What is user optimization? When a website organizes content, visual layout and url structure in a way users will understand easier. When users cannot find the right sections of a website they want, frustration sets in as well as distrust. People don’t like being misled or have their time wasted, and a poor website layout does just that. Information should be easy to find, easy to understand and ways to contact the service or buy a product ( the calls to action ) easy to see and use. User optimization impacts SEO directly as on page SEO factors and indirectly, by preventing users from finding contact info to sending spammy signals.
When SEOs use the word user optimization, mainly the areas of focus are:
- Poor Url Structure
- Poor Menu Layout
- No Clear Contact Information
- Contact Information Is Listed Multiple Times
- Content Is Too Short, Too Long, or Doesn’t Explain Much
- Poor Content Formatting, Grammar and Spelling
- Too Many 404 Pages and Poor 301 Redirects
- No Organization
UX / UI Optimization Is Part Of SEO
Website design has and will always be apart of marketing and also SEO. Simply because it’s something websites can keep up on as a signal of freshness. Just as search engines might look for websites producing new content. Users look for websites to produce new designs every now and then, change is a signal online of activity. In an age of automation, users want trust, and trust isn’t often had from current automation practices. Knowing that there are people behind a website, making adjustments and practicing what they preach, sends trust to the users visiting the website.
Keeping up with current user website design can help SEO, but it’s more about monitoring how users interact with the website and trying to make that interaction even better. From menu layout to button placement, even the colors used matter when appealing to both a user’s visual and mental process. SEO can be done by developing user profiles, and answering questions from each profile and arranging content in such a way user groups will best digest the information. User click through rate and goal conversions rely heavily on user understanding, so keeping content short but informative is key.
User Engagement Improves SEO
Searchbots are always scraping data for website indexing, webmaster tools for Google and Bing both include click through rates, impressions, and clicks. If websites have access to this data, why would if be so hard to believe search engines do as well? So in a world where time is money, would it make sense to send more searchbot crawling resources to websites that don’t get as much user engagement? Without customer engagement, there just aren’t signals being sent, period. Sure crawlers will come along here and there, but that’s a pulse, not an indication of brain activity though…
By using Google Analytics or 3rd party software like heatmapping, user session recording and friends, coworkers and family to test a website, a lot of information to improve user interaction will be seen. Often a website is looked at by the business owner so much, that it’s almost impossible to see the parts needing improvement, scenery doesn’t change much to have comparisons too.
Without the experience with multiple websites and reading data, it’s hard to figure out what needs to be changes. This is where A / B testing comes into play, by keeping one variation the same and making the change to the other. Results can be monitored over a period of time to determine the best variation.contact SEOByMichael today and know for sure tomorrow, with an SEO user optimization audit!
If you suspect your website may have user optimization issues, or you just aren’t sure,