The Human Factor in Keyword Placement

The Human Factor in Keyword Placement

The Human Factor in Keyword Placement

So you've made it to page one for your keywords excellent! In order to have done that, then chances are that you already have an idea of how you can use keywords in the head elements of your website for maximum search engine placement. But have you ever thought of the human factor? Have you put much thought into how the placement location of your keywords in your title and Meta descriptions will play a factor in the amount of times a user clicks your results? In this article, Andrew Hallinan will cover how your keywords will be most effective for the human element.

Reader, I want you to think about something for a second. When you search for something on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, what do you look at first? What grabs your attention first? Do you ever really think about this?

Google has thought about it! Google's User Experience Research team has discovered a way to actually track a person's eye movements and focus when they are looking at a search results page. Watch this video for an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w29DrEEsqT4

Based on the research that Google has performed, we've learned that people mostly read the search results page in the order that the search results have been listed top to bottom. Searchers will generally start top down and scan the results until they find something that they feel will be useful and then BAM! They click the link and make a decision to check out that website. (Sometimes the searcher will decide to revise their search terms, but that's information for another blog post at a later date.)

After 34 different users were evaluated Google had a pretty good idea of what they were looking for when evaluating the search results page. Check out this heat map image below a great image which helps show where people looked at the longest.

http://www.forgetmarketing.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/google-heatmap-study.jpg

What can we learn from this?

1. Searchers will scan the results top down

Duh! Most people already knew this the best place to be for your search terms is on page 1, in position 1! This study certainly verified what we already knew. But there are some other conclusions that we can come to that will greatly effect how our website will perform once displayed on the search engines.

2. Searchers will notice the first few words in your title and snippet first

Ah, now we're getting somewhere! Look at the site map again where did users spend the most time? Searchers spend the most time looking at the left side of the page reading the first few words in your title and the first few words in the snippet. This is important! If you want to maximize the human response to your search engine results, it's utterly important to have your most important keywords in the title FIRST! It's equally as important to have your most important keywords in your Meta description tags FIRST!

If the user spends more time looking to the left of your results, then it's important to meet them where they are. Considering that Google will bold the keywords that match exactly the search terms, if you give them what they are searching for in the first few words of your title and description, you'll have a much better chance of succeeding and getting their click.

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