End user focussed Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Why you should focus on the user if you want to get on top and stay there

Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. - Google

Google's mission statement sums up what the search engines are all about.

So the first part is to organise the worlds information. Remember before search engines got good at their job? The results were terrible and you'd often have to go through the first few pages of results to find what you wanted. Now we expect no more than the first few results to be exactly what we wanted and the information to be of a high quality.

Next make it universally accessible, so they do it by making it free to use for anyone with an internet connection.

Last but not by any means least is useful. This is where speed, design, quality information and structured code comes together to create great user experiences on the website. Also for search engines to fully understand what your website is about..

User driven content creation adds long term value

Sometimes people fall into the trap of creating "Keyword rich" low quality content. This method did apparently work in the early days of SEO but this was before the search engines become as advanced as they are today. We didn't start until 2003 and the birth of SEO is said to be around 1995.

If most of your visitors stay on your website and view a few pages, this will be a good signal to the search engines that your website was what the people wanted to find.

By contrast, if most people hit your website and "bounce" back to the search engine and continue to look at the results, this is a signal that your page is not a good match. We call this measure of sucess the "bounce rate".

Either signals will influence your position in the search engine. So the job is to write great quality content that will entice the person to click on another page. 

Web design and usability are critical for SEO

The grandma rule sums it up for me when it comes to usability. Get clear on what it is you want the reader to do. For most of my clients it is to phone, fill in a contact form or buy something.

Then get yourself a grandma (technophobe), you know the people who are almost scared to touch a computer incase they blow up the world.

Paint the picture to them and get them to do the required action. For example, imagine it's 2am and for some reason you wanted to begin the process of getting your carpets cleaned. I'm going to show you this website and I'd like you to make contact with the company.... and go! 

If the technophobe can do it, anyone can! The worst thing you want to do is assume that it is obvious to carry out the action you're looking for.

Really this all boils down to the design of the website and that is the bit I do for people. Another good one is that "nothing should be more than three clicks away". Site navigation is important because everything should be easy to find or it will lead to frustration.

Get inspired by your competitors

Whether you're drawing a blank or not about what people may want to read on your website, competitors can be great inspiration. Look at what they are writing about and look out for their keywords. Would this kind of content aid you in your objectives?

Check out their keywords in Google's Keyword Planner Tool. How many people are searching for them? Is there much competition? What other related phrases does the Keyword Planner bring up? This can give you some great ideas of what content to incorporate for your visitors. 

Just make sure you keep your eye on things that people are looking to buy. Don't just target things for the sake of it.

Get inspired but don't outright copy or you will get burned at the stake by search engines.

Contact us if you need a website designed that can take on your competition.