The success of your website depends significantly on whether it compels visitors to spend time on it or not. The user-friendliness of the site is also crucial to make your audience stick around. This is one of the reasons why experts focus on optimized content to enhance user experience.
Google and other search engines want to provide the most relevant content that viewers need. To achieve this objective, the RankBrain algorithm uses AI to identify the intention of a user’s search terms. Based on the data gathered by AI and machine learning, Google provides the most relevant search results to suffice user queries.
There is also a crucial link between user retention and SEO that leads to essential usability principles. Here are four principles that you can follow to boost website traffic and SEO.
1. User-experience
A significant number of visitors may not entirely focus on your website. They may have some other thoughts going on in their heads. Your website’s job is to make it easier for them to find what they want. If they are looking for cooking recipes, it should be readily available in a click or two. They shouldn’t need to search in sidebars or go through menus to find the information they need.
Real Guest Blogging suggests that you run user-experience tests on your website frequently. This will help to eliminate any obstacles that stand in the way of viewers from getting the information they need instantly.
2. Website learnability
Do you know what the first impression is when your target audience visits your website? If not, you should ask someone to go through your website for a few seconds and ask him the following questions:
- What does your company offer?
- How can your company make the viewer’s life better?
- What does the viewer need to do to buy?
The viewer should be able to answer these questions instantly. If he does, it means your website creates an excellent first impression. Otherwise, you need to proceed with the necessary optimization changes to ensure that you get your target message across immediately.
3. Website layout
A simple layout often works wonders for a website. Your website doesn’t need to look flashy or have complicated options to make a good impression on visitors. Try to implement the KISS rule when planning your site layout. The acronym means “Keep it Simple, Stupid.” In the case of SEO, this means improving the different aspects of your site to make it easier to use and understand, such as using standard-looking icons, placing clear navigation labels, creating concise and straightforward content, and eliminating clutter.
4. User response
Most people don’t go through an entire webpage. They scan through the page to check what they want. It would help if you made your website easy to browse. Divide the content into several subheads, add multiple white spaces wherever possible, and use bold text. This allows your viewers to find the precise information they want to read. You can even track the parts of your webpages that viewers understand the most using heat mapping software.
Usability is one of the crucial factors that determine the success of a website. The principles above should give you an idea of what you need to do to make sure that people know about your company within a few seconds. They should understand that your site is the right place for the answers they are looking for and then take actions depending on their needs.