Now that I have your attention, you are probably wondering what the heck I mean. I spend a lot of time consulting companies on their websites as part of my search engine optimization or pay per click services and have noticed that a lot of websites just aren’t visually friendly…pretty. They may have tons of content, but with little white space; some have pictures all over the place and I have seen a few with various colors of text. Do you know what all of that does for the user experience? It just confuses the heck out of your users and you will most likely lose them.
How to make your website more readable
So here is a short and sweet reminder of some dos and don’ts when it comes to the visibility of your website, or readability, and how to keep it clean to win your users/viewers:
- Create plenty of keyword rich content for your website without being spammy but please be sure to break out the content with space, paragraphs, bullets and headings. Headings are a great way to inform the users what the paragraph is about.
o Keyword rich content is great for search engines and those headings are exactly what the search engines like to see – it is you telling Google what is most important about that paragraph and page.
- Feel free to alter your font with color and/or size, however keep in mind this is typically meant to draw
the attention to that item or section. If your whole page or website is this way, the user won’t know where you are trying to get them to look and may abandon the search.
- Users love to see pictures but keep in mind the flow of the specific page. So, yes, please do add
pictures but keep the flow of your content going and use the pictures to help solidify the meaning of your content.
o Reminder that search engines can’t read pictures so this is a great time to remind you to enter keyword rich alt tags for all of your pictures.
- Another thing that I have found on some websites is a lack of contact information. Think of it this way, if a user is ready to buy or call, do you want them to have to search for your email, phone number or address? I have always liked to have contact information in the header, the footer and the side bar, where appropriate. Additionally, it can’t hurt to circle back in the end of the content to advise them how to contact you and link them to the contact page so they can fill out the contact form.
o This is a great opportunity to identify where you are location and what surrounding cities, if applicable, you are convenient to which can also help with your search engine optimization.
- Lastly, internal links can add to the natural flow of a website by directing a user through the specific website architecture for a product or service. It is also nice in that you aren’t making the user work to find what they want to know. You should already have a navigation bar, but this makes it easier for the user as well.
o Internal links are also great for search engine optimization in that it not only keeps the user on your website but aids the search engine spiders to crawl your page and informs the search engines what is important
Make it easy for your consumers to navigate and read your website. #website #readability Click To TweetAny website pet peeves you have or something that has helped your website be more user friendly that you would like to share???
I hope these tips have been helpful for understanding the user and the search engines about some of the readability and functionality of your website. However, should you need further help or have further questions; I would love to hear from you. Contact me via my contact form as I would be happy to help you out.
~Kristen
thanks for sharing some great points here! great job! and as your website exemplifies, clean is simple is effective! great job! p
Awww, thanks Patricia… much appreciated!
I was actually JUST doing some research to see how my site was indexed in Google!
When you say “keyword rich content” how do you know if the keywords you’re using actually APPEAR in search terms?
You have to think about it in terms of having the keyword rich content on the page, not necessarily in order but Google indexes your pages monthly, or depending on how often you update your site, could be much less often. So, when someone types in a search query, Google determines (by algorithm) which sites to return based on their authority and relevance to the search query. That last part will be your answer, if you have your keywords in your content, in your meta tags and etc, then you have a higher chance of showing up in the rankings… the catch is to be in the first 3 pages… or rather, the first page. Hope that helps.
Some great tips, thank you.
You are welcome.
GREAT points made! I despise going to websites where there is clutter. Thanks for clarifying for us. So important to be what I like to call “user friendly”.
Yes… user friendly = readability… I see sites that aren’t user friendly as ones that don’t want me to stay there! lol
Nice article about keeping it clean! Very good advice and you demonstrated the points in the post.
Thanks Beth… glad you liked and hope it helps.
You’re giving me some points to consider and reconsider 🙂 I’ve always loved websites that had the right balance of visual where it maintained that clean look, but allowed emphasis in the relevant areas.
Hmmmm, BONUS… making Edmund think… glad to hear it… and hope GREAT things come out of it! 😉
These are great tips Kristen. Question about headlines, how important are keyword rich headlines? And tips on keeping it authentic…?
Thanks Sheri. As far as your question – I assume you mean headlines as in H1, h2 etc like tags….they are important to have keywords in them, the more important keywords at the front, than the end, but make it make sense, and I would default to sounding real over keyword stuffing any day. Sometimes it is hard to come up with the right combo of a header to make it SEO friendly. Think of a header this way… it is your way of telling the reader AND the search engines what that next paragraph is about. If you are referring to the title/headline of your blog which turns out to be (depending on your settings) in the url of your blog post, I would follow the same lines as the above – do what you can to put it in there (see my blogs, they aren’t always keyword rich, sometimes it just isn’t natural). But as long as you are doing everything you can with each blog or page on your site to make it optimized, not having one headline, title or header tag won’t make as big of a difference, but if that is the only thing you optimize, you will see it in your rankings. Hope that helped.
Some really great points that are definitely worth thinking about. I really like how your website reflects these things too.
Thanks Clive
really good points! I know I’d be found more often if I simply posted more often, too.
Post more often on social, or blogs, yes… but keep your site fresh and clean too!
There are many new bloggers and even a few seasoned bloggers who simply do not know this information. It’s our job as biz coaches to lead the way… 🙂 as best we can!
Thanks Norma, while it is beneficial for bloggers, it is more detrimental to businesses who have websites that just aren’t user friendly.
Thank you so much for great and admirable tips it is very informative article.