Far too many websites “Rick Roll” visitors to their homepage and the SEO consequences can be disastrous. Not only does “Rick Rolling” choke a website’s overall traffic to a virtual trickle, but it also reduces the value of each visitor as well as undermines a website’s rankings in the search engines. Fortunately it is an easy SEO mistake to avoid and you can prevent your search engine rankings taking a hit by following this simple advice:
Don’t “Rick Roll” visitors to your homepage.
Okay, okay, I admit I’m using the term “Rick Roll” pretty loosely. Strictly speaking a Rick Roll involves tricking someone into following a link to a video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. To experience for yourself what it’s like to get Rick Rolled, go to Jeb’s blog on the ScribeFire plugin and click on one of the links in the comment about the fictional ScriBot plugin.
Our talented Web designer & developer, Jack Shepler, introduced us to the Rick Roll a while back, but the prank and the goofy video still hasn’t gotten old for me. I’ve been Rick Rolling friends and colleagues in emails ever since. Rick Rolling Jeb through that comment in his own blog post was one of my more recent triumphs and immensely satisfying (even if it was a little too easy).
As fun as it can be to Rick Roll the unwary and unsuspecting, no small to medium sized business website would ever intentionally Rick Roll it’s visitors with bogus links pointing to “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The first couple times might be amusing, but the joke quickly grows old and becomes a more and more annoying prank. Eventually such a website would lose all its credibility and the visitors would eventually stop coming.
But this is almost exactly what a website does when it has a video on it’s homepage that autoplays every time it loads in a visitor’s web browser.
An autoplaying video on a website’s homepage renders all those precious links in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) little better than the Rick Roll links Internet pranksters have been leaving in comments all over the Blogosphere. The user experience is the same: (1) eager anticipation and hope of finding something useful or interesting, followed by (2) disappointment and irritation at the intrusiveness of the autoplaying video, culminating in (3) a mad scramble to get to the browser’s back button and return to the calm serenity of Google before (4) following a link to your competitor’s site.
Even if a new visitor to your website withstands the aural assault of the autoplaying video, it makes it more likely for that visitor to view fewer pages and spend less time on site. This is because many of your website’s visitors use your homepage as a sort of home base for their navigation of your site. After exploring one section, visitors tend to return to the homepage to begin exploring other sections of the website. Warry of being “Rick Rolled” again on the homepage, a visitor is more likely to leave your website altogether in order to avoid having to endure the video’s unwelcome intrusion.
So, why would a search engine ever care if a website “Rick Rolls” its visitors with an autoplaying video on the homepage? In a certain sense it doesn’t care at all. The video is virtually invisible to the search engine spiders and the search engines don’t have to suffer through it playing when they crawl your homepage. But Google does care about the user experience on a website and can get a pretty good idea of that user experience through web analytics.
In a blog post at SEOmoz.org our friends at Slingshot SEO confirmed a nagging suspicion that Jeb and I had and could never quite shake: namely that Google does pay attention to user stats like bounce rates, time on site and depth of visit (page views) when ranking websites. When a site “Rick Rolls” visitors with an autoplaying video, not only do you get less value out of each visitor to your site, but you are also actively working against improving your search engine rankings.
I’m sure we’ve all been “Rick Rolled” in one way or another by homepages we’ve visited in the past. If you’ve been “Rick Rolled” by a website’s homepage, please share it with us by linking to it in the comments below.
Don’t “Rick Roll” visitors to your homepage.
Okay, okay, I admit I’m using the term “Rick Roll” pretty loosely. Strictly speaking a Rick Roll involves tricking someone into following a link to a video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. To experience for yourself what it’s like to get Rick Rolled, go to Jeb’s blog on the ScribeFire plugin and click on one of the links in the comment about the fictional ScriBot plugin.
Our talented Web designer & developer, Jack Shepler, introduced us to the Rick Roll a while back, but the prank and the goofy video still hasn’t gotten old for me. I’ve been Rick Rolling friends and colleagues in emails ever since. Rick Rolling Jeb through that comment in his own blog post was one of my more recent triumphs and immensely satisfying (even if it was a little too easy).
As fun as it can be to Rick Roll the unwary and unsuspecting, no small to medium sized business website would ever intentionally Rick Roll it’s visitors with bogus links pointing to “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The first couple times might be amusing, but the joke quickly grows old and becomes a more and more annoying prank. Eventually such a website would lose all its credibility and the visitors would eventually stop coming.
But this is almost exactly what a website does when it has a video on it’s homepage that autoplays every time it loads in a visitor’s web browser.
An autoplaying video on a website’s homepage renders all those precious links in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) little better than the Rick Roll links Internet pranksters have been leaving in comments all over the Blogosphere. The user experience is the same: (1) eager anticipation and hope of finding something useful or interesting, followed by (2) disappointment and irritation at the intrusiveness of the autoplaying video, culminating in (3) a mad scramble to get to the browser’s back button and return to the calm serenity of Google before (4) following a link to your competitor’s site.
Even if a new visitor to your website withstands the aural assault of the autoplaying video, it makes it more likely for that visitor to view fewer pages and spend less time on site. This is because many of your website’s visitors use your homepage as a sort of home base for their navigation of your site. After exploring one section, visitors tend to return to the homepage to begin exploring other sections of the website. Warry of being “Rick Rolled” again on the homepage, a visitor is more likely to leave your website altogether in order to avoid having to endure the video’s unwelcome intrusion.
So, why would a search engine ever care if a website “Rick Rolls” its visitors with an autoplaying video on the homepage? In a certain sense it doesn’t care at all. The video is virtually invisible to the search engine spiders and the search engines don’t have to suffer through it playing when they crawl your homepage. But Google does care about the user experience on a website and can get a pretty good idea of that user experience through web analytics.
In a blog post at SEOmoz.org our friends at Slingshot SEO confirmed a nagging suspicion that Jeb and I had and could never quite shake: namely that Google does pay attention to user stats like bounce rates, time on site and depth of visit (page views) when ranking websites. When a site “Rick Rolls” visitors with an autoplaying video, not only do you get less value out of each visitor to your site, but you are also actively working against improving your search engine rankings.
I’m sure we’ve all been “Rick Rolled” in one way or another by homepages we’ve visited in the past. If you’ve been “Rick Rolled” by a website’s homepage, please share it with us by linking to it in the comments below.
I think it’s important to note that Ben isn’t saying that video on your home page is bad – it can be good in many cases.
Done right, a home page video should make your visitors feel a sense of connection to your website. The video should personify your overall goals. Like Ben says, however, you don’t want to surprise users with auto-play, particularly with audio.
That doesn’t mean you can’t make the video an integral part of your home page.
The best way to entice your users to watch the video is to auto-play the video without audio. Include a button that says “play audio”. When clicked the video would then start from the beginning with audio on. Not only will the user not be rick rolled or irritated while having their speakers on, they’ll know what they’re getting into before they hit play. This is a common practice in flash video advertising across the web.
Short of that, give a preview much like Youtube does. A simple screen shot with a play button works nicely.
-Jack
Jack, thanks for clarifying that for me. I definitely think web video can be a great asset for websites. Just don’t force it upon users via autoplay. I also should have clarified that the type of video I had in mind incorporated audio. It’d be ok to have silent video or a slide show autoplay, so long as it isn’t overly distracting, intrusive or “busy”.
Jack, those are some great design ideas for how to entice users to view web video on a page without being overly intrusive. It’s also what you did on the Lodge on Magnolia site you designed. You were probably too modest to mention it or link to it in your comment, but it is a very good illustration of the web design concepts you’re talking about.
Check out this site for a pretty awful homepage “Rick Roll”
ixwebhosting.com
It’s gotta be seen to be believed. Not only is the audio exceptionally grating, but the video is even more intrusive. It felt like Erica was leaping off the screen and invading my personal space!
Here’s another site with a “rickrolling” homepage:
Roundpeg.biz
This comes courtesy of PJ who received one of their spam-casts asking him if he needed a new website.
Here’s another site to “rick roll” your friends with:
http://the-best-deal-ever.com/
No video, just in-your-face, obnoxious, auto-playing audio.
Does anyone see a trend emerging with these rick roll-esque homepages?
A lot are from pushy sales sites with untrustworthy domains like a dot biz or too-many-hyphens.com.
Not only will auto-playing media hurt your SEO, it’ll undermine your credibility and destroy your conversions.