Search Engine Optimization… And User Optimization

An important part of SEO is optimizing your site for crawling, which includes modifying flash pages, no-following links or disallowing parts of your site that you want the crawler to disregard, and making sure you are utilizing keywords and tags appropriately.

Once again, however, you really want to optimize your site for your users! Your site can be optimized for the search engines till the cows come home, but if the consumer takes one look and is turned off, you haven’t done yourself a speck of good.

Consider that while the number of users with high speed internet is growing, not everyone’s internet connection and load time is as fast as they would like.

You might want to consider speed of loading when you are optimizing your home and landing pages (and we have even more reason for this now, as Google has started taking load speed into account when calculating Quality Scores).

Save fancy effects or below the page stuff and set it on a delay, so your initial screen pops up fast. You can use the time your visitor spends checking out your layout to finish loading stuff below the fold, and any fancy graphics you may want to display won’t harm anything by appearing a second or two late.

The consumer of today wants results, and they want them now, which is a strong argument for making sure your page loads fast and has plenty of pertinent information to engage their attention.

Your site should be easy to navigate, simple in its lines and shouldn’t make the customer have to dig for any important features. Your ‘back to home’ should always be easy to get to as well as ‘buy now’, ‘join now’, ‘register now’ etc… your customer should always be faced with an easy call to action at every opportunity.

Don’t forget that while a lot of variance in backgrounds, fonts and colors may appeal to you, it might confuse potential clients. Take into account your target demographic – you might design a different home page for 18-25 men than you would for 30-44 women, and still a different one for 55-80 year-olds of either sex.

You need to have a clear vision in mind of what your consumers need, and endeavor to reach them and make sure they come away with the firm belief that you are the best one to fill that need.

Use the keywords not just for the search engines, but for the consumers as well; if they are searching for doggie coats, you want to let them know they are in the right place for doggie coats, that they can definitely buy doggie coats from you, that in fact, they have hit the doggie coat jackpot by coming to your site, because you are the doggie coat depot!

Don’t stop following all of your optimization plans to get the search engines’ attention, but do remember that the user’s attention is your final goal, and you must be prepared to capture and hold it to make your site succeed!