Opinion: Search hype should not detract from poor quality websites

I noticed that the Online Marketing Show featured heavily on search because its research showed that visitors, powerful marketing guardians of brand, were most interested in search engine marketing. What concerns me is that search engine marketing and the battle to make it to the top slot of Google or Yahoo’s first page is being over invested in. In reality, most visitors click in then out again just as fast.

I know that any marketer worth their salt cannot afford to ignore search engines, since 90 per cent of web users use search to source relevant websites. But what is the point, if visitors reach the site only to lose interest immediately because the content doesn’t attract their interest? It might make website figures look good at board meetings, but does it really achieve what you want – promotion of your brand and ultimately customer acquisition or a call to action to purchase online?

I may be a lone voice rallying against an industry phenomenon, but I think marketers are over investing in search engine optimisation without stopping to think of the value of the traffic they are driving to their sites and the potential negative perception that unhappy searchers, particularly those who are in a hurry, will feel when they cannot find what they want after the first click.

It brings us back to the age old chestnut of brand engagement. A poor TV advert that fails to demonstrate the product or service offering up front will never stick in a viewers mind no matter how many times it is repeated in the ad breaks of Big Brother or Lost. The same goes for websites.

A recent Logan Tod study examined exactly what happened when visitors landed on a page from a search engine. The research showed that marketers are simply not engaging visitors or encouraging them to remember and return to a site.

In nearly two thirds of the sites clicked on through a search, 20 per cent of visitors left after looking at just one page. In some cases this was as high as 47 per cent. I call this group of websites ‘Wasters’ because they squander the opportunity to promote their brand or generate engagement. Worse still, they encourage a negative user experience so when a potential customer sees that site address again in a search, they may ignore it.

We are a time poor, cash rich society, so it is known that people go online to get what they want, quickly and efficiently – whether that’s information or to purchase goods and services. An effective, creative and audience targeted landing page is therefore crucial. Assuming that all these search generated visits are really interested and will work to find the information is a fallacy as the data above shows. A few smart organisations now understand this challenge and are investing in developing and testing landing pages to discover what each visitor segment needs and how to create the best user experience.

So my advice to the 5,000 or so visitors who braved the summer heat to go to the Online Marketing Show is invest more in effective search landing pages and homepages that satisfy the user rather than an internal audience. Worry less about search marketing and create a website that is tuned to your audience’s actual online behaviour, really reflects your brand and actively engages visitors beyond the first click from a search engine.

I am confident that a more business results driven, customer centred website will deliver you better quality online activity than the top rank on a search.

Matthew Tod
CEO, Logan Tod & Co.