Human Emotional Filter and its Effects on SEO

The web is a place for people. Truth is, the Human Emotional Filter (HEF) plays a big role in SEO. That’s plain, simple fact. SEO has extended to just being a technical, code guru into a job that requires multiple masteries that extend to the field of marketing, copywriting, functionality, and even design. So what’s the human emotional filter and how does it affect SEO?

The Blueprint

We as human beings are wired to feel. We feel happy, we feel sad, we feel wanting, we feel satisfied, we feel angry, we feel excited – we have emotions running in and out of our hearts day in and day out. There is a blueprint that has made us who we are. People nowadays act out of what we feel. This is depicted in movies “Follow your heart”, even if oftentimes what we feel is not the best decision at all.

Unfortunately, in sales and in laws of attraction, what is logical is boring, unprofitable and is also generally hard to sell. Do you know that every time someone lands in your webpage, you are selling your page (its content, its design, its functionality, etc.) to them in exchange for their time, and perhaps, money?

Every time a user enters your site, that user has the chance to improve your site’s User Activity (UA) or leave (which is not a good thing to your UA profile). So what do you do?

You make them stay.

How do you make them stay?

Create things in your website that pierce their Human Emotional Filter.

Make them feel.

Trigger-Happy 

There are ways where you can attract a user’s attention and lead them on in the content of your website. Basically here are some of the things that are happening (and you need to take care of) from the moment they come in, to the time they go out:

1) Site Design / Theme – A user enters your website, looks around, decides if the ‘look’ speaks of a good, trustworthy brand and is worth his time.

2) Great Copywriting / Video Content – The user reads some of the above-the-fold content or video about your product or service and finds himself excited or wanting.

3) Branding – The user goes ahead and looks at your about page, clients you’ve worked with, your team and company history and tries to feel in their gut if you’re someone who they could trust.

4) Subscription – The user likes what he sees and subscribes to your news-feed in hopes of receiving more of the great information from your website.

5) Conversion / Loyalty – The user comes back through your news feed and decides he trusts you enough and you have a good brand and reputation, so he goes ahead and purchases your product.

Before you get into that sweet 5th step, there is the critical first two steps wherein the Human Emotional Filter plays a huge, huge part. You need to make them FEEL who you are by making them see, read, watch and hear what they can get out of you.

Our favorite subjects is ourselves. So make sure the first two steps are all about your users.

The Tricky Part

Is that I can’t really tell you exactly what you should write in your website, how your video should go, what you should say or what content you should write. The Human Emotional Filter is an extremely customized, reactive decision-maker. So your website has to be extremely customized to fit a person’s wants/needs in order to pierce their HEF positively.

How does all this Affect SEO?

Simple. The better you are at piercing a person’s Human Emotional Filter, the easier you are in getting them to convert and stay loyal to your brand. First of all, it affects your site’s User Activity by positively affecting your Dwell Time Metrics (DTM). The more people spending more time in your website in a lot of your pages, the better. This factor is very difficult to fake, buy, and manipulate especially with the accuracy and intelligence that Google has farmed over time through a lot of website’s Google Analytics data.

Secondly, it positively increases user interaction – which, chances are, will reflect on your social signal data. People who like the feel of your page and who can relate to your content will probably give you a Tweet, +1, Share or a Like at the very least.

Thirdly, links. Need I say more?

Some Actionable Steps to Help you Out

Generally, here are some of the things you can directly take out of this entry:

1) Use strong eye-catching words above the fold (Usually in your article title) like ‘Sex’, ‘Discover’, ‘Free’, ‘Help’, ‘Know’, ‘Money’, ‘Powerful’, ‘Secret’, ‘Proven’, ‘Save’, ‘Trust’, ‘Understand’.

2) Create strong branding pages such as an About Page, Company History Page, Meet the Team Page, etc.

3) Start doing Email Marketing! Mailchimp is a free email marketing service company, you can start there. That’s how over 1,000 SEO Hacker readers keep on coming back here (you can sign up on the form on the right sidebar)

Start piercing your user’s Human Emotional Filter. Chances are, your competitors are still stuck in the field of doing technical SEO. Your creativity and ability to emotionally communicate with your users is your best asset – it is not easily replicated.