Here are the lessons from the Steve Krug’s book “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition.
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The optimization of our website is the easiest part to learn SEO. But despite being easy, sometimes we get it wrong. Also easy does not mean at all that it will be easy.
Let’s see a list of tasks when analyzing the optimization of our website:
Step 1. Right choice of keywords
All SEO process begins with the choice of keywords; we must bear in mind that a poor choice of keywords can lead to months of work completely useless. You have to check if the selected keywords are feasible and if we’re getting performance should position them.
- Relevance: There are terms that are more related to our business than others, it is important to prioritize the most related to our business.
- Importance: There are terms that link to products or services much more important than others in the face of sales, we must be clear that the terms we have prioritized are most important.
- Conversion: Of all the terms, we will be more on influencing the action of purchase by the customer.
- Search Volume: It’s obviously an important factor, but we must always take into account the difficulty of positioning the word, his is finding the proper relationship between ease of positioning and volume.
Step 2. Ensure that the keyword and page fit.
Once we have reviewed our terms have value, you have to look reaction between these terms and the content of our website. They have to fit perfectly.
The normal thing is to create a page for each keyword attack, but among all pages must be a link.
Step 3: Integrate the keywords in the content
Content at first should be written directly by an expert of the company, then you can pass review by a specialist writer or SEO copywriting, to integrate it with the keywords you will attack that page. In doing so the process is the best way to integrate keywords naturally.
After entering the text, we should analyze the following factors:
- Using Keywords: Ensure that occur naturally and there is an appropriate balance should not spend 6% of the content.
- Headers: Must be informative and related anchors not keywords, if keywords naturally fit then go ahead.
- Title page: The title has to have mandatory keywords, including a logical statement.
- Meta Tag Description: The contents of this tag appear in the Google search results, it is important in order to attract visitors to write appropriately in clear our services as attractive as possible.
- Voice: Whole site must have a common style, we should not have a page-oriented hard sell with lots of text and other news commenting.
- Active statements: You have to use words to incite the visitor to perform an action such as purchasing a service, “do not let him get away” “unique opportunity, buy now”
- Attractive images with ALT attributes and title: It is often easier to get in the top results of Google with images. When the search is a product, such as “ceramic mask” the first results are the images of that name and title, so it is important that our images, in addition to attractive, take the title and ALT tag keywords or related content with our image.
Step 4: Revision of the usability of the web
We’re not talking about whether the text is appropriate in this section, but the ease of use and navigation of our website. It is important that all major sectors of our website are very clear and you can navigate between them easily and clearly.
It is important to always type a path or breadcrumb breadcrumbs of our site that make it clear in that section of our website we are.
Step 5: Review SEO
Although it seems a bit late, is the right time, when the text is written and SEO work Reaction created content. It’s time to see if the placement of the keywords is correct and balanced between pages.
Step 6: Approval
Before publishing the page would be advisable to pass it to an expert SEO copywriter to ensure that we have not changed too much the original idea and still retaining the right proportions.
To improve its position in Google we recommend following these guidelines.
Author – This article is written by Tony Dan from Backlinksvault and Backlinksindexer
Graphics consume almost 50% space on a web page and Google reads them carefully to gather important information about your website.
From the resolution and format to image alt tags, everything plays an important role in the ranking of a website.
Now, while it is known that small resolution graphics load faster and that keyword-rich alt tags are easily readable, there is some dispute between “popular on web” and “SEO-friendly” graphics. Most browsers and OSes will support most graphic formats; however, not all formats will be conducive to your website’s bandwidth allocation, loading time, or suit your business objective.
There are mainly 5 types of graphic formats that are highly popular on the web, and all of them have their benefits and disadvantages as far as SEO is concerned:
JPEG– It’s the most widely used image format and is supported by all popular operating systems, which is highly beneficial from the SEO perspective. However, unlike GIF, JPEG cannot be animated and its excellent resolution may make graphics heavier.
If your requirement is cross-OS compatible graphics to use in small numbers on your website, JPEG is the best choice for SEO-friendly images.
GIF– It’s the ideal image format for logos and animations, the latter of which can be done without any coding so viewers can watch it directly from a browser without any third party plug-in. However, GIF supports only 256 colors and lacks the high-quality appeal of JPEG.
So, if your site requires high-gloss quality images, their purpose being to retain attention, do not use GIF. However, if you want animation effects without the burden of a heavy Flash file, use GIF.
BMP– It’s a popular image format for Windows users, but is not SEO-friendly. Also Bitmap images use up lots of bandwidth that make a site slower.
TIFF– It offers excellent resolution and clarity but is extremely heavy, eat server space and more importantly, can reduce the page loading time. Mac users prefer this format for its richness, but if SERP ranking is more important to you, then avoid it.
PNG– The best quality of PNG is that it’s loss-less. Even compressed, an image remains high-quality despite becoming lightweight. However, PNG is not advisable for graphic design because it is not supported by all web browsers.
Generally, most designers will use JPEG and JIF formats because of their attractiveness, support from multiple-OS and browsers and faster load time.
Author Bio – Hema Gupta a content analyst and marketer at WebGuru Infosystems provides information about image formats to help designers to design SEO-friendly graphics.
If you are building a website, whether it will be used to provide information for a particular audience or advertise and/or sell particular products and/or services, or indeed for both of those purposes, then it is crucial that the website is created in a way that makes it useable for many different people.
This means ensuring that the website can be easily accessed through many different devices and web browsers. The importance of usability to a website can often be underestimated, but will be explained further throughout this article.
There is a need for speed
It is important, for example, that a website can be loaded quickly through many different devices and web browsers. This is because, should someone find that a website does not load quickly, they are likely to lose patience with that website and instead try loading a different one. This can obviously cost the owner of the slow-loading website valuable hits and/or sales, and so can prove a surprisingly crucial factor in the success of that website. You should particularly consider that the average website user will not wait longer than 6-7 seconds for a page to load; hence, there is little point in having a high quality website if it cannot be loaded sufficiently promptly.
For this reason, you should try your best to avoid having any files, like images, on your website which are large in size and therefore may take a long time to load. While you might be tempted, for example, to use elaborate background images which will make your website look prettier, you need to consider that not everyone who attempts to access your website will have a very fast computer or Internet connection which can help them to load such images quickly. Furthermore, many people who have high speed Internet will expect website pages to load almost instantly; hence, you should endeavour to optimise all of your website files to have the smallest possible size without sacrificing their quality.
Keep things simple to make things easy
Furthermore, once visitors do successfully load a website, it is crucial that they are not left confused about what the website has to offer. You should remember that your website’s design should ideally cater equally for both people seeking brief information and people seeking more detailed information, and that any confusion experienced by any of these people could tempt them into abandoning the website to peruse another one. What you actually want to lead these people to do is use your website to quickly find the information that they want and then take a positive action – whether that involves taking up advice detailed on your website or purchasing any products and/or services that your website advertises.
Hence, when developing a website it is crucial to consider how it will be navigated by its visitors. For all visitors, but especially first time visitors, you should endeavour to make navigation straightforward and consistent. Make sure that no part of the website is any further than three clicks away. Though there are many different advanced ways in which you can design a website, there is little point in drawing on many of these if they render the website difficult to use. Ultimately, you would be better off sticking to a simple website design if it makes the website easier to use, as this should also make it more successful.
It is also important to keep the website’s structure simple. The extent to which you achieve this will largely define how easy the website is to navigate, which can make or break its appeal among inexperienced and impatient web surfers. Even if your website has a hundred pages, there are still ways in which you can maintain the simplicity of its structure – for example, through using expandable tree menus that clearly show where in the network of the website’s pages the user currently is and what pages the user has already viewed and clicked through.
The importance of uniformity
You should consider that many Internet users have become accustomed to very particular designs in the websites that they visit. Hence, it would be wise to adhere to one of these designs for your own website in order to discourage confusion in its visitors. Staples of many website designs include the logo of the organisation which owns the website in the top left corner of every page, which often incorporates a link back to the website’s home page; a navigation bar in the same part of each page; links in the footer to pages dedicated to the website’s privacy policy and terms of use; and an ‘About us’ section or page which reveals more about the organisation which owns the website.
Furthermore, whatever design is chosen for the website, it should remain consistent throughout all of that website’s pages. This should help to discourage confusion in the website’s visitors and could also extend even to error pages. These pages are the type which typically appear when a broken or invalid link is clicked, and any error pages you create should include information on what may have led to the error. However, bug prevention is always better than cure concerning the usability of a website. Indeed, if visitors to your website routinely experience a significant number of bugs, this is likely to damage your website’s reputation over time.
The importance of website usability in a nutshell
What you ultimately want to provide with a website is a pleasant experience for visitors which makes it easy for them to promptly find precisely what they are looking for. This is crucial for the success of your website, as it will help it to attract an increasing number of visitors and, if you are using the website to advertise or sell particular products and/or services, encourage higher sales of those products and/or services. As word of mouth spreads about the high quality of your website, the website’s visitor numbers and hence success should further increase.
Long time ago marketing people were always talking about “The Customer is King”. And we can still learn a lot when we talk to the customers.
What if we have the best quality product and it’s also the cheapest one. Well we should have some sell going on then. But maybe our viewers can’t find the product.
People are impatient. So if they can’t find the information they are looking for right away they will leave your site. So the issue is “Don’t let the viewer think”.
There are plenty of other websites available – most of the people will leave your site within 10 seconds.
I found this example.
Go and check out your own Google Analytics data.
What is usability testing?
Usability testing is a quality test that will tell you how easy your website interface is to use. The goal is to improve the ease-of-use during the design process.
Usability has 5 quality components:
- Learnability – how easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they see your web design? Remember don’t let the customer think too much.
- Efficiency – how quickly can the users perform different tasks?
- Memorability – when the users are coming back to your site how well can they perform different tasks?
- Satisfaction – how satisfied or pleasant are the users with your design?
- Errors – how many errors do the users make?
The basic components of a usability test are
- Find some representative users
- Ask these users to perform a task with your design
- Observe what the users are doing – is it difficult to find the information? Is your navigation logic?
When we are talking usability we also have to talk about utility. Utility is whether your design provides the features they need. Do the users want a search bar? Do you have a search bar?
And how useful is your website. Useful is usability AND utility. So the perfect website design is a website with high usability and high utility.
Usability testing is an ongoing process
You will need some different usability tests. Here are the main steps
- Before starting the new design – test the old design, what is the good part and bad part of the present design.
- You can test your competitor’s design. Get some ideas of alternative interfaces and features.
- Make paper prototypes of one or more designs and test them
- Keep on testing during your design process.
- When you have your final design ready test it again
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Henrik
You only have 3 seconds to show most of the visitors what your site is all about. So if you are loosing the customer when they get to your website – all our great SEO isn’t worth anything right?
So don’t confuse them. Is your website credible and trustworthy? Does it look professional? The visitor will think of your company the way your website is looking. So how do you want to sell to a customer if your website looks unprofessional.
And the people today have no patience. So if they can’t find the information they are looking for they will Google another website. So when you are doing your design remember that – Don’t let the visitors think. Make it easy for your customers. Use a common sense approach to web usability.
Be serious about your design. Here are some few general guidelines for you.
Guiding the Eye – don’t let the visitors think
Remember your visitors are not interested in your design, colors and so on. They are interested in your information. Your design and colors will help them when they are visiting you. But don’t make it the main thing. The main thing is your information.
Normally the logo is placed on the top left corner. So unless you have a very special design and got a very unique idea, give the people what they want. Let’s say you place it in the lower right corner. Your visitors don’t know who you are, they can’t find the logo (well it will take them 1 min.), they will have to scroll down. And suddenly the visitors have used 1 or 2 min. on the website without concentrating on the information. And remember often 1/3 of the visitors will leave your site if they are confused after 5 or 10 seconds. So unless you have a great plan for it… Don’t let the visitors think.
Think precedence. You should help the visitors’ eyes. Guide them. Use a stop color if you want the people to pay attention to something special. You are in control of the user’s eyes. So be sure what you are doing.
- Position — if you want the visitors to see something place it on the upper part of the page. We read from top – left to right (not the whole world I know).
- Color — Use bold if you want to draw attention to a text. A special typography will also tell the visitors what kind of text they are looking at. So let a quote look the same around your site and so on.
- Contrast – contrast makes things stand out. But remember that also make the other things fade out a little – right?
- Size — big draws attention.
- Elements – maybe you are using a special kind of graphic element that can draw attention from the visitors.
Spacing
Don’t be afraid of space. Spacing can make things look more exclusive.
- Line Spacing. Line spacing can make it easier to read your text.
- Padding. Padding is the space between text and elements like images. They should never touch each other.
- White Space. Don’t be afraid of white spaces on your website. White spaces can help you to make other things stand out and make your site look more exclusive.
Navigation
Maybe you have heard the new buzzword. Usability. Well navigation is king of the usability. Lol – no it’s not. But it’s very important.
You will probably have a top navigation bar. But you can also have navigation on your pages. A link to another page on your site is also a navigation.
The main thing is that people should know when its a navigation link. Normally when you can click on a navigation link you will have it underlined. Again don’t let the people think. Make it easy to find and use your navigation.
If you have many sub-pages a good idea is to use drop-down menu. If you have a large website (a website with many pages) a good idea is often to use a bread crumb trails. So people always know where they are on your site.
Typography
When you are choosing your typography – there are some things that are important to consider.
- Font choices – be consciously about your choice. Do you want a modern slim look, retro look. If you are selling hot fashion will probably not have an old fashion typography
- Font sizes – Remember that people have to be able to read your text. Get your grandparents to read your text. 🙂
- Line length – Don’t make your lines too long. The longer the lines are the harder they are to read.
- Color – Don’t make your text in a color that have to low contrast to your background.
- Paragraphing – Maybe you should use spacing around your paragraph. There is no general rule about this. But do a test or two.
Usability
Many people are saying content is king – but I heard more and more people saying – Usability is king. And even though they might be wrong – it’s still a very very very important element.
Take a step away from your computer. And imagine what people want to do on your site. Let’s say you have a website with used cars. So a visitor on your site is maybe looking for a used car.
But how will the visitor search for it. The type of car, the size of car, the color of the car or…
Really the best thing you can do is to make some usability test. Invite people over. And give them a test. Like to find a black Toyota from 2008. How long time did it take them to find the information. If you had 10 people over was it only one person who could find it in 5 min. What can you do to help people?
You can also get ideas from other websites about used cars. Check them out. Write down the good elements, the bad elements. Take your visitors seriously.
Consistency
Consistency is very important for your website. Make sure you are using the same font, headline, subtitle font, colors, navigation. Using consistency means that you are making it easier to visit your site.
The easiest way is to use a template. Then you know it will stay the same.
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Have a great day out there….
Henrik