Site Usability and SEO go hand in hand

Writing for search engine optimisation (SEO) has moved way beyond the use of strategically placed keywords. People use SEO to drive traffic, which is the aim. But there is no point in driving that traffic unless you are prompting an action from the user once they get to your site.

To create the kind of content that search engines will latch on to, you need to remember that your main target audience is actually human. That means that text needs to read well and be easy to understand, instead of being full of key words and key word phrases that become meaningless if they are too long, not grammatically correct or nonsensical.

Here are some fundamentals to remember:

1. Write understandable content. The simpler the better.
2. Design your page so that a user is encouraged to click through to other pages in the site, thereby reducing what is known as a ‘bounce rate’. Google uses the bounce rates of sites to measure the relevance of the search term of the users vs. the landing they have come to.
3. If you must use a form, keep it simple. The more steps users have to complete to reach a desired goal, the greater the barrier to entry.
4. Get the balance right in terms of text and image usage. Pages must load quickly to prevent the user from losing interest and leaving. Images must be saved at a small, web-optimised size and should be named to suit the content of the page, e.g., Image01.jpeg means nothing to a search engine – HotelEastLondon.jpeg means much more.
5. Text per page should be between 200 and 300 words. If an important document like a White Paper needs to be published online, or something that is longer than what is recommended, then do it just know that unless there is a lot of value in the content, it is unlikely that most people will read more than 200 words.
6. It’s important to consider the role of screen readers when naming images. These are software applications designed to ‘identify and interpret’ what is being displayed on the screen… (and) then re-presented to the (sight-impaired) user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device’. So if you’re putting up an image of a range of 3D LED televisions, label it as such, as opposed to image 1, image 2, image 3. This will make more sense to the user and be less boring.

The long and the short of it is… always remember the user at the other end of the search term when looking at your SEO.