Advanced on the topic of “Beyond the Usual Link Building”, one of the suggestions I made in the presentation was about how to improve how your listings appear within the search engine results.

There are a lot of people I’ve met who tend to be hyperfocused on whether their pages rank, and don’t spend as much attention on how those pages’ entries appear within the search results pages.

It seems like common sense that if the entry looks like what a user is seeking, they’d be more likely to click upon it. Therefor, if you were to improve your search engine results page entries, you’d also likely improve your click-through rate — increasing your traffic.

Compare these listings on Google for a search for “Seattle indie records shop“:

You can see that the star ratings and review on the listing for “Easy Street Records” is slightly more eye-catching if you were a records shop afficianado — the stars and the dollar-sign price range and the easy-to-read sample review text give it an advantage over the listing for the record shop below it. A consumer who is rapidly scanning and clicking to find what they want is going to be more likely to click here.

How much more likely is such a listing to gain clicks? According to Vanessa Fox, Yahoo! has reported a 15% click-through-rate (CTR) increase on similar types of listing treatments! Their results were based upon comparing the CTR of typical search result listings with CTR of listings sporting their special treatments developed through SearchMonkey. The customized listings really stand out from the other listings, drawing the eye and clicks, too.

Yet, before these research results were released, I’d already seen how merely fine-tuning the listing text alone could improve both CTR and rankings. Using savvy methods for forming TITLEs and Meta Descriptions on pages, one can improve keyword relevance, ranking, and click-through-rates.

Now that Google has launched their own type of enhanced listing treatment, dubbed “Rich Snippets“, there’s starting to be even more options for optimizing listings in search results. The first special treatment they’ve enabled are the ones for reviews and ratings, and it seems clear that they intend to launch more, particularly ones related to the use of Microformats, such as hCalendar, hCard, and hProduct.

One person at SMX who liked this concept of “optimizing listings” for improved CTR was Matt Cutts, who Tweeted out a mention of it:

While these tactics likely have no direct effect on search engine keyword rankings, I’ve theorized for some time now that they could have an indirect effect upon rank. Google’s frequently-discussed patent for “Information Retrieval Based On Historical Data” includes within its descriptions of ranking methods (”scoring”) the possibility that pages might be ranked according to how often they’re clicked upon when they appear within particular searches. The patent states:

“…scoring the document includes assigning a higher score to the document when the document is selected more often than other documents in the set of search results over a time period…”

Very loosely interpreted, this means that if your page’s listing is clicked upon at a better rate than other pages appearing for the same keyword search, that click-frequency or CTR could actually affect that page’s future rankings for that keyword.

It’s long been controversial as to whether Google implemented many of the methods outlined in various patents like this one, but you already have a good excuse to fine-tune your listings: regardless of theoretical impact on rankings, it could easily improve your click-through rate, improving your site’s qualified traffic!

Quick Tips on Optimizing Listings:

• Title should be brief and state what the page is about, and who you are.
• Meta description should be brief and expand upon what the page is about or how it may be better than others listed for the same keyword search.
• Currently, mentioning deals/discounts/rebates may improve CTR since the economy has pushed people to be more price-conscious.
• Implementing Microformats now on your site for appropriate types of content will likely position you to take advantage of future rollouts of “Rich Snippets” treatements in Google results.
• Building a search application with Yahoo!’s SearchMonkey platform will help you to understand how Google’s developing similar types of listing enhancements.

Good listing engineering is a complex task involving semantic tagging, taxonomic research and development, good copywriting, and SEO knowledge. Don’t make guesses when doing this — use a good expert if you don’t have experience with it.

Optimize your snippets and SERP listings, and improve your CTR and Performance!

By Liana “Li” Evans

At the beginning of the week I wrote a piece for Search Engine Watch entitled, “Do You Know Where Your Audience Is?” Knowing this is a piece of the social media puzzle that can decide whether your strategy is going to be a successful venture or a failure. There are a few other pieces to that puzzle, but generally, knowing where your audience is is foundational to any social media strategy.

It affects even how portable you make your content. What I mean by making your content portable is making it easy to share, making it easy for your audience to move it across one social platform to another. If your audience finds your content valuable they are going to want to share it whether its through social bookmarking, social news, email or twittering, people want to share great things they experienced. Content that has value can create buzz and word of mouth without the author really realizing what’s going on. If it’s really valuable to the audience and there’s no way to share it, that content might not take off, however just the opposite can happen. If you believe you are always putting out valuable content and you want it shared and you have too many options to share it, this can be a turn off as well as confusing to your audience.

Lets take for example a blog, there are a few ways a blog can be shared. The blog itself can be found to have a lot of great content, and people who just get to your blog via a twitter link, Stumbleupon or a link through email might not be quite that educated on RSS. So having a dozen or so of ways to subscribe to your blog by RSS can be confusing and a turn off, rather than a turn on to people coming to your blog. If you use Feedburner or other like services to handle your subscriptions, take a look at your audience – what are they using to read your blog and choose those top 3-5 icons to show for RSS subscriptions. While you may think you need every single RSS aggegator listed, your audience is likely telling you differently, listen to them, they understand what’s valuable to them. For the most part, Google Reader has become the giant here, people share blogs and blog posts through the “share” option in Google Reader as well as porting out their list of blogs so their own readers (if they own a blog themselves) can keep up to date on what they view is valuable.

Then there’s blog posts and making them easy to share. Again, just like having too many aggregator icons listed, having too many social bookmarking and social news icons in a drop down or spread across the bottom of your posts can be a real turn off. Look at your analytics, listen to your audience, what are they saying about how they found your content? Is your content the type that would really get traction on Digg? Is your audience even on Digg? You’re audience might be on a very niche site like Boudica, which caters to women and not on Digg. In this case having a sharing option for Boudica or sites like it, just might be the better option. Generally the audiences can cross platforms and if your audiences feels its good enough for Digg, they’ll get it there. The point is make it sharable for where your audience hangs out, not an audience who isn’t interested.

When making your content portable, it’s also important to keep in mind, content doesn’t always equal text. Content that’s valuable to your audience can take the form of pictures, podcasts, videos or even slideshares. Making these types of content easy to share is just as important as making your text content easy to share. Make it easy for your audience to embed things, provide the embed code or the link code and well as the sharing buttons you’ve decided are valuable to your audience. Don’t forget to also provide ways to share through email and social networking sites – if your audience is there.

Don’t stress that you need to have every way to share out there. Yes there are plugins for blogs that can list all the popular sites, and are easy to install, but is your audience on those sites? Are you loosing out on having your content on a site where your audience is because you are focusing on where someone else’s audience is? Before you decide to plaster your content up with a million “submit to” buttons, analyze your audience and listen to where they want to submit your content first.

By Liana “Li” Evans

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a keynote be so insightful and revealing about a major internet website as I did when I attended Joe Megibow’s Keynote at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington DC. Joe is from Hotels.com and the audience was certainly treated to some great insight into listening to the voice of a customer as well as testing and being fanatical about “getting it right”.

Hotels.com is quickly approaching its 1 millionth user review. Through reviews and feedback they have learned to both listen and learn to provide what their customer really want, not what what they think their customers need.

Two years ago, Hotels.com was at a crossroads, they were known as the “low cost, cheap operator”, but they wanted to be more. At the beginning of 2008 they launched a re-branding which included re-branding their website. A few weeks ago, they relaunched their search engine which is faster and easier for customer to use.

Hotels.com does a lot of analytics through Ominiture. They are fanatical, analytics drives almost everything on their site. However, over the last year they wanted to listen to their customers a little more, but they really had no context. Their good sales were masking the problems that were really happening on the site, so they needed to find another way. They combined “voice of the customer” with analytics in a usable way.

They installed OpinionLab, they got a lot of feedback. What’s even more important, every OpinionLab entry is tied to TeaLeaf. They also installed over 700 phone numbers so that they can measure all of the channels that sales and feedback comes from. All of this transforms Hotels.com.

Executives at Hotels.com get feedback everyday, and they use it, they read it. They click on what happens in different issues watch it in TeaLeaf and send their own feedback to the different teams within Hotels.com. Everybody has buy in to fix things on Hotels.com. They’ve acted on 200 site conversion issues over the last 6 months. The thing to remember is that mistakes are common, everyone has them. But not everyone realizes they have them and on top of that not everyone acts upon their mistakes to correct them.

They had issues with logins. They thought they only had 2 ways to login, but through the customer feedback and watching the sessions being replayed in TeaLeaf, they were able to see that they actually had a third way to login that they never realized they had. This third way was what was creating a big problem. Because of this they added a “book without registering” option. Immediately half of all the customers chose this option!

Hotels.com realized by installing the “book without registering” option, they were making it hard for their customers to book. Not only that, customers were not getting any kind of value out of registering with their site. There was a disconnect between how the marketers were thinking about customer conversion. They really needed to give customer a reason to register, a reason to care about their accounts. They introduced – book 10 nights, get 1 night free – “the loyalty program that doesn’t require too much loyalty”.

The loyalty program exposed issues they didn’t realize that they had. A customer had an issue with logging in. Joe called her and talked to in detail about what happened. He actually turned her into a fan of Hotels.com. But from the conversation Joe also gained valuable insight, apparently something was happening with the loyalty program after booking many nights and getting a bunch of free nights. A certain field was getting wiped out. They looked into this and found thousands of profiles with the same issue and as time was going on, it was getting worse. They fixed the issue within a week.

Customers do not repeatedly make this stuff up. They were getting random reports of issues of their Terms of Service. It was not allowing users to accept it no matter what they tried. It was about 1 person a day, but they were having trouble recreating the problem. When they started looking deeper, they found 40-50 people a day were having this problem, and it had to do with IE. It took a few months of investigating but they fixed it, and now that issues gone and 40-50 more people are converting and booking.

Minor updates can create major issues! One of their updates created issues with the SSL and how cookies were handle. People browse in different ways, a lot of people use the back button. Apparently a lot more than they realized, combine that with the fact they use 4 different servers to service up Hotels.com, when customer were backing out of the SSL are to regular HTML pages, the update was dropping their cookies, and then they had a 1 in 4 chance of getting back to where their were before, if they didn’t hit the right server, their information was dropped. This was very frustrating to their customers, they listened, they used TeaLeaf and corrected it.

Hotels.com is fanatical about getting this stuff right. Everyone inside Hotels.com is dedicated to it. Internally they have people just wanting to create mashups, tools and applications to help them make it easier to listen to the customer and fix things that aren’t working right. They built an in-house iPhone application for monitoring the Voice of the Customer since most of their staff was on the iPhone. Over the past months, they’ve seen a substantial increase in conversion because of their efforts. They’ve created a ton of good will and they are winning the cultural shift within Hotels.com internally of doing good by the customer.

IBM set to unveil a new, open source Web accessibility tool.

At next week’s 2007 Technology and Persons With Disabilities Conference, IBM plans to formally present a new tool for Web browsers that will help people with visual disabilities access multimedia content on the Web.

"Just because someone is blind, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be enjoying YouTube or MySpace or anything else like that," said Frances West, director of the Worldwide Accessibility Center for IBM.

This could be a giant step forward in Web accessibility. You’d think that podcasting, video files, audio files, etc. would be ideal ways for people with visual disabilities to access content – and they are. The problem users have isn’t with the multimedia files themselves; it’s how those files are embedded in Web sites.

As today’s article in ZdnetIndia notes:

When streaming audio or video requires users to click a Play button using their mouse, there is usually no keystroke alternative, and the controls are randomly placed on the screen; If they can’t press Play, they can’t experience the multimedia.
In cases where the audio or video streams automatically once a page loads, the Web page’s audio often interferes with a user’s audio aids.

IBM’s tool will provide predefined shortcut keys that help users control how and when multimedia files play.

Although IBM promotes the tool as something being done for the good of society, they’re also keeping an eye on the huge population of aging baby boomers who have recently donned reading glasses and hearing aids.

And, as someone who holds her breath during every annual eye exam (Will the doctor utter the dreaded bifocal word this time?), I’m happy they’re making the effort.

Few leading Web sites worldwide meet basic accessibility guidelines.

Larisa Thomason

The United Nations recently commissioned a Web accessibility study that validated the anecdotal evidence people with disabilities have offered for years. Most Web sites have accessibility problems. In fact, many sites don’t even fulfill the most basic accessibility requirement: ALT text on images.

The UN study audited the accessibility of 100 leading Web sites from 20 countries. (Request an executive summary of the report.) The results were startling to many – but not to people with visual or physical problems. For years, they’ve been frustrated by inaccessible sites.

Their aggravation is understandable once you look at some of the results.

• ALT text descriptions:93% did not provide adequate text descriptions for graphical content, causing problems for visually impaired people.
• Poor contrast: 78% used foreground and background colour combinations with poor contrast, making it difficult for people with mild visual conditions such as colour blindness to read information.
• Improper (or no) header tags: 89% failed to use the correct technique for conveying document structure through the use of headings, making page navigation awkward for many visually impaired people.
• Inadequate link text: 97% used link text that did not clearly indicate the destination of the link, causing confusion for people with learning difficulties.

Ok. So some of the other findings – like using JavaScript for important functionalities – may be harder to bring into compliance. But ALT text descriptions? Header tags? Descriptive link text? Readability?

What were the designers thinking when they put these sites together? This is basic design that affects every user and costs sites money in lost sales and customer goodwill. If people can’t access your information and use your shopping cart, they sure won’t buy your products.

And, as AOL found out, they may just sue you for good measure. In 1999, the National Federation of the Blind sued AOL because, among other problems, the company’s software was incompatible with screen reader technology. The NFB withdrew the suit after AOL agreed to make changes. In October 2006, the NFB sued Target, citing several issues including the fact that the site requires the use of a mouse to make purchases.

On December 3, 2006, the UN observed an “International Day of Disabled Persons,” and described the importance of accessible technology, noting that:

Persons with disabilities are at a considerable disadvantage by not being able to access information technologies. For instance, as education becomes increasingly dependent on information technologies, not being able to access the Internet for example limits the learning potential of persons with disabilities.

Whether or not the United Nations effort actually has any benefit remains to be seen. But at least it may help focus attention on the problem – and enlighten recalcitrant designers about just how easy it is to meet basic accessibility requirements.

In his humorous 1968 novel, Heaven Help Us, author Herbert Tarr describes how a young rabbi (Rabbi Small) helps a bar mitzvah student give a stellar performance. The student is so nervous that even the sound of someone sneezing is enough to break his concentration.

Rabbi Small’s solution is to so inure the boy to noise and distraction that he can continue the service unflustered – no matter what’s happening around him:

“I rambled around the sanctuary, sneezing, coughing, rattling candy wrappers, stamping my feet as Sandy spoke. I also broke paper bags, sneaked up on the boy and yelled in his ear, though it embarrassed me to be caught throwing Silly Putty at a bar mitzvah boy while he spoke earnestly about God.”

I recall this scene whenever I conduct usability tests. Rabbi Small tried hard to create real-world conditions for the boy. It’s a good idea. You’ll get better data from your usability testers if you provide some common distractions during the test.

Think about it: how often at home or in the office do you have the luxury of peace and quiet while you work? The office environment is filled with water cooler chatter, ringing phones, and that annoying co-worker who blares polka music on her CD player. Home isn’t much better – particularly if you have pets or children. Just try to be productive with a child hanging on your leg or a cat reclining on your keyboard.

That’s the real world, and it’s something rarely reflected in a formal usability test.

It’s like those EPA fuel economy tests where nobody ever speeds, gets stuck idling in traffic, or floors the accelerator with an enthusiasm usually reserved for NASCAR drivers. Your mileage may vary because you don’t always drive as if there’s a DMV inspector in the passenger seat.

In a standard usability test though, the user knows she’s being watched. Nobody wants to look stupid in front of the observer, so the tester is motivated to concentrate on the task, go slowly, and pay attention to details.

That’s almost completely opposite of how most people actually use Web sites. As Steve Krug points out in his excellent usability manual, Don’t Make Me Think, a misconception we have about users is that: “we picture a more rational, attentive user when we’re designing pages.” Furthermore, we optimistically assume that: “users will scan the page, consider all of the available options, and choose the best one.”

After all, that’s what our eager-to-please usability testers do, right? But be honest. Is that how you use a Web site when you’re alone? No normal person has that kind of time.

I’m not suggesting that you should yell at your test subjects or throw Silly Putty at them. But a bit of background noise and a distraction or two does give the test a more realistic ambience. Arrange for your phone to ring; ask a co-worker to interrupt with a question; drop your clipboard. Or try this: cats don’t care that they’re opaque; have one stand in front of the screen at least once during the test.

Nobody uses the Web in a perfect environment, so try not to be so obsessive about creating one when you do usability tests. A more realistic testing environment will help you get better results. And those will help you design a better, more seamless user experience.

By Larisa Thomason

My family loves the new GEICO Car Insurance commercials where the hapless caveman defends his species against ignorant assumptions that all cavemen are idiots. Apparently, we aren’t alone. News and commentary about the commercials is all over the Web:

• Wikepedia’s GEICO entry
• YouTube videos
• Caveman’s Crib Web site lets you tour the Caveman’s very upscale house. Usability note: loads slowly!
• An Adweek article discusses the phenomenal success of the ad campaign.

This is great viral marketing, and we’re all envious. But the point of the campaign is something that every Web designer and Web site owner should engrave on their keyboards:

“So easy a caveman can do it!”

Yep. GEICO is making usability their value proposition – at least in this ad campaign. If only every other Web site made the same commitment to ease of use.

Unfortunately, if you start discussing “usability” and “accessibility” with many site owners and designers, their response is less than animated. You can generally count on silence, glassy-eyed stares, and gentle snores of boredom.

Actually, usability is anything but boring. It’s a vital ingredient in customer satisfaction. Review these three scenarios. Chances are, you’ve had similar experiences.

• You’ve spent hours scouring the Web, and finally found the perfect gift for your hard-to-please significant other. Then you can’t complete the transaction because the shopping cart isn’t compatible with your browser.

  Are you bored?

• Or what if you’ve forgotten to mail your credit card payment and it’s due right now? You go to the card Web site to pay online, but can’t read the information because the text displays in 8px type.

  Have you accomplished your task?
  

• How about this situation? You subscribe to a satellite TV service and get a notice that prices are rising. So you sign into your account to see what service you have now and compare costs. But the Web site doesn’t give you access to that information. All you can do is pay your bill and order movies.

Does this site offer what you need?

These situations are a minor irritation for most users, but can be major obstacles to users with physical or cognitive disabilities. People using assistive technologies generally have one way to access information. If the site doesn’t accept that method, the disabled user is just out of luck.

Maybe you think: “Hey, that’s just a few people and I can blow them off.”

But think back to those users who were irritated or frustrated. They have options, and one of them is to click straight over to your competitor’s site and breeze through his shopping cart to buy that special gift.

GEICO has the right idea. “Easy to use” isn’t just goal; it’s a requirement for a successful Web site. Good usability by itself can’t make your site a success. However, poor usability – by itself – can make your site a failure.

There are many Web usability resources that cover everything from basic usability and accessibility principles to legal requirements for site owners. Check them out:

• Dive Into Accessibility online manual.
• US Government Web Usability Guidelines
• Usability hero Jakob Neilsen

Then invite that caveman over and ask him to do a usability test.

Ever wonder what people do when they get a 404 error? Most people leave the site. Christine Churchill shows you how you can turn this revenue hole into a marketing opportunity. See our article on
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