SEO Made Simple: How to Create Engaging Experiences for Users
The fact is that user engagement and user experiences affect search engine optimization too. One way to make users stick to your site longer is to make your website simple to use, easy to get around on, and understandable. Plus, you need to offer engaging experiences for your users. Your website design plays an important role in this regard. Here are some tips for what I refer to as SEO made simple.
* Design for the User – You know that you need to design for your ideal customer, but it’s also important to design for the users. Users aren’t always clients. If your users are confused, they’ll click away and you’ll miss out on user engagement. This happened to me when I was first online.
* Study Your Audience – Always keep studying your audience. Those are the people who have visited your website, participated in your groups, purchased your products, and have an interest in your industry. The only way you can get close to a design that is pleasing to your audience and users is to understand who they are and what they are expecting and prefer.
* Develop User Group Types – Since all the people who come to your website aren’t customers but rather are users (users of your website), it’s important to create groups of the type of users that will come to your site so that you can offer the right content to them based on what they’re doing on your website.
* Make It Simple – When you are designing your site, don’t look at it from your vantage point; look at it from your least computer-savvy user’s eyes. Does that slider on your site make it apparent it’s a slider? Does that button show up good enough with the right instructions to click it to affect some sort of action? My SEO made simple is based on this.
* Label Clearly – Use simple, to-the-point text on all links. You want it to be very clear what happens when your users click on any button. User engagement will increase when you help them know exactly how to work things on your site. Clear language about what they should do needs to be a priority.
* Include CTAs – Calls to action are so important on a website. If you want your users to answer a poll, you need to ask them to do it and give them instructions so that they know what will happen and how to conduct the survey. If you want them to sign up for your newsletter, you should explain why you want them to do it and what’s in it for them.
* Make It Work Everywhere – Today, most users access the internet via tablets or mobile devices. When you design any type of website and user interaction features, they should work just as well on mobile devices as they do on a PC.
* Get Feedback – Ask your users what they think about your website design via a pop-up or pop-under short questionnaire. This is the best way to know whether the design you’re working on is working for them. Your website design is always in a state of flux and will continue to change with technology, so getting their feedback will help inform future updates and changes.
Finally, provide open comments on blog posts and articles, and make it easy for them to contact you. If you want engagement from users, focus on offering an engaging website that asks for interaction and engagement.
I’m Connie Ragen Green and I work with new online entrepreneurs to help them get into profit as quickly as possible with information products, affiliate marketing, marketing for small businesses, blogging, authorship, and more. Download your Online Entrepreneur Blueprint and get started right away.
