Recently, Google added the “Instant Previews” feature, which enables users to preview websites on search results before clicking on them. It is important to analyse how these features will affect SEO strategies and the experts involved in the SEO effort.

Instant Previews allow users to see a screenshot of the target page of search results, and even highlight the most relevant paragraphs on this page. Users will now be able to see if the following page is the one they were looking for. In case they do not really know what the page should look like, they might choose the one that looks the best. See below an example of how this feature looks like on search results.

First Impression
This feature changes the relationship between SEO and design significantly. Designers will start to have a big role in attracting new visitors to websites through organic listings, and not just to to persuade them to stay or to act on a website (e.g. to click on a button, to view certain content, etc).

Designers will need to change their mindset and take into account new elements when creating a page layout and design :

• How will the page look in a thumbnail view?
• Which colors will attract the users to enter the site?
• Which fonts (and which sizes) to use on important pages? Typography - using larger font sizes might become an important conversion element

 While the SEO experts will need to review the content on the pages, the key content should consist of the required keywords and short sentences. This way google will highlight short and targeted sentences, and users will see what they actually can find on the site.

The end of trick or treat?
We got used to SEO tricks, spam sites, or empty content sites that are meant only to link to other sites. These sites will attract less people to click on them, even though they might still be indexed and appear on the search results. Users don’t need to visit the site to know how it looks, or to make sure that this is the site they are looking for.

For example, adding keywords, or page description text to the bottom of the site will have a new meanings; if the highlighted text on the preview will be located on the bottom of the page, users might automatically skip rest of the content when viewing the page.

What should we focus on?
The designers will need to work with the SEO reports, and design the pages according to the keywords priorities and the content appearance hierarchy. Whereas the SEO experts will need to work with the designers and define which content should be located on top, and which on the bottom.

This will result in an even stronger Conversion-Driven SEO, where SEOs, analysts and designers will work in an integrated way to bring qualified visitors rather then to rank highly for a keyword. As any other marketing effort, also SEO must prove itself by increasing the bottom line, not the rankings or number of visitors.

The connection between designers, SEO experts and content editors was never a must to achieve SEO goals, now it is definitely required to target and attract visitors to the promoted pages.

The change is here! Company owners have to assure that their creative and SEO teams work hand in glove.