Speaker 1: 0:52

Hi, ed Dawson here, and, as I'm a bit busy at the moment and need a break, welcome to another one of my best of SEO is not that hard podcasts. These are the episodes from the back catalog that I think have the greatest hits and ones that are still relevant and provide great value for you. So, without further ado, let's get into the episode. Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of the SEO intelligence platform, keywordfewpolicecom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimize your content for traffic and authority. I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge, hints and tips I've amassed over that time. Hello, welcome back to SEO is not that hard. It's me here, ed Dawson, hosting as usual, and today I'm covering tool tips, and so this isn't tips for tools that I might suggest people use. This is actually about tool tips on web pages. So you know the little things. You normally something like a question mark, something like that you can hover over, or it's next to something where you can get some additional information just by hovering over it tool tips, hoverover, or it's next to something where you can get some additional information just by hovering over it tooltips, um. So this is something that's really okay it's both usability and seo, but it's one that's really worth talking about. So, yeah, let's uh dive into it.

Speaker 1: 2:07

So, first of all, let's define what a tooltip is. So, really, a tooltip is a brief, usually informative message, hopefully, that appears when a user hovers over, focuses on or taps an element on a web page. So it's a way of providing additional context, information or clarification about something on your web page without clustering up the interface. So tooltips are commonly used to explain icons, abbreviations, form fields, row headers, that kind of thing, and hence they're there in design to enhance the user's understanding and interaction with your web pages. So then you might be thinking okay, tooltips improve user experience, but how does that relate to SEO? Well, there's a good question. But while they are primarily a usability feature, they can indirectly influence your site's SEO performance by improving user engagement metrics, which we know is important now, and providing opportunities to include topically relevant keywords and text on your page.

Speaker 1: 3:09

So let's have a look, first of all, why tooltips are good for usability. So, first of all, they enhance your users' understanding, so they're there to provide immediate contextual information without requiring users to navigate away from the page to try and find out what's going on. So, for example, if you have a complex term or an unfamiliar icon, a tooltip can offer the explanation on the page, ensuring users aren't confused or frustrated. Secondly, they reduce the cognitive load. Okay, so, by offering additional information only when needed, tooltips help keep your interface clean and uncluttered, so users can then focus on the primary content and access extra details that they need on demand, which makes for a smoother user experience. Rather than having to wade through loads of text. Especially as they get used to using the page, they won't need to have that reminder every time. It improves your form completion rates. So in forms, especially when we've got information that might not be completely obviously clear where people have got to provide, a tool tip can give information on how to fill out specific fields correctly, which reduces errors. It means you're more likely to get successful submissions, particularly useful for complex technical input fields.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Tool tips encourage user engagement. So interactive elements like these can make your website more engaging and users are more likely to interact with content that provides them with immediate feedback or different information in a user-friendly way as they go along. And finally, it's got accessibility benefits. So if you implement them correctly, then tooltips can improve the accessibility for users who rely on screen readers or keyboard navigation, meaning that you know you're going to ensure a broader audience can use your website. Okay. So that's the usability side of things, which is worth doing it just for that usability in itself, because it'll help, like, say, with a whole bunch of stuff including conversion rates. Um, but when it comes to pure seo benefits, you know there are benefits that tooltips may have when it comes to seo, so let's run through them.

Speaker 1: 5:06

So one we've got increased time on page. So providing this additional information encourage interaction. This tooltips can keep users engaged for longer and increase dwell time signals to search engines that your content is valuable and relevant. Secondly, it reduces bounce rate. You know a better user experience means a user is less likely to bounce, leave your site immediately. So a lower bounce rate can positively affect search engine rankings. We know that, as it indicates user satisfaction, you get an improved click-through rates. If tooltips are used in navigation menus or call to action buttons, they can guide users more effectively than just having a page without them, and this can lead to high click-through rates in important pages.

Speaker 1: 5:45

Keywords you know tooltips offer an opportunity to include relevant keywords phrases topically relevant that may not fit naturally into the main content of a page, and this can help with your semantic SEO, as search engines can then understand more about the context and the relevance of the content and the page because of this tooltip information. You know we've talked about the context and the relevance of the content and the page because of this tooltip information. You know we've talked about the enhanced accessibility. You know accessible websites often rank better because they're catered to a wider audience. So using tooltips correctly can improve your site's accessibility, which can indirectly boost your SEO. And, yeah, and overall user behavior signals Positive user interaction, such as hovering over elements engaging with tooltips, can contribute to favorable user behavior metrics. So these metrics can influence how search engines will perceive your site's quality.

Speaker 1: 6:29

So, however, it's important to note that for tooltips to have these SEO benefits, they need to be implemented properly. Search engines primarily crawl static content, so if your tooltips are hidden beyond JavaScript or aren't accessible in HTML, search engines may not index that content. The caveat is yes, google does render pages. It does try and do its best with JavaScript, so they may still work if it's all done in JavaScript, but why not do it properly the first time around, where you know it's definitely going to work? Okay, so if I've got you sold on why you should be using tooltips, then here's some best practices for how to implement them in a way that will work best for usability and also for SEO.

Speaker 1: 7:08

So, first of all, use semantic HTML and ARIA labels. So if you use HTML elements and ARIA I call them ARIA because it's hard to say. It stands for Accessible, rich Internet Applications Attributes Just Google A-R-I-A and you'll learn all about it and this will ensure that screen readers, search engines, can both access the tooltip content. You'll find loads of examples online of how to do this. Secondly, keep your content relatively concise. Tooltips there should be valuable information that's directly related to the element that they're associated with. So, you know, keep that text concise so that users can quickly grasp and understand what you're trying to get through to them. Optimize your tooltip content with keywords. You know, make sure if you just, you know get your keywords in there, don't be spamming, but get it in. Naturally it will help. This is going to add extra relevance to your seo and provide that additional context to the search engines.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Ensure mobile compatibility, especially on. You know, a lot of sites now get most of the traffic from mobile users, so you want to make sure that you know on touch devices it work, because on a touch device there's no hovering option, so make sure your tooltips are accessible via taps so they don't interfere with the user's ability to interact with other elements. Use um, yeah, ara attributes like the um area dash, label area dash, described by or role equals tooltip to make tooltips accessible to those users with disabilities, because it's not only broadens your audience, but it also can positively impact seo. Avoid overuse too many tooltips can overwhelm users and they can cluster your interface. So use them just for the elements that genuinely need additional explanation and provide fallback content In case JavaScript's failsafe is disabled, ensure your tooltip content is still available.

Speaker 1: 8:57

If that's something complex, then talk to a developer on how to do that. And, yeah, and style Be consistent with your style. So have a consistent design for tooltips on your site so once a user's discovered one tooltip, they'll be able to spot where all those are on your site. And finally, yeah, if you can monitor user interaction, so you can use analytics tools to track how users have interacted with tooltips. So if you find ones that just aren't needed. So if you find ones that just aren't needed, it means you could possibly remove them. Or if you find ones where people are having to, you know, continue to have to use them, maybe it means you've got some more education you need to do around whatever that topic is. Okay.

Speaker 1: 9:40

So for a real-world way that tooltips are used, we've actually just updated our content optimization tool that integrates with Google Search Console, because that has has got a lot of very kind of well, technical terms in them, or well, technical terms that don't necessarily have an obvious explanation if you don't know what they are. So, for example, things like similarity is a column for pages and queries and things like that where we're looking at creating these embeddings. The case of similarity If you don't know what it means, you might not get the full explanation. So we've got tooltips for that to explain what the similarity is. Also, what's the difference between page position and best query position on some of these data tables we've got so all these things now we've now got tooltips next to them so that people can understand them, because we were finding, when we were doing usability testing, that people, although they appreciated that we've got all this data. They didn't necessarily know what each column meant and what it related to. So with this now, tooltips are there so that if people want a reminder or want to learn what each one is, they're there.

Speaker 1: 10:38

It's not going to be something that makes a big difference to SEO because Google doesn't crawl on those pages. This is a web app where it's not publicly accessible. So, yeah, google's never going to say it's not going to help us SEO-wise. But there are other places on the site where we do have tooltips and that will be helping us with our SEO as well as helping our usability. So, yeah, that's tooltips which you may not have ever considered before in terms of an SEO thing, but let's remember, they enhance usability, help users with additional context without cluttering interface, which can improve user satisfaction, get conversion rates up. It has indirect SEO benefits. So, again, those user engagement metrics help, but obviously there's also things like the keyword and the context of the text in those tooltips that will help your SEO. It's really key to implement it properly. Use HTML, use that A-R-I-A method of getting it implemented and avoid, like you know, the common pitfalls as in don't hide critical information, don't neglect accessibility and don't overcomplicate your tooltips. So yeah, I hope you found that useful.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Any questions, any thoughts? Get in touch with me as usual. All the ways of doing that are in the show notes. And until next time, just remember keep optimizing, stay curious and remember SEO is not that hard when you understand the basics. Thanks for listening. It means a lot to me.

Speaker 1: 12:04

This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my SEO tools and services. You can find links to all the links I mention here in the show notes. Just remember, with all these places where I use my name, that Ed is spelled with two Ds. You can find me on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. Just search for Ed Dawson on both.

Speaker 1: 12:19

You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast. The link is in the show notes. You can try our SEO intelligence platform, keywords People Use at keywordspeopleusecom, where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online. Poster those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority. And finally, connect your Google Search Console account for your sites so we can crawl and understand your actual content, find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimize and continually refine your content Targeted, personalized advice to keep your traffic growing. If you're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice, then visit wwweddawsoncom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO. Is not that hard.