After completing a recent article about optimising websites for higher conversion rate, I thought I should add to that theme with some guidance about how Usability/Conversion Optimisation and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) go hand-in-hand.

 

Optimising your websites for Search Engines should not mean designing/writing special pages for search engines and other pages that are optimised for your visitors. Optimisation for higher conversion rate and ease of use should, largely, be the same as optimising for search engines.

Website Usability and SEO

 

Designed and structured correctly, your website should attract both targeted visitors as well as provide useful and 'indexable' content for the search engine spiders/robots and, hence, improve your search engine positions.

 

Fast loading pages

• Usability benefit: Your site visitors don't have to wait for your pages to load.
• SEO benefit: It is easier for search engines to index your content.

Making your pages easy to read

• Usability benefit: Visitors to your website have a better experience reading your content.
• SEO benefit: Implementing readable content means you are steering clear of techniques the search engines would consider to be SPAM.

Clearly arranged content

• Usability benefit: Headings, sections, paragraphs and bullet lists make your content easy to scan and easy to read.
• SEO benefit: The same headings, sections, paragraphs and bullet lists help search engines to assess the relevance and topic of your content.

Easy and logical navigation

• Usability benefit: Makes it easy to find relevant content without having to trawl the whole site.
• SEO benefit: Search engines can index your site easily by following the navigation structure.

Most important copy is 'above the fold'

• Usability benefit: Your site visitors can instantly see what is most important without having to scroll.
• SEO benefit: Search engines often index based on what it sees first (as well as other criteria so don't get too hung up on this one) and so including the most important text near the top helps them index your content more accurately.

Self-explanatory page titles

• Usability benefit: Two-fold; 1. when your link appears in the SERPs your page is easily identifiable by it's title, and 2. if someone bookmarks one of your pages, it is easy to identify based on the title.
• SEO benefit: As your page title is one of the most important elements that a search engine uses, it must be relevant to the page content and keyword rich.

Meaningful, relevant addresses (URLs)

• Usability benefit: Because a logical address is easier to remember, for example www.mydomain.com/product/ is easier to remember than www.mydomain.com/prod.asp?catID=432&pID=S329&view=uk_en
• SEO benefit: Keywords and relevant text in your URLs has a proven and clear advantage over dynamically created URLs and helps to increase rankings.

 

 

There are so many factors that have a positive and negative impact on your search engine positioning and most of these factors also have an impact on the usability and conversion rate of your website.

 

For an assessment of your website and a detailed quotation for total website management, including usability analysis, conversion rate optimisation, search engine optimisation and competitor analysis, call Koss UK today and lock in a monthly fee that fits your budget before prices increase.