On-Page Optimization for Content and UX

Ready for to part II of our On-page optimization series? Good we like to call this one On-page II: Content and UX. Tagline: This time it’s personal.

Let’s talk a little bit about on-page optimization, specifically the content and user experience that we want to create. This is both important for people visiting your site and how a search engines sees your pages.

Best Practices

Let’s talk best practices. Here we have a sample page for my Seattle yoga studio, Yoga Bearra. Best yoga studio name ever.

Answer Searcher Intent

First, you want to make the content fulfill 90% of a searchers' intent. If someone searches "Seattle hot yoga classes," and I have a page optimized for “Seattle's best hot yoga classes” then I’m in good shape. This page clearly targets the search phrase "Seattle hot yoga classes." But does it also target the intent? Does the content and the experience that someone has when they get to this page answer their questions? Questions like: Where are your locations? Who are your instructors? Is this the type of hot yoga class that I would want to attend? Is it very traditional? Is it more modern? How long is the class? You want to answer 90% of all the things a searcher will have in their mind when they query a phrase like "Seattle hot yoga classes."

Load Speed

Next, make the page load fast. We can't tell you how important this has become as people have become very impatient. Webpage speeds have gone up and up. Google has some great tools called Page Speed that you can check out to measure your load times. Making your site load fast will make it very likely that you can perform better in search engines and make users happier.

Relevant Content

Make sure you include content that is relevant to a search and matches the vernacular of the people searching. “Hot yoga” is a perfect example because, a phrase like "Bikram," is often associated with the keyword. It's going to be associated through the search engines' topic modeling algorithms. It's also going to be associated in people's minds. A searcher expects to see Bikram and hot yoga associated with one another and you want to do your research to make sure that that type of content is on your pages.

Design

Who loves a beautiful website? Everyone. Make your design beautiful and pages usable. Users associate the quality of design with trustworthiness and with the value of the webpage. Those signals will affect all of your marketing efforts. They'll affect the links you can earn, whether people share it, if people refer their friends to the site, and whether search engines rank it well.

Get Visual

Use visuals wherever possible. If you've got some videos of your yoga studio or some pictures of what like to do yoga there you’ll be all set. People are drawn to photos. They're drawn to visuals. That's why we do these whiteboard videos with a whiteboard, so that you don't just have to look at Rand all the time. Well, we actually know you love to look at Rand. Don’t lie to yourself.

Responsive Design

Employ responsive design, because the web is getting mobile. When this webpage loads on a mobile device, we want it to shrink down so that we can see all of this content in a single column. We don't want to pinch zoom and drag things all over the place. Responsive design will make sure that design looks works well everywhere and for everyone.

Navigation

Make the navigation useful and matched up to actions users may want to take next. If we've got a history of Bikram page and people want to learn more, the site should take them to a place where they can learn more. Study the kinds of actions users might want to perform next and get inside their heads so that we can provide those step. This will help from a content and UX perspective, not just for your users, but for search engine signals as well.