In this first ever issue of the Manchester SEO Blog, I will be taking you on a voyage through the layout of your content and how this has an impact on your visitors, and your website’s Google ranking.
‘Content is king’ is an addage you will probably have heard more than a few times if you have been trying to get into the murky world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). While this is not untrue, I feel it loses sight of the single most important part of your site…your visitors!
I like to think of it this way – it doesn’t matter if you have 1 competitor, or 100 billion, if your website is the most informative, helpful and useful site for the subject matter, then it would be in Google’s own interest to place you first! The content itself is vital, but is itself only a means to an end. By making this content easily readable and making the site accessible the content itself will do more for you.
Usability may not seem like an SEO issue or connected with rankings, but if you’re visitors are not able to find what they want they will leave sooner, Google will see your average time on site decrease, and you will be given poorer listings. By having the most eye-catching links and icons placed correctly with the most appropriate text, your visitors will click deeper, stay longer and read more from your site, all of which will have a positive long-term impact on your visibility.
Getting Inside the Mindset of Your Visitors & Target Audience
Google Analytics
Getting inside the mindset of your visitor is the tricky part of SEO. Because you work closely with your site regularly, it gets difficult to see the wood for the trees! The true acid test for usability is how a complete stranger behaves, and by watching your visitors closely with great tools like Google Analytics, you will be able to identify which pages are popular and why. Looking over the keywords people find you for can give clues as to what your visitors want, and will help you better tailor your message to your audience.
I like to think of traffic flow like water – you can passively influence the stream, but ultimately even a substance as hard as rock will be carved by the water over time. Google Analytics has one feature that few other tools do – by clicking content » overlay from the left menu in the dashboard, Analytics will display your site, and include it’s own annotations, indicating what percentage of traffic clicked each link from this page, helping you visibly see the path of your traffic flow and visitors. This will help highlight any usability issue, or patterns that you might see emerging.
Tags: content, Google, target audience, traffic, Usability, visitors
