When you’re getting a website designed, there’s much more to attracting customers than just how it looks. That’s exactly where SEO and usability come into play.
We’ve created this article on the importance of SEO and usability to give you an overview of what role these play in site traffic and gaining more customers. Using these two elements on your website can fast track your business from struggling to succeeding.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it’s all about ensuring that your site can be found on Google. SEO focuses on using commonly searched keywords or phrases on your website, that people use to search for similar services or products on search engines. This way, when people search for a relevant keyword, your site will be one of the first to pop up on the search results.
SEO is important because search engines are one of the main ways that people will find your website. You need to make sure that you get to that all-important first page position of search results. We all know that it’s not often we click to the second page so if you’re not front and centre, you’ll get lost amongst the myriad of results.
In-depth knowledge of SEO is incredibly useful when you are optimising your site. That’s why many people choose to use an agency that provides SEO services. Paying for expert SEO services will give you an excellent return on investment through lead generation and an increase in customers.
Here are just a few examples of ways that SEO can benefit your business:
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Higher conversion rates
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Lead generation
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Build brand awareness
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Gain market share
What Is Website Usability?
You may have heard of UX or UI – user experience and user interface. These are both related to the overall usability of your website. If your website is designed without usability in mind, you can expect a higher bounce rate, meaning that people will leave your site after seeing only one page.
UX and SEO go hand in hand. SEO may help someone find your site, but if it is confusing or hard to use, then the person will simply click the x button. If a user finds it easy and intuitive to navigate around your website, they are more likely to buy whatever it is that you’re selling.
Some important aspects of website usability include:
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Fast loading speed
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Intuitive to navigate
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Visually appealing website design
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Easy to find information
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Well organised site architecture
It can be useful to not only engage with a website designer about usability but use a project management service from a company like Thinkroom for quality control. They will check the site design to make sure that the user experience is not compromised through too many graphics slowing down the loading speed and other factors affecting the usability.
How SEO and Usability Tie into Website Building
When you are getting a website designed, you need to ensure that you are choosing a designer who will incorporate SEO and usability into the design. If they don’t, it’s much harder and far more expensive to go back later and make the site more useable or add features that are useful for SEO.
For example, one critical aspect of site usability is the site structure. This is how the website is set up for a user to click from one page to another. If the structure is confusing or unorganised, the user can get stuck in dead ends or going down a rabbit hole they didn’t want to go down. Changing the structure of an already designed website is much more difficult and expensive than doing it right in the first place.
When it comes to SEO, focusing on this after the design of the website is a mistake as well. If you do this, you will likely have to go back and have all of your content rewritten for SEO. That’s because you need to create content types that are good for SEO, such as infographics or how-to guides, but also use keywords that will get you noticed on search engines. Plus, you’ll need to add links to sites with high credibility. It’s much faster, cheaper, and easier to do this in the first place than edit everything later on.
That’s why many people choose our web design services here at Webdesignit. We will tie user experience and SEO into your website from conception through to the finishing touches. Having these aspects built into your site means that more people will get directed to your site and then stay there.
Contact us today to find out how we can help you with your next website and make it a compelling site that people want to engage with.