Is Your Site Search Engine and Users Friendly?

In the last article of this series (see Resources for links), I explained the importance of having regularly updated content on your site. In that same vain, we looked at how that content must be clear, authoritative and more importantly, relevant to your niche. Additionally, I talk about how crucial making your content available through RSS is become with the advance and development of the decentralized information movement. In this article, I’ll discuss two more fundamental characteristic of the ideal Web 2.0 site, and that is that your site must be search engine and user friendly.

The Internet is free source of news and opinions. This is a wonderful thing from a buyer and shopper point of view however, for you the publisher of information, so much information in such variety of media equals lots of competition. Things that were heavily relied upon in the past for Ranking, such as meta tag keyword and description information are being deprecated and may not always prove so fruitful. Nowadays, technology is diving distribution and forcing the search engines landscape to evolve more quickly. So how do you build a search engine and user friendly website?

As I’m sure you may have already heard, at the center of all this there’s a lot of technology: JavaScript, HTML and XHTML, a bit of dynamic HTML, Ajax, and even some XML (Extensible Markup Language). Don’t worry if you don’t understand all of this (or any of this for that matter) you don’t have to. What I’m about to teach you through this series of articles does not require any knowledge in programming. Anyone can do this and I don’t care if you are selling garbage bags, bartending, teaching disco dancing or working retail. These are all very easy and inexpensive techniques anyone can use to launch their very own Web 2.0 ready site and it can be done in a matter of just minutes.

Building a site with SEO in mind goes Hand-in-Hand with having a site that is user friendly too, in fact you can’t work towards the one without the other. Search engines love feeding web users lots of relevant content, so the more authoritative and relevant your content is, the more likely it will eventually be served. Consequently the better the users experience the better your Ranking. In other words, make pages for users, not for search engines. Hence, you need to figure out your niche and be carefully defined within that niche. In addition you must updated your content regularly and that content must be authoritative.

Now that we understand the significance of having the right content lets talk about the sites structure. First, you must take common-sense steps to ensure that your site helps users find their content easily. For example, is your content organized in an easy-to-read hierarchical layout? Are you using HTML links on every page, and does each page provide internal links in the text to help the search engine crawler find its way around? Does your site offer a site map and do you include a link to the site map somewhere on each page? And last but certainly not least. Do your pages contain relevant information that clearly and accurately describe your content and is that text clear, crisp and legible?

Remember, optimizing your site structure has to be an integral part of the design process and must enhance the overall user experience. Furthermore, pages that are simple to navigate and don’t require much thinking on the end users part, will also be pages that are easy to crawl and index. In reality, SEO is pretty simple, avoid using overzealous SEO practices and think about what’s best for the user. The ideal search engines and user friendly site is all about providing the user with content–rich relevant information and getting them to that information as soon and as easily as possible.

And there you have it. Two more fundamental ingredients of the ideal Web 2.0 ready site; is your site search engine and users friendly? In the upcoming weeks we will be continuing this discussion, as promised, and show you how you can launch your very own ready-built Web 2.0 site. If there’s anything you wish to add on the subject of search engine and users friendly websites please feel free to share your thoughts and comments and keep checking back for more updates.

Resources:
How Can Interactivity Increase Conversions & Make You Money?
How to Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshotize the Ideal Web 2.0 Site in a Nutshell.

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