Web Usability and Search Engine Optimization

If you are in Online business or own a Ecommerce/Information website, you must know and concentrate only two things to make your online business a success:
  • Attract visitors to website - Get incoming traffic.
  • Convert a visitor into customer/member - Conversion.
I believe that Web Usability (User Interface Design) and Search Engine Optimization( SEO) go hand in hand. If you are really serious about your website, read on to find out what I mean.
Question yourself.... What is important for you?
...a very Beautiful website? (your designer's hard work to please you) ---OR---
a simple site that enables a user to find everything easily?
I am not saying an aesthetically designed website lack's user friendliness, I mean to say use of heavy flash to impress customers, many images, navigation that looks only good can make a website a nightmare for your potential customers. Such websites are good to receive people's attention who love art but not necessarily they can become your customers and also such stuff is good to impress many for the first time, but average person hate to visit such sites again because it takes huge downloading time and many find such websites difficult to navigate.
Now-a-days people are using Internet like anything and they find its easy to shop through Internet instead of going to shops. So now you can imagine that Internet is not a new thing for most of them and they love to visit a site which has:
  • Simple look (User Interface)
  • Easy search features
  • Less steps to reach desired product
  • Easy navigation
  • Simple explanation of services/products
Jackob Nielsen, Web Usability Expert, explains through "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design", how web designers make mistakes while they think they have created a good product, read it here: http://useit.com/alertbox/9605.html.
If you are a company, ask your designers and web developers to read "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" book by Steve Krug, rather I would suggest make it compulsory reading for your staff, it would be a great treat to your employees.
A website designed following web usability guidelines, is good food for search engine spiders/crawlers. They love to digest websites that are more user friendly.
A usable website receives good ranking on search engines.

Website Usability is the basic step in good search engine optimization.


Dinesh Gajbhiye,Web Usability and seo Professional - Pune, India | [email protected]
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

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