This press release on the AP newswire (pdf)MELBOURNE, Australia, March 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – In the past year, Google has revolutionized the game of SEO with a series of updates known as “Penguin” and “Panda”. In the past, businesses could literally stuff their website with low quality, repetitive articles that were keyword-rich but content poor. According to Rhondalynn Korolak, author of Sales Seduction, “these updates mean that the search results you are presented with are much more likely to engage the part of your brain that makes decisions and takes action.”
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130314/PH76672-a )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130314/PH76672-b )
Now the online game is all about quality content. And quality is defined as content that is unique, authentic, relevant and compelling to the intended audience. Rather than focusing blindly on SEO which is prone to manipulation, Google is forcing website owners to shift their focus to social engagement optimization.
Ironically, this move toward giving preference to online content that is reader-centric, unique, emotionally engaging, and backed by social-proof sounds a lot like the key brain stimuli for persuasion and influence espoused by neuromarketers.
Neuromarketing is rapidly becoming the key tool of choice for salespeople and marketers. By using sophisticated imaging equipment to analyze how the brain processes information, we now know that the part of the brain that DECIDES is 45,000 times older than language and writing, and struggles to process both.
It is this primitive part of the brain that dominates the decision making process. According to Korolak, “survival-related functions and visual cues dominate your decision making process. Consumers don’t care about your brand, your awards or your features and benefits. They are looking for solutions that solve their pain and keep them alive.”
And Google is the largest portal in the world for consumers searching for solutions to problems and pain. “In order to assist their users to find those solutions quickly,” says Korolak, “Google has discovered that it pays to appeal to the reptilian brain.”
To do this Google has become more sophisticated in the way that it indexes websites to find content that is most likely to be relevant and engaging. For those websites that have strong visual appeal, unique content that solves pain and emotional engagement that retains users longer, Google rewards them with coveted page 1 placement. Those that focus too much on their brand and don’t create emotional engagement or solve pain, are relegated to search engine obscurity.
According to Korolak, “if you are using lots of big words, telling them why you got into business, and listing your features and benefits, chances are you are pushing customers away and killing your Google page ranking.”
To learn more about Sales Seduction, visit:
http://imagineeringnow.com/products/sales-seduction/
About Rhondalynn Korolak
Korolak is a Melbourne-based lawyer, chartered accountant, business coach, speaker, best-selling author and small business marketing expert. She has been featured in/on Yahoo, CNN iReport, Skynews, bNet, Fast Thinking, Dynamic Business, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire. To book her for an interview or find out more, contact her at:
Rhondalynn Korolak
Email
1300 892 984 (in Australia)