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SEO Is Not That Hard
Are you eager to boost your website's performance on search engines like Google but unsure where to start or what truly makes a difference in SEO?
Then "SEO Is Not That Hard" hosted by Edd Dawson, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience in building and successfully ranking websites, is for you.
Edd shares actionable tips, proven strategies, and valuable insights to help you improve your Google rankings and create better websites for your users.
Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned SEO professional, this podcast offers something for everyone. Join us as we simplify SEO and give you the knowledge and skills to achieve your online goals with confidence.
Brought to you by keywordspeopleuse.com
SEO Is Not That Hard
The Speed of Satisfaction: Mastering Time to Value
The deceptively simple concept of Time to Value might be the most overlooked factor in your SEO strategy. In this eye-opening episode, I break down why the speed at which users experience the core benefit of your website directly impacts your search rankings.
Time to Value (TTV) is that magical moment when a visitor says, "Ah, I get it!" – the instant they realize your site delivers exactly what they needed. Whether it's finding the perfect product, getting a crucial answer, or completing a task, how quickly this happens determines whether they'll stay, bounce, or become loyal visitors. And Google is watching these behaviors closely.
We explore the two distinct types of TTV – Basic Value (the quickest path to main benefits) and Exceed Value (discovering those delightful secondary features) – and why prioritizing that initial value delivery is critical in today's short-attention-span world. You'll learn practical design strategies to reduce your site's TTV, from simplifying onboarding to creating intuitive navigation, clear CTAs, and lightning-fast page speeds.
The beauty of optimizing for Time to Value is that it naturally aligns with Google's core mission: serving the best results to users. When visitors quickly find value on your site, it reduces bounce rates, increases engagement time, boosts conversions, and builds brand loyalty – all signals that tell Google your site deserves higher rankings. Ready to transform your approach to website design? Listen now and discover why being helpful, fast, and clear might be all the SEO strategy you really need.
SEO Is Not That Hard is hosted by Edd Dawson and brought to you by KeywordsPeopleUse.com
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You can get your free copy of my 101 Quick SEO Tips at: https://seotips.edddawson.com/101-quick-seo-tips
To get a personal no-obligation demo of how KeywordsPeopleUse could help you boost your SEO and get a 7 day FREE trial of our Standard Plan book a demo with me now
See Edd's personal site at edddawson.com
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"Werq" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of the SEO intelligence platform, keywordpupilusercom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimise 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 and welcome back to SEO is not that hard. It's me here, ed Dawson, as usual, and today we're going to look into a concept that might sound a little more like product design than SEO, but, trust me, it's absolutely vital for getting and keeping users, which, as we know, google absolutely loves. So today we're going to talk about time to value, or TTV.
Speaker 1:So if you've ever wondered why some websites just click with you instantly and why you abandon others within seconds, time to value is probably the hidden sort of force at play there. So what is time to value? Basically, it's the amount of time it takes for a new user to realise the core benefit of your product, service or website. So here's an example. So say you download a new photo editing app, how long does it take you to successfully edit and save your first photo. That's the time to value. It's the time you take to figure out where the editing tools are. Or if the process is confusing, your time to value is high and you're probably going to get frustrated and delete the app. But if you can jump in, make a quick change and share it in seconds, then your time to value is low and you're much more likely to stick around. What it's really about is the kind of like kind of aha moment, where the instant where a user says, oh, I get this, this is useful, this is a good tool, this is a good website, this is a good website. So why is this important for SEO? Google's algorithms are constantly trying to understand user behavior. If users quickly find what they're looking for on your site, if they spend more time engaging, if they return, these are all signals of a positive user experience. So a low time to value is a huge contributor to that positive experience. It reduces your bounce rate, it increases your engagement and it builds loyalty with people. These are all the things that Google will take note of. Now.
Speaker 1:There's generally two types of time to value. The first one is time to basic value, and this is the quickest path for the main benefit. So for an e-commerce site, it might be successfully completing the first purchase. For a blog, it might be finding the answer to a question in a clear, concise way. On keywords people use. It's that people being able to do that first search for a people also ask where they can see that graph of all the questions people are asking on a topic really quickly. They see value quickly and secondly, there's time to exceed value and this is where users discover the secondary benefits that might make your product even more indispensable. So for the e-commerce site, this could be successfully applying a discount code, setting up a wish list, discovering product reviews and keywords people use. It's things like using keyword lists, like the keyword clustering process, things that are a little bit more Tricky to get in seconds deeper into the product, but they're still important things to how quickly do they get to exceeding the basic value and basically, the quicker you can get your users to that basic value, the better, because we know attention spans are shorter than ever.
Speaker 1:If your website or your product doesn't deliver quickly, then users are going to simply leave. And when users leave quickly, what does that tell Google? It tells Google that your site's probably not the best answer for their query. So here's how a good time to value directly will help your SEO efforts. It gives you improved user engagement signals. So a low time to value means users are more likely to stay on your site, browse other pages and spend more time A strong positive signal.
Speaker 1:It will reduce bounce rates. If users quickly find what they need, they're less likely to bounce back to the search results and look for other sources for the same information. A lower bounce rate back to those search results is this positive signal. It'll increase your conversions, whatever your goal is If it's a sale, a sign-up, a download a clear path to value makes users more likely to convert. And more conversions mean, you know, more business, more money. It's much better to increase your conversion rate than it is to increase the number of people coming to your site and it's simpler often to increase that conversion rate than to actually generate more traffic. And finally, it'll give you a better brand perception. So users have a quick, really positive experience. I'm much more likely to remember your brand, they're much more likely to recommend it and they're much more likely to return in the future. And this builds authority and trust. And these are those indirect, powerful seo signals that you're trying to drive and if you think about it from google's perspective, their job is to serve the best results. That's what they always want to do, and if a site consistently delivers value quickly for their users, makes their users happy, then that signals a good result, a good site to Google.
Speaker 1:So how do you design for a low time to value on a website? It starts with understanding your user and what the primary goal is when they land on your page. So here's a few tips, a few things you can think about. The first would be be, if you do any kind of onboarding, simplify that onboarding as much as possible. Have a minimal sign in. If you do require registration, ask only for essential information and only at the time that you actually need it. Offer special login options. Don't throw huge forms at them before they even see what you've got to offer. If you can do things like allowing them to log in with Google or with Facebook or Instagram or other social platforms where they've already done that process, so it's a simple sign in that makes it much easier for them. Focus on that key first action you want them to do. So identify the single most important thing a new user can take to get value and get them to that directly.
Speaker 1:Don't overwhelm everyone with loads of options for a new software trial. It might be create your first project, not set up your profile that you want them to do. For example, keywords people use, you'll find if a new user comes there, the first thing we ask them to do is to do a search, for people also ask results without asking to log in or anything else. We want them to do that straight away because it demonstrates the value of our product instantly to people. They can get it straight away and then further down the line. That's when we'll start saying let's create an account. Here's some other options. Here's some other things you did. We want that quick time to value straight away.
Speaker 1:You want crystal clear calls to actions and navigation. Make it so easy for users to find what they're looking for. Your main navigation should be logical. Your call to actions should stand out. If someone lands on your product page, is the add to basket or the request, a demo button, immediately visible and clickable.
Speaker 1:Go for an intuitive design. Avoid cluttered layouts. Use white space effectively. Don't make people work to figure out what it is that you want them to do and where the most valuable content or action they need to take is provide instant gratification where you can, or pre-populate content if your tool requires creation, provide templates or examples. Graphic design tool as I said before, it can start with the templates. Users aren't faced with a blank canvas. Have smart defaults. If there are settings, pre-select all the sensible defaults. Don't make users configure everything from scratch. And personalization Wherever possible. Use data to personalize the experience. If they're a returning user, remember the preferences or the recent activity, the basic settings that they've set up, and also Emphasize what the benefits are of your site, not just the features.
Speaker 1:People want to know what's in it for them. So your hero section, your main content, should immediately communicate the benefit that users will gain. Don't just list features. For instance, instead of saying our software is X, y or Z, say things like save 10 hours a week with our automated reporting and make sure that your value, the proposition, is up front. Make your unique selling points evident. The moment someone lands on your page, they know what you're all about and what you can bring to them. Not features, but the benefits you can bring to them.
Speaker 1:Always make sure to use visual cues and demos A quick video or an animated GIF which demonstrates your core features or a function can be far more effective than a big block of text and illustrations. Clear visuals they break down complex processes and they can highlight key features. Finally and this goes back to something I've said in many other podcasts optimize page speed. This is fundamental. If your site takes ages to load, the user's time to value is immediately compromised, no matter how good everything else that comes along, you're done if your site takes a long time to load. Faster sites mean faster delivery of that value. When you're thinking about your website, you just ask yourself if a brand new visitor lands on this page, how quickly can they understand what we offer and can they achieve their primary goal?
Speaker 1:And prioritizing this low time to value isn't just about making users happy. It's about building better and more effective website. That naturally aligns with what google wants to see in a website. It's all about being helpful, being fast and being clear, and when you do that seo, it quite often takes care of itself. That's why I always bang on make your site fast, make it intuitive, make it easy to use, make it obvious what you're doing, and this is what time to value is all about. So that's it for today. I hope this explanation of time to value helps you think differently about your website and the user experience that you provide for people.
Speaker 1:If you've got any questions or you want to show your thoughts, do reach out. All the details of how to get in touch are in the show notes. Yeah, and until next time, 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. This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my seo tools and services.
Speaker 1:You can find links to all the links I mentioned 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. 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. Post 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 and 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.