This document discusses leveraging principles of psychology to inform SEO decisions. It outlines different systems of thinking - system 1 involves intuition and instinct while system 2 involves rational, logical thinking. It then covers various psychological concepts like the anchoring effect, reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, consensus, and framing effect that can be used to influence behavior. Specific tactics are provided like using different tones of voice, mirroring, visualizing data, and creating checklists to overcome biases and make more informed decisions.
8. SYSTEM 2
RATIONAL THINKING
SYSTEM 1
INTUITION & INSTINCT
2) TACTICS FOR
ELIMINATING BIASES
1) HIDDEN PSYCHOLOGY
OF COMMUNICATION
& TRUST
3) WEAPONS OF INFLUENCE: UTILIZING PSYCHOLOGY TO CHANGE BEHAVIOR
18. “My wife and I visited New York City for a
week last year to see some friends.
The [taxi ride] was fine, but the asshole
never turned on the meter so he said, "Uhh,
19. At Seer, we believe there is a person behind every search…
…and we need to talk to them to be successful SEOs
27. AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
People tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent
information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.
29. You have a 95% chance of winning $10,000
100% chance of winning $9,449
A
B
30. You have a 95% chance of losing $10,000
100% chance of losing $9,449
A
B
31. LOSS AVERSION
• People are drawn to sure things over probabilities, even when
probabilities are a better choice
• People will take greater risks to avoid loss than to achieve gains
32. SEO
• STAT ranking data
• SEMrush
• GSC data
• Screaming frog crawls
PPC
• AdWords Search Query
report
33. 2 keywords:
•720 combined conversions (PPC)
•$62,000 in ad spend (PPC)
•Ranking on page 3 organically? (SEO)
PAID CONVERSIONS
ORGANIC
RANKINGS
35. We also need to be
weary of our OWN biases
an heuristics
36.
37. BENEFITS OF A CHECKLIST
1. Helps us apply what we already know, correctly
2. Helps us use data to make decisions, rather
than relying on intuition or system 1, and what
“feels good”
38. HOW TO BUILD A CHECKLIST
1. Identify goal of the checklist
2. Identify traits to evaluate that are important for
success
3. Create “do” steps
4. Create “talk steps”
5. Test it!
49. 1. ANCHORING EFFECT
• Describes the tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when
making decisions.
• Occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments.
50. 2. RECIPROCITY
• People are obliged to give back to others the form of a
behavior, gift, or service that they have received first.
• The key is to be the first to give and to ensure that what
you give is personalized and unexpected.
51. 1 MINT = 3.3% TIP INCREASE
2 MINTS = 20% TIP INCREASE
52. 3. SCARCITY
• Simply put, people want more of those things they can have
less of.
• What do your customers stand to lose if they fail to consider
your proposal?
53.
54. 4. AUTHORITY
• This is the idea that people follow the lead of credible,
knowledgeable experts.
• If you want to influence, it’s important to signal to others what
makes you a credible, knowledgeable authority.
55.
56. 5. CONSISTENCY
• People like to be consistent with the things they have
previously said or done, especially when positions are
publicly stated and written down.
57. Look for voluntary, active, and public commitments and
ideally gets those commitments in writing.
58. 6. CONSENSUS
• Especially when they are uncertain, people will look to the
actions and behaviors of others to determine their own.
60. 7. FRAMING EFFECT
• People react to a particular choice in different ways, depending on how it is presented
• People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is
presented.
61. Traffic growth was 95% to goal this month
Vs.
We missed our traffic growth goal by 5% this month
62. 9 out of 10 times I’ve seen this strategy work
Vs.
There’s a 10% chance this strategy won’t work
Over the next 30 minutes I’m going to discuss what I believe are ways that you can leverage principals of psychology to become better marketers, consultants, and SEO practitioners … and how anyone here can cultivate it. You’ll find clues to why that is in the slide that I’m about to show you.
What emotion is this guy expressing?
How fast could you sense that?
You also sensed into the future. Maybe he is ready to yell at you or attack you.
The answer was 2,745
Your mind has two modes
… they occur automatically and require little effort.
… they require attention and time, and are disrupted when attention is drawn away
Huge benefits to both systems. The problem arises when we use system 1 to make decisions that we should be using system 2 for. This leads to lots of biases and fallacies that are not optimal.
Heuristics and biases
While we like to think of ourselves as rational in our decision making, the truth is we are subject to many unseen biases and heristics due to our system 1.
Over our next 20 minutes together, we’ll talk about how you can:
Leverage system 1 to uncover effective methods of communication and build trust
Eliminate biases by leveraging system 2
And how to change behavior through influence
TRANSITION: Hidden psychology of communication and trust – customers, co-workers, clients, pitches, etc.
Of any message, this is how it breaks down
So how can you use this in your day to day lives
What’s the first way you can use this rule to your benefit?
These feel different, don’t they? Smiling puts people in a positive frame of mind. It’s arguably the easiest way you can easily build trust and rapport with your colleagues, clients, and coworkers.
Can lead to the individual building rapport with others. Why does this happen?
Similarity principle - We trust people who are like us or who are similar to people we like
Body language – copying the other person’s gestures
Using your client’s jargon/verbiage
Using your client’s customer’s language on their site!
Conversation flow and room energy.
In most cases you’ll want whomever is presenting to sit closest to the screen and have the clients in the middle/back. This way they can maintain a forward gaze for the majority of the meeting, while easily maintaining eye contact with presenters and other team members. Vs watching a tennis match.
Make it easy for your client to engage in conversation at the same time as following the presentation. This also allows the presenter to keep an eye on the client’s body language vs. watching the slides that he or she is presenting.
Late Night FM DJ Voice
Used selectively to make a point
Inflect your voice downward, making it calm and slow
The Positive/Playful Voice
Should be your default
The voice of an easy going, good natured person
Relax and smile
The Assertive Voice
Used rarely. Will cause problems and create pushback
That’s all good, but dude I do marketing…so that’s great, let’s talk about marketing
The model’s intention is to outline a process for developing a relationship between a negotiator and his or her counterpart, which culminates with the negotiator influencing the decisions of the counterpart.
Though marketing might be a little less high stakes, the idea is the same. Many of the problems that marketers in the internet age may find themselves in result [insert animations]
BUILDING TRUST AND RAPPORT THROUGH EMPATHY HAPPENS IN OUR SYSTEM 1. WHEN WE TRUST SOMEONE, IT FEELS MORE LIKE COMPLETING THE PHRASE BREAD AND BUTTER THAN IT DOES LIKE SOLVING A MATH PROBLEM… MOST TIMES ANYWAY.
What happens when we don’t start with empathy? Well you see this all the time
In the ad, Jenner is seen posing in a blond wig at a photo shoot, while a peace protest marches by. She then ditches the wig, grabs a can of Pepsi and joins the protest. Jenner gets to the front and hands the can to a police officer, who drinks as the crowd cheers.
This was posted to Reddit on March 14th and got 14k upvotes. The most upvoted comment said…
Not a whole lot of empathy shown for the real pain points and needs of this customer, and according to Reddit, many other people feel the same
This guy was willing to pay for speed, but wanted a fair priced fair. That’s the pain point that was most important to him, and the NYC cab couldn’t provide it.
At Seer – we do SEO. And we believe that there’s person behind every search, and Google will reward the content that the people like best. And to empathise with them, we need to go beyond keyword research. we need to talk to the people behind the search. Yeah, we need to talk to them. Or at least we need to hear them out somehow.
Let me show you how powerful this can be…
Gantt chart software company.
Customers wanted to know what project planning was before they knew what a project plan was. And they wanted to know what
Figure out what the people want and give it to them. Google will reward you.
How do we review customer sentiment at scale?
Client in the senior living industry
Scraped 5,00+ reviews
Ran all 1-2 star reviews through NGrams Log Likelihood
Ran all 4-5 star reviews through NGrams Log Likelihood
Shows the frequency of various terms being used
Start with empathy to build trust with your customers, and Google will reward you!
+134% INCREASE IN Local landing page conversion rate
But as we know, it’s not all about the website
How many of you have pitched an idea and been turned down in your personal or professional life?
While we like to think of ourselves as rational in our decision making, the truth is we are subject to many unseen biases and heristics due to our system 1.
Some of these are more applicable to us as marketers than others
Why do biases occur? Well, a few reasons... Availability and substitution
Shark attack, earthquake, struck by lightning – but we’re not building a wall to keep out the sharks
Use data to make decisions, rather than relying on intuition or your system 1, and what “feels good”
We all know this! Raise your hand if you’re not already using data to make decisions and get buy in for your decisions! Good, that’s step 1.
But even when we use data, we need to watch out for system 1
But it’s not that simple, let me show you why…
Raise your hand if you went with option B
B first example, A second example
Exact same odds, but most people would rather take the risk when it comes to the loss than risk the sure gain
So you get the point, there are a LOT of ways we are influenced by biases and heuristics
SO, it’s not JUST about using data, but it’s also about how we frame our recommendation through data. MORE ON THIS LATEER
This is why we are now combining PPC data with SEO data through a tool called power BI in order solve these challenges
We can now make a revenue case for SEO strategies by tying in PPC conversion data
This allows us to better use data but also visualize it
This is why we are now combining PPC data with SEO data through a tool called power BI in order solve these challenges
Client that creates a product that allows their customers to track their work, but they didn’t want to refer to their product as “project management software” because they wanted to differentiate themselves from their customers.
bubbles are keywords, and size of bubble is ad spend
Add conversion and average order rank
“Project management” – MSV = 1,000,000 or whatever it is
Looking at only competitors couldn’t make the case to CMO
Visualization can now connect the dots between PPC and SEO
golf client, wanted to understand the competitive landscape across one product verticle - golf drivers
In the past you may have asked them who their top 5 competitors are, checked out their rankings, ran a gap analyses, etc.
What we can do in PBI..
Take all of the keywords that have converted one or more time
Throw them into STAT for 24 hours
Create a top 20 ranking report
Join with PPC query report
size of box is number of ranking keywords that have converted on PPC in the driver category
Also need to be weary of our own biases and heuristics
Never run a competitive analysis with 3-5 competitors again
When it comes to SEO –
Don’t follow them, unless what they’re doing is driving results and you can beat them (more authoritative site, better content, more logical contextual relevance, fresher content)
Analyze them at scale
The first way that we can use our system 2 to overcome our system 1 is by using checklists, or simple formulas
What’s the first way we can scoot around our system 1 and eliminate biases through checklists..yes, simple checklists.
In the early 2000s, the WHO realized that they had an international crisis on their hands when they looked at the amount of deaths from surgery and complications from surgery
So, they modified a pre flight airline checklist to the operating room
It was a super simple checklists with things to do check before giving anesthesia, before the incision, and before the patient leaves the OR
In 6 months, deaths fell by 47 percent and post surgical complications dropped by 36 percent.
Known allergy?
Is the site marked?
Does everyone know what procedure we’re about to do?
Identified important things that anesthesiologists know, but might overlook due to the unexpected - like a patient’s allergies. The reason why this checklist was so effective is because it ensured that surgeons followed simple, basic preventative measures that they consistently thought they followed follow but dind’t. These misses are simple failures, perfect for a classic cheWcklist.
Created procedures for the nurses to follow instead of assuming that the surgeon knows what he’s doing – like is the site marked
For any problem that involves a process and making decisions
$100,000 to spend on off-site initiatives – you can pick 3. Which do you pick?
What was the reason we wanted to do this in the first place
Created simple if/then formula to tell us if this was good or not - over a certain amount of revenue based off client’s CVr and AOV
Eliminated our own biases and instead applied an objective checklist to help us answer the problem
not like there is some ultimate ranking system
but we're evaluating strengths and experiences with client needs and opportunities
not like there is some ultimate ranking system
but we're evaluating strengths and experiences with client needs and opportunities
WARNING: THESE ARE WEAPONS, DON’T USE THEM ON EACH OTHER OR PEOPLE THAT YOU LOVE
Really 5.5 million
Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, the concept of “reciprocity” is simple -- if someone does something for you, you naturally will want to do something for them.
If you've ever gotten a mint with your bill at a restaurant, you've been the victim of reciprocity. According to Cialdini, when servers bring a check to their patrons without a mint, the diners will tip according to their perceptions of the service given. With one mint, the tip jumps up 3.3%. Two mints? The tip jumps "through the roof" to roughly 20%.
Can you spot the authority signals in this lawyer’s office?
Top lawyers
Pictures with important people
Diplomas
Maybe you can name drop other big clients who have implemented certain strategies?
80% chance of success vs. 20% chance of failure
While we like to think of ourselves as rational in our decision making, the truth is we are subject to many biases due to our system 1
Behavioral change stairway model
Talk to your customers so you can empathize with them
Smile, 3 tones of voice, mirror to build trust and rapport
Make checklists, use and visualize data in order to influence
It’s my hope that by doing so, you’ll become marketers, better practitioners, better consultants, and hopefully better human beings.