Eye-tracking technology for better SEO

People don’t always realize that they can optimize their landing pages using eyetracking techniques to better convert the traffic from their websites  into sales. Yes, SEO still remains a fundamental aspect for optimizing websites, in fact, they could be used hand-in-hand as technologies such as these, which Google is recently testing to improve some of their products, can also contribute to better results.

The new eye-tracking technology Google is implementing leads to understanding where people’s eye balls go first once they obtain their search results. Which elements are most evident? The boldfaced characters, images, videos, underlined phrases, etc.

In the blog, Google points out that people’s decision-making process takes split seconds and that it’s almost impossible to tell what their actions will be. However, the studies have been able to tell the order in which a user examines the search results. And it’s as expected; from top to bottom. Nonetheless, it verifies the importance of a brand’s page ranking  in both organic and PPC search results for visibility and click through.

The following video provides a better and amusing idea of how people’s minds work when scanning a results page:

Google’s conclusion from the studies- the inclusion of videos and thumbnails (rich media) to facilitate the navigation process of the user.

These eyetracking results can perfectly apply to Search Engine Optimization and product marketing for they help detecting users’ eye scan, click-through behaviors and general focus which can in turn determine the areas within a website that should consider revision.

Google will also use the eye-tracking technique for some of their other products like Google News and Image. Search

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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