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What is takes to be at the top of the search engine results
Building a site that is traffic-worthy is essential in the search engine rankings game. This is a step in the SEO process that is too often undervalued or overlooked altogether, but has a large impact on the long-term viability of a site. Search engines seek to meet the needs of their users by ranking search results with the best, most functional, accurate, and easy to use sites that are the most pertinent to that specific search. Thus, sites who wish to remain at the top of a search list must tailor their site to fit these needs, or they will certainly be pushed lower in the rankings by a competitor site who does.
Usability is an obvious requirement in building a traffic-worthy site. This will be the greatest factor to impact the user’s experience. Even the most informative, professional site is rendered useless by a search engine user if they are not able to extract the required information from the site. A fully usable website needs to anticipate the behaviors of the user in such a way that the site is set up to create a seamless user experience.
The design of a site refers to its layout, color and image patterns, and navigation. A usable, traffic-worthy site must do several things in this area. First, while a creative layout may seem like a plus, adhering to basic elements of layout and structure can actually make your site more easily decipherable to users. For instance, links should be in blue text and underlined. Tabs or menus listing content should be along the top or side. These are basics, to be sure, but search engine users will already be familiar with them. Also, layout and color schemes should be designed in such a way that different areas of the site are easily distinguishable. Search bars, menus or tabs, and actual written content should all be visually distinguishable from one another. After you have established the format of these different elements of your site, make sure to keep those formats consistent throughout the site. The goal here is to make users of your site feel that the experience is logical and virtually effortless.
The design of your traffic-worthy site will also prompt users to view the company as professional and of high quality, or the opposite if care is not taken. Simply put, the site must look like a professional made it, and not like something that an amateur or student could have engineered. A professional site will adhere to the guidelines outlined above, but must go one step further. One additional area to which attention must be paid is the site’s photography. High quality images only should be used, as opposed to photographs that have an average or clip-art look to them. The colors used will also give users indications of how to view the company. All primary colors, for example, are not commonly used in a professional setting. Instead, choose more elegant and subtle color combinations. The spacing and organization of words and images must feel uncluttered and have an order to them. An easily identifiable navigation tool, such as a search bar, is something commonly expected of a professional site as well.
Lastly, and most obviously, use only the highest quality content on your site to make it truly traffic worthy. Your users should come away with the best researched information possible, and should be provided with unique pieces of information or perspectives they will not find elsewhere. Know what you are talking about, and give users access to every conceivable related topic or question. Utilize top ten lists, one-stop-shop articles that give information and action items on a topic, and informative charts. These are all attractive and effective methods of delivering information to your users, and the more varied these methods are, the more users your traffic-worthy website will be able to appeal to.
Tags: search engine, SEO, TrafficDid you miss any of these?
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Content is KING. This is what I think and in a sense your traffic won’t boost dramatically in a flash, but in a long term sense your are looking BIG!
I think you’re absolutely right, One Year Millionaire. People need to remember Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes time to engineer a well constructed, content rich website and even more time to get the word out. No point in telling everyone to come see it only for them to be let down upon arrival. Make it something to take pride in and the advertisers will follow too!
Excellent post, especially the last paragraph. Thank you!
On that subject, it’s came to my attention there’s a growing amount of posts on webmaster and blogger forums now about ways to get visitors that are at best, underhanded. It bugs me so much that instead of seeking out great content or writing it themselves they’d rather do that. If certain bloggers/webmasters would expend half their energies on writing good stuff that they do on trying to buck the system, they would get on a lot better and the Net would be a better place.
First impressions last forever so I agree that your site must look both attractive and professional. It pays to spend a little more time, effort and a little money on this.
Peter Kee