Avenue Digital attended BrightonSEO 2016 with much excitement and energy; guaranteed to be an insightful collection of talks, BrightonSEO has gained international popularity with newcomers and experts alike and hosts talks from industry experts on topics ranging from the creative to the technical.
Although Avenue left BrightonSEO feeling as if their actionable SEO techniques were only confirmed, the day was well received by the team. Some of the topics of the day were:
Site Speed and Attention Span
Faster was the order of the day. Already accepted as industry best practice, site speed can play a major part in the way users engage with your site. Effectively, for SEO, site speed will be a dominating factor in whether users actually get to visit your site or bounce before seeing any content at all. Google absolutely takes Site Speed into account (you can see that in Analytics), and this is a very important metric and technical aspect to make sure is fully optimised.
Attention span is the human equivalent of site speed; if you are not providing information succinctly and tailored to the demographic of your audience, that information will not load for the audience and bounce rates are sure to follow. There was a difference presented between the attention span of the Millennial generation and Generation Z.
The Millennial Generation has an average attention span of 12 seconds.
Generation Z has an attention span of 8 seconds.
It doesn’t seem like much, however it is the difference between keeping your target audience engaged or not. And, it shows how quickly the content of a website and the load speed has to get to the point in order to keep the user engaged.
Personal Branding and UX
UX played a big part at BrightonSEO. In fact, it is widely suggested that SEO is now more than ever becoming reliant on brilliant UX. Avenue can see the effects this is having through the incorporation of UX metrics into Google Analytics, such as Returning Visitors and Direct Traffic. Whilst these metrics do have an impact on SEO, it is important for the memorability of a brand and website to give the user a warm, well thought experience. Websites which are way too reliant on text and the over-supply of too much information have a low chance of converting.
By providing the visitor to your site with a good UX, you are making your site more memorable. This supports personal branding by warming the visitor to the site, whilst guiding them on this particular digital journey. A brand, it was said, is in fact the most influential factor on the page. SEO will, in this respect, rely on not overselling the product, but neatly nestling the product between accessible site architecture and desirable visuals.
UX, it also came across at BrightonSEO, is reliant on fluidly presenting the visitor with a competent user interface. Whilst this does come from site architecture and great visuals, the interface can be related to popular video games which allow continual accessibility to menus, maps, and character detail. Part of this interface can be created by not allowing the visitor to meet a dead end by utilising SEO friendly techniques such as breadcrumbs, featured blog posts on product pages, and related products on product pages.
Content
Content is King, some say. And Avenue agrees. Ranking in Google is measured primarily on the content contained on the page and in the meta. Content includes text, images, videos and internal links.
What was made clear at BrightonSEO is that the forceful practice of trying to make a visitor convert (annoying ‘sign up’ pop ups, too many callouts, etc) is not King, or Queen, or acceptable in the Court of SEO. (Not even as a Jester; us SEO’s reserve that spot for click baiting).
Visitors are educated in normal site architecture and navigation; they know where they should go to convert if they wish. Measuring these conversions is one part of SEO, but with a lot of UX and Content reliant on Returning Visitors, Time on Site and Pages Per Session, keeping users engaged and not harassed into converting seems to be King.
BrightonSEO was a great experience for Avenue, and has inspired our innovative interests to keep pushing the new and prized practices further. With great insight and design, SEO can bring great things to a company; Avenue aims to cause this for all clients and BrightonSEO only served to confirm what we already knew.
About Avenue Digital
Avenue Digital was established in 2015 and has fast become a leading digital marketing agency, proving SEO, PPC Management, Social Media Management, and Umbraco Design and Build expertise. This strong growth has been achieved through a steady accumulation of consumer and professional service based clients and a significant strategic acquisition.
Existing Avenue clients include Rothesay Life, LPC Law, Convergen, Lomar, Venesta, Bureau Van Dijk, Mount Anvil, Benoy, Shrieve, GLH Hotels, Ella’s Kitchen, Levi Roots, Shop Direct, Farrell Clothing, Anna Freud Centre, and Blesma.
Although a specialist SEO agency in London, Avenue Digital is performance focused and a provider of digital marketing including:
• SEO Management
• PPC Management
• Social Media Management
• Umbraco Design & Build