Website Redesigning and Web Page Readability

Website redesigning and web page readability has been thrust upon website owners due to Google recent algorithm changes such as Panda and Penguin. Content marketing has been revived as website owners attempt to promote their websites to regain lost rankings in search engine result pages. However when optimising web pages with search engine optimisation techniques little attention has been given to web page readability in order to engage the visitor into the conversation. The principle here is simple: present it well and it will be read.

What Is Readability?

Internet users today are in a hurry and don’t read anymore. They scan web pages picking up on keyword phrases that they’re interested in. So it seems logical to emphasis keyword phrases with font size, colour and boldness all the way to the end of your page that also will improve your ranking in search engine result pages.

If you make your content difficult to read the value propositions are are devalued as the lack of legibility causes friction and anxiety in the mind of the reader that are the basic inhibitors to conversions.  Readability is a valuable asset but often dismissed part of web site designing or redesigning and SEO.

Here are my tips.

1.People Scan Web Pages

You must first understand that visitors to your website don’t read every single word. They scan the page. You have basically seven seconds to capture their attention with good captivating content that’s emphasises the keywords and keyword phrases the visitors will resonate with.
My tip is enforce good writing, structure is a manner that attracts and keep in mind the scanning effect of humans.

2. Use a Hierarchy for Fonts

One of the better ways to meet scanning behaviour is to use a font hierarchy. That means that titles of pages should have a larger font size than headings and sub headings. Emphasising titles, headings and sub heading with boldness isn’t good to get the words to stand out. Use variable font hierarchy instead and get the words notices.

3. Use Headings

Structure you page with good headings and sub headings. Visitors to your page need to see the content structure in sections. Make your subheads large enough and descriptive enough so readers can determine whether they’ll actually take the time to read that section word for word.

4. Use Sub Headings as a Visual Aid.

Subheads are also a great way to logically outline your content and to cover the various arguments thoroughly and will help you create content that communicates and engages.

5. Use Design Elements

Eye path is very important design feature when you need to attract the visitors and lead him on a pre-determined path set up by you, the website owner: you guide the visitor to convert and buy your product or service.
Visitors in the Western World read from top to bottom, left to right. This is a very important concept to remember when designing websites. Tailor the website to your audience.

Start designing your content with important features on the left side on the page as that is where your eyes focus upon first: natural instinct draws them there. Use these design elements of eye path to create engaging pages:

• size 
• motion 
• colour 
• position 
• shape 
• paths of familiarity 
• attraction 
• relevance 

6. Use Images in your Content 

The web is getting more and more visual. Take advantage of that by using images to break up the flow of your content. Not only that, but you can use images to augment the text. You can tell a story or a joke with that image or make a connection for readers that they might not have made through the text. However bear this mind: the image must be totally relevant to the content of the page. If the image is irrelevant it could damage your content.

7. Legibility Matters

 Of course you need to use a font that’s easily legible. It really doesn’t matter that much as long as its legible, easy and comfortable on the eye. 

8. Resources 

There is a useful blog post that gives you a useful insight into levels of optimisation and details useful tips on how to optimise a website. Read it I think you’ll find it helpful

About The Author 

Vincent Sandford is Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation and Web Marketing expert at SEO Synovation a web marketing agency with staff in UK, The Netherlands and Italy. He writes articles, blogs for websites and is a regular contributor to SEO The Essentials, MarcheRustico, Vino Marche, Wine Tasting, Online Reputation Management and Tasting Italian Wine and Wine Tasting tips.

Improving Search Engine Results

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is an important process to improving the ranking to your website in search engine results.  Its a process that involves several levels of optimisation ranging  from keyword research, website architecture, usuability  and linking strategies to correct imagery and fresh content.  In this post I explore the options.

Improving Your Web Page Ranking

User behaviour

Studies have revealed that 90% of Internet users find websites through search engines and out of those users, 85% do not go past the first 30 results displayed. With this in mind it is easy to see why it’s important for your website to rank high in these results. Your website must be displayed within the first 3 pages of search engine results.

Search Engine result Results Pages SERP

Search Engine Results Pages, or SERP for short, are the pages you see after you type in your keyword query into the search box of a search engine. Ninety percent of internet users query search engines to find what they are looking for. The most important elements first seen by users in SERP’s are the page title, the page URL and the page description. So it makes reasonable sense to optimise those elements with keywords that are relevant to the content of the web page, are present in the page title, page description and are part of the page URL. Simple right.

Types of Listings

The Search Engines Result Pages can be broadly divided into two categories:

• Non paid organic listings sometimes called natural listings
• Paid Advertisements sometimes called Pay per Click or PPC.

Clicks on organic listings account for approximately 80% of all traffic. Organic lists are free and attract the vast majority of clicks and are the overwhelming reasons why is it important to get your site to rank naturally in the search engine result pages. Website owners need to follow a process to get their websites to rank higher.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of engineering your website so it can be properly read by the search engine spiders. A useful blog post to read is on levels of web page optimisation

What are Search Engines?

Search engines are programming systems that analysis text and only text. If your webpage is full of images and no text your site will be crawled but not read and not indexed by search engine simply due to no text on the page. You need text on the page, you need to target each keyword/keyword phrase on the page. For example, if you want to target the search term “web marketing agency” you need to have one page with the title “web marketing agency”, a URL with “web marketing agency” , page description with “web marketing agency” and lots of content about ““web marketing agency” plus all the page elements (H1 – H6 headings, Alt image tags, Bolded words and Links). Website optimisation is performed by internet marketing specialising in all levels of optimisation.

What NOT to do!

However it never makes sense to call a home page “home” or have their business name on the title of every single page of website. This is great for corporate branding but useless for other purposes. The owners probably search for their business and are pleased when it comes up first in Google. This is only good for the customers that know your company name or brand which is fine for large brands like Argos or Amazon but if you’re trying to get customers from internet users you need to optimise your text for keyword or keywords phrases that internet users are searching for.

What TO do!

Other aspects of getting higher rankings for your website are trust, authority and link building. The trust you get is via good link building and from algorithms. The more links you get from already established trusted (authorities) sites the more Google will trust you. It makes sense really, because a good website will not link to a rubbish or an irrelevant website.
It is important to understand that the value of link juice transfer to your website is the page rank of the web page divided by all the inbound, internet and outbound links on the page plus yours times a damping factors .

How Link Juice is Transferred

If you get a link from a website with a Page Rank of 4, and this web page has 250 other links pointing to other websites the value of link juice transferred to your website is calculated as:

the standard weight of a page PR 4 is 625 divided by the total of links plus 1 (yours or 251) times a damping factor of 85% equals 2.117 which is added to your webpage page rank.

You can read a very useful blog that explains in detail the value of link juice transferred.

Another aspect of trust is by executing your link building strategy within accepted good practice and search engine guidelines. This means building links naturally, creating keyword rich anchor text, pointing links to relevant pages and not using keywords excessively on your page. Adding an unreasonable number of pages to your website in one day is not a natural progression. Search engines like websites to expand naturally, anything else and your website comes under the radar and possibly get penalised/banned.

Summary

So the only way to obtain high SERPs is to stay within search engines guidelines and accepted practice. This means building websites that are easy to navigate (so users and the crawlers can find every page easily) ,have lots of good relevant interesting content and plenty of trusted links. Make your website the best site on the internet in your chosen niche and you shouldn’t go far wrong.

About the Author:

Vincent Sandford of SEO Synovation is the author of numerous articles and blogs on search engine optimisation, online reputation management, web marketing, wine and real estate. He has a passion for website marketing and helping professionals, small and medium businesses grow. Learn what Vincent can do for your website by visiting SEO Synovation a web and search marketing agency.
 

Levels of Web Page Optimisation

Every webpage should and must have an objective. It may be to introduce the visitor to the services you are offering to him to solve his problem. It may be to optimise his website to get traffic or to defend his online reputation or to increase his brand awareness. Whatever it was that brought the visitor to your website you must satisfy that desire.

Levels of Web Page Optimisation

Your webpage is about presenting your first impression. Research tells us you have seven second to capture the visitor’s attention: the first seven seconds of a visitor landing on your page are critical and must answer the visitor questions. Webmasters should optimise webpages of a website for thought sequences of the visitor to gain better results. The content should answer these three fundamental questions:

• Where am I?
• What can I do here?
• What do I do next?

 Also very page of the website should seek to answer this question:
If I am your ideal customer why should I buy from you and not your competitor?
The forth fundamental to design website pages is this:

• State a value proposition that solves propects problems
• State a clear call to action
• Encourage the prospect to navigate where you want him to go

The fifth and final fundamental to design website pages is design elements of eye path:

• size
• motion
• colour
• position
• shape
• paths of familiarity
• attraction
• relevance
• acceptance
• motivation

Types of Webpages

There are three types of web pages: home pages, inner website pages and landing pages. The goal of a home page is not to get the visitor to it but to get the visitor through it on a desired path to reach a desired goal. Inner website pages are usually an extension of the home page and compliment it to reach a desired goal: buy product, get an email address or subscribe to a newsletter.  Landing pages are usually an extention of pay per click campaigns and are specific to one product or services and to obtain a positive follow up or objectove
The goal of all web pages is to achieve the highest conversion rate possible. Achievements of the perfect website are constrained:

1.  by the broader initiatives of the organisation; 
2.  by your organizational capabilities; 
3.  by your overarching strategy.

 A useful model to apply when optimising web pages is depicted in this image Courtesy of Bruce Clay:

Seven Levela of Optimisation

 1. Element optimization. The most important elements on the search engine results page are the title and description. These are seen first by the searcher and entice him/her to click on your website. So these elements must conOther elements are image alt tags, bold important words and relevant content.
2. Page Optimisation. This is of course the most important element to consider. Creating unique content will enhance the visitor’s experience and favour search engines. This section considers design and layout of the page. On home pages there are competing actions for the products but you should consider promoting one principle product, service or actions which will be tied to the maximum profit generating factor. All other considerations are major but not the principle. Headings and sub headings become vitally important to encourage the visitor to stay on the page and read the compelling content you’ve written. Inner pages and landing pages are similar in design as their objective is singular to get the visitor to perform an action.
3. Path optimization. A page is merely a single step along a path It may start from the home page, or an email. Optimizing the path is more to do with matching the message and expectation of the visitor than anything else. Optimising at this level lets you leap ahead of competitors.
4. Segment Optimisation. Optimising for market segments is the domain of the landing page. Recent statistics released by Google show that 40% of keywords are unique. To construct a home page or an inner page that caters for multiple keywords or keyword phrases is a challenge that’s not always successful. Different respondents arrive with different needs and varying frames of reference. At this level up, you start optimizing different paths to cater to those different audiences. With this optimization, you can reveal tremendous insights about who your customers are andhow they view themselves and their interest in your company. These discoveries not only improve your conversion rate for specific paths — they can help optimize our segmentation strategy at a higher level too. Creating landing pages for specifi market needs will bring you greater conversions.
5. Campaign Optimisation. In 2012 there is a more fluid marketing environment; there are still different initiatives in the field that connect certain messages, offers, audiences, and tactics with common threads. At the campaign level, web page optimisation is matching the pages and paths with the right messages of the campaign, and using the front-line results to inform and improve overall campaign effectiveness. It requires coordination and continuity.
6. Operations Optimisation. Maximizing the efficiency of your overall landing page capabilities is the key here. The personal skills required in operations of web page optimisation are design, production and construction. Increasing the reaction speed of changes to web page alteration can dramatically increase conversions. Monitoring social media chatter may reveal shifts in demand that if acted upon swiftly will increase conversions.
7. Strategy optimization. At the very top of the pyramid, the focus is on optimising marketing strategy. At this level of web page optimisation there are directions that must be considered and are namely: which strategic segments do we follow and which segmented market has the largest growth.

To learn about what Vincent Sandford of SEO Synovation can do for your business email him or visit his website on web marketing.