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Search Engine Optimization and Website Usability

Written by: Justin Beller

Article Overview: The design and functionality of a website does not have to suffer just to receive a high ranking on a search engine results page. Search engine optimization, the practice of optimizing the code and content of a website to make it easy for search engines to index and for end-users to find and usability, the practice of making something easy to understand and learn are actually two sides of the same coin. Both practices are a lot more similar than you may think and lend to enhancing the user experience for websites and web-based applications.

Search Engine Optimization and Website Usability

INTRODUCTION

A website is not usable if it cannot be found on the web, but once it is found how do you keep your visitors engaged? Search engine optimization techniques (SEO) are what get people to a website and usability supports the user experience, giving the end-user a reason to stay and accomplish their specific goal or task.

There seems to be a disconnect between SEO and usability standards when it comes to websites and web-based applications. The belief among many is the two are incompatible. Web developers and businesses who use the web as the cornerstone to their marketing plan often feel there needs to be a compromise or trade off between driving traffic to their website and providing an engaging, user-friendly environment for their visitors. In reality, SEO and usability are very compatible and form a holistic relationship where the techniques in both methodologies are actually dependent upon one another. In other words, design and functionality doesn’t have to suffer just to get a high ranking on a search engine results page.

THE CASE FOR SEO AND USABILITY

Usability is defined as giving the end-user the ability to successfully, comfortably and confidently learn or complete a task.

Incorporating usability standards with SEO techniques makes good marketing sense. A website needs to be optimized for easy indexing by search engines and easy retrieval by the end-users. Once a visitor has reached the site, providing them a clear path to follow toward a goal-oriented outcome is good usability. For a functional website, this would be equivalent to a street map or instructions clearly written to guide someone on how to put a product together. In the end, the visitor has a positive experience and it all starts with smart planning.

Rather than focusing solely on search engine optimization, people should also consider user-outcome optimization. The web has now matured to a more professional level as it weaves its way into the global mainstream marketplace. As it continues to matures, two factors have emerged driving website owners and webmasters toward a more professional view of their online marketing, and subsequently their usability strategies.

The first factor is the increased analytical abilities of major search engines like Google. Google within the last few years field a patent which outlines how it will account for the historic record of every document and file in its index. This covers behaviors such as:

• How much time an average user spends examining a document
• The entry and exit paths of users
• Whether users store reference to the document or files in their bookmarks
• How users access the document or file (via a search engine keyword search, direct URL, referral link or bookmark)
• Evaluation of search traffic driven by the search engines and related keywords the document or file was found under.

For a search engine like Google, each of these points have manifested in an end-user tool called Google Analytics which gives marketing professionals and webmasters an opportunity to see how visitors use their website and its content in ways they may never have considered. In the context of website marketing, usability is about moving visitors along a pre-defined path from a given entry point to the goal line and then perhaps off again to another relevant website experience. Examining the “digital trail” visitors follow to reach the goal line or conversion goal provides a picture of the website’s usability health.

The second factor driving online marketing and usability strategies is the evolving needs of website users and their own personal increased analytical abilities. The web has become second nature for many end-users. People have become experienced in the web environment and know what to expect. Today, many websites do not live up to the expectations of end-users because those expectations have moved beyond design and visual appeal and now focus on the content and the tasks that are to be accomplished.

Usability has become an important component in smart, informed and relevant website marketing because it lends itself to making the website experience clear and simple for visitors. Still, SEO professionals have difficulty understanding usability professionals, and in all fairness usability professionals have difficulty understanding SEO.

Usability focuses on what happens after end-users arrive at the website. Usability testing evaluates many things, among them just how user-friendly and intuitive the interface is. Valuable information can be gained from conducting a usability test on a website, but it doesn’t measure how a typical end-user is prompted to visit a website. That’s the job of SEO. It comes well before the website is developed. Keep in mind that users use search engines, more so than we think. It has been determined that the number one way people discover new websites is through one of the major search engines, either Google, Yahoo!, Windows Live Search (MSN) or Ask. The key for any web professional, whether their background is in usability or SEO, is to place themselves in the shoes of the end-user and support both their search and findability efforts.

Usability professionals must move outside of the realm of the testing lab and seek to understand the end-user’s search process. The usability profession has mountains of research and data on browsing and scanning behaviors of end-users once they are on a website, but an equal amount of research time should be dedicated to the end-user’s query process. From a marketing perspective, an end-user who has queried a website looking for a particular piece of content, product or service has already pre-qualified themselves. The potential to convert that person to a customer grows by leaps and bounds provided a positive user experience is waiting for them when they reach the website.

At the same time, SEO professionals need to place themselves in the usability testing labs or take part in usability tests themselves. Primarily, their focus is only on what happens before end-users arrive at a website, not what happens afterwards. Understanding how an end-user finds what they are looking for once on a site provides clues for the SEO professional to come up with a defined vocabulary of keyword phrases that matches the paradigm of the target audience as a whole.

CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN SEO AND USABILITY

How can web professionals bridge this gap that appears to exist between SEO and usability? Consider this – in order for a website, document or file in a search engine’s index to receive a top ranking for a set of keyword terms in a competitive industry or market segment, it must justify its overall value or risk losing out to competitors who offer higher value content. The overall goal of search engines is to rank the best, most usable, functional and informative sites first. By ensuring you provide quality content and make it easy for that content to be found, both by people and search engines, you ensure long-term prospects for your search engine rankings. Taking a usability approach is helpful. The following factors into quality usability:

Design

Graphical elements and layout influence how usable a website is. Adhering to web design standards and ensuring they are used consistently throughout the site provides a positive user experience. It meets the expectations web users have now become accustomed to.

Information Architecture

Information architecture is crucial to connecting SEO and usability. The organizational hierarchy of a website’s content greatly affects its overall usability. Topics and content are categorized in a logical fashion that matches the paradigm of the target end-user. It easily supports and end-user’s goals and tasks they wish to accomplish using your website and interestingly enough, search engines pick up this same organization and structure in a similar fashion to support their automated indexing of content.

Navigation

Good navigation is critical to usability. It’s one of a website’s given primary functions providing users access to its content. By adhering to navigation standards, usability performance can dramatically improve.
Functionality

Functionality is simple and straight forward. Make sure the site works as it is intended. Links, buttons, etc., must all do what the end-user expects them to do.

Accessibility

This is the technical ability of users to access and move through your website using the tools they have as well as the ability to serve disabled or impaired users. For the purposes of SEO, the important accessibility aspects are limiting code errors, fixing broken links and making sure the content is visible in all browsers without special actions on the part of the end-user.
Content

The actual content itself is often overlooked in regard to usability. Good content will have descriptive headlines and accurate information leading to quality content. All factor in retaining visitors and gaining links from other websites.

Let’s now examine some ways that tried and true SEO practices actually relate back to usability in websites and web applications.

Keyword Research

Write your site’s content using keywords that your users use when searching for what you have to offer and you’ll be speaking their language.

It’s important to think in exact terms when defining your products, services and content. With a broad of a term like “car parts”, you’ll be one thousands and ranked lower in a sea of search engine results. Using a narrow, more defined term like “68 Ford Mustang parts” will yield less competition among other sites offering the same or similar items.

When you are conducting your keyword research, enter some selected phrases into a search engine or two to see what results emerge. It will tell you a lot about the quality of the keyword phrase and give you ideas on other terms you could use that may be more successful.

Content Minimum per Page

The more content on a page, the easier it is for a search engine to figure out what it is about. From a usability perspective, pages with less than 200 words are unlikely to contain a fair amount of searchable information and site visitors will probably leave and search elsewhere for more detailed content.

Maximum File Size

Pages that are larger than 100kb are not worth the effort for search engines to index. From a usability standpoint, consider that many end-users still use dial up modems to connect to the internet. A 100kb HTML file takes about 20 seconds to download on a 56k dial up modem. It’s important to be able to capture the attention of your end-user immediately with valuable content otherwise if it takes too long for them to download it, they will look elsewhere for other alternatives.

Using CSS for Layout

Search engines prefer CSS-based sites and score them higher in the search rankings. CSS-based sites are benefited by clean code, flexibility of important content placement and greater content density makes it easier for search engines to access, assess and rank CSS-based pages.

Using CSS for layout is advantageous for usability. The reduced HTML file size that is inherent in CSS-based sites results in significantly faster download times for the end-user.
Meaningful Page Titles

Search engines place a high level of importance on pages that have a proper, descriptive page title. If a title adequately describes the content of a given page, search engines are able to more accurately categorize and index what that page is about.

A meaningful page title helps visitors understand where they are within a website and on the web as a whole.

Headings and Subheadings

Search engines place high value on text contained within heading tags than the rest of the document. For the most part, headings summarize the content immediately below it.

Headings are useful to website visitors because it enables scanning. Most users quickly scan the contents of a web page versus reading it line by line and word by word. It’s about finding the information they are seeking as fast as possible.

Quality Opening Paragraph

Many search engines concentrate on the first 25 words of each web page. In this opening paragraph, the content should be rich with keyword phrases so search engines can accurately index and categorize the page, but at the same time it needs to be understandable to a human visitor who will quickly scan it to see if the content matches what they are looking for.

Descriptive Text Links

Search engines place importance on link text. It is assumed that link text will be descriptive of its destination.

Descriptive links are important for usability largely due to end user’s habit of scanning rather than reading a web page. “Click here” is not very useful, but a descriptive link with keywords or keyword phrases matching what the end-user is seeking is easily understood.

Quality Content

Last, but not least, is quality content. Providing creative, unique and regularly updated content on your website gives search engines a reason to frequently revisit your website for indexing.

From a usability standpoint, quality content gives other websites a reason to link to your site. In doing so you will provide added value to their site visitors. At the same time, you’ll be adding value to your site visitors. When it is all said and done, valuable content is usable content.

CONCLUSION

Optimizing your website for both search engines and people need not be a trade-off. There’s a significant overlap between the tasks required for SEO and the tasks required to support usability and provide a positive user experience on your website. If you recognize this, it shouldn’t be too challenging to create a website that can easily be found by search engines and usable to the visitors once they reach the site.

REFERENCES

(n.d.). SEOmoz | Beginner's Guide to SEO. Retrieved July 3, 2007 from http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-1-page#5

Hedger, Jim (November 27, 2005). Usability Strategy and Search Engine Optimization. Retrieved July 3, 2007 from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/usability-strategy-and-search-engine-optimization/2572/

Krause Berg, Kimberly (February 15, 2005). Why Search Engine Marketing Has a Passion for Web Site Usability. Retrieved July 3, 2007 from http://www.searchengineguide.com/krause/2005/0215_kk1.html

Moss, Trenton (November 15, 2004). Secret Benefits of Search Engine Optimization: Increased Usability. Retrieved July 3, 2007 from http://www.sitepoint.com/article/increased-usability

Thurow, Shari (November 21, 2005). Web Site usability and SEO. Retrieved July 3, 2007 from http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3565176

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Article Tags: search engine optimization, seo, usability, web, website



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