Now more than ever, it’s important to give your website guests an engaging and positive experience every time they visit.
People are busy. They prefer visuals over long paragraphs. As a result, websites provide smart navigation and concise content to quickly answer questions and provide practical solutions.
Hurray, customers are thrilled! But search engines such as Google see things quite differently.
Search engines scan for MORE content, not less, based on specific search terms entered by the users you want to attract. If you’re not convinced, go online for an apple pie recipe. You’ll find it eventually after scrolling through 1,000 words or more (and it’s delicious).
Hence, the paradox. How can you provide lots of good content to satisfy different search engines, but not frustrate or bore your audience? Here are three ways that work:
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Keyword targeting—Identify what search terms your target audiences are using to find specific information on your site. This includes broad search terms (like apple pie recipe) and specific long tail keywords (all-natural organic apple pie recipe). This not only relates to a wider range of users, but also shows search engines you’re addressing multiple keywords within the topic.
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Keyword content—Provide keyword-specific content on targeted pages, so those pages deliver more content for that specific keyword than other sites in your industry. This not only includes written content but other attractive formats such as video, related links, infographics, whitepapers and more.
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Nested site structure—Organize the keyword-specific pages in a structure that helps search engines easily understand not only the structure of your site but also how each specific page relates to one another under broader search terms. Using our apple pie example, include a broad “apple pie page” with content as well as links to more detailed internal pages (such as all-natural organic apple pie). This structure allows both broad and detailed users to find what they want without being overwhelmed by text. Search engines also are happy because all the content is grouped into related categories and, based on the keyword, they can now send the user to content most relevant to their inquiry.
Though these are only a few of the basic SEO principles, they continue to play a large part in ranking even as search engine criteria continues to change. Apply them to achieve a better user experience AND better results on your search engine results pages.