Measuring Customer Relevance as Part of Your Web Sites SEO

Last week, Google implemented a change to their search algorithm to measure the page layout of your site as a factor related to page rank. Their reasoning for the change is that if a user needs to scroll down to see the primary content within your page; the less satisfied they’ll be with your content. According to the official Google webmaster blog, the change is specifically meant to target sites with heavy advertising content located at the top of the page and will affects less than 1% of searches globally.

Understanding the implications this change will have on your own site is difficult to measure. Your best course of action to improve your Google Page Rank is to focus on the user experience as much as possible. This is true, because Google strives to weed out sites that are optimized for search and not people. The last three major updates to their algorithm have been for this purpose and future updates promise to continue to do so.

For guidance on what to do, Google suggests focusing on maximizing page load speed, improving content relevance and simplifying navigation. These are easily measured and related directly to customer satisfaction. All three have the same purpose, to get people to the content they want, and these are the principles upon which Google is founded.

You can measure your success in providing value to visitors by evaluating your analytics, specifically your site’s bounce rate. Your Bounce Rate measures the number of people who visit your site and leave almost immediately. The lower your Bounce Rate the better. Google interprets a low Bounce Rate as a clear indication that their search results match what you’re promoting and will continue to drive traffic in your direction.

If you’ve spent a small fortune on SEO services and are getting lots of traffic, but also have a very high bounce rate, don’t expect those results to last. Google will see this and adjust your page relevance rank within their algorithm accordingly to compensate. Your goal as a web site owner should be to attract and keep users on your site. In this case, fewer users who stay on your site (low bounce rate) is actually more beneficial to improving your page relevance than lots of visitors who immediately leave (high bounce rate).

When you consider this in terms of Google’s latest algorithm update you can better understand how they interpret that picture at the top of your site. While it may improve the attractiveness of your site, if it’s not helping people learn about your company or find the information they are looking for, then you should consider replacing it with more meaningful details.