As Google refines its search tools, it’s becoming clear that a good site experience translates into a better position on its search results page. SEO techniques that may have worked well years ago are now outdated and could be damaging your ranking position. Instead, the goal should be to create content that both readers and search engines will love.
Here are 5 tips on how to make a visit to your website a great experience.
Quality is better than quantity
It’s a mistake to think that simply publishing a blog every day will pay off when it comes to search engine results. The focus should be on making your content the very best it can be, so it – and by extension, you – can be regarded as the ultimate resource on this subject online. To achieve this, you need to cover subjects that you’re a natural expert about. If your brand is focused on graphic design then there’s little point in writing a lengthy article about gardening. Stick to what you know and aim to deliver information that goes beyond received wisdom.
Improve the user experience
When judging your ranking, Google takes into account things like bounce rate and the number of pages visited on your site. In other words, if people land on your site and don’t like what they see, Google will recognise this and penalise you. It’s in your best interests to make your site easy to use with a wealth of great, useful content that will keep visitors around for longer. Simple techniques like using useful infographics and appealing images can boost appeal, as well as toning down the hard-sell and instead encouraging the user to click through to other relevant pages.
Make it easy for the reader
If someone clicks onto your site looking for the answer to a question, don’t make them scroll through a lot of waffle and unhelpful information before they get to it. If your site is based around forcing people to read through acres of text, just to get them to stick around for longer, you’ll end up with frustrated visitors who quickly bounce away to another site.
Refine your SEO
The old technique of jamming your page with keywords is over, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t certain things you can do to help your rank on Google. Make sure to complete all the on-page SEO tools, such as including keywords in the URL, title tag and header – this isn’t gaming the system, it’s a way of helping visitors to your site.
Finetune the structure and speed of your website
If your site is a collection of randomly connected pages then this won’t benefit either Google or the reader. It’s a big task but you should aim to streamline your site, collect the pages into specific and helpful categories that can make it easy for readers to scan and get to what they want. Even better, make sure your website is running at the best speed possible – one of the most off-putting online experiences is waiting an age for a page to load. If your site is slow, you risk being left behind.