Search Engine Optimization can be an almost infinitely complex subject. You can easily get caught up in all the fun details of latent semantic indexing, canonicalization, and c block hosting, but it’s much easier to focus on a simple holistic approach. One concept that has helped me learn most in this field is to look at search engines the same as you would any other user.
Far too many people get caught up in “How do I get my site to the top of Google?!!?” and they forget that Google is actually the one that wants to put you “at the top”. Google wants to look at your site as any other user would and then make a judgment on how likely they are to tell their “friends” about you. The entire purpose of a Search Engine is to return accurate and meaningful results to the person who submits the query. If the search engine fails at this, then their customer will try another query, maybe one more, and then finally give up try another search engine. They’ve essentially lost a customer. Fortunately for Google, they have a long history of returning pretty good results for your searches so they’ve established quite a following. This is why Google can determine how you should run your website to be considered “worthy” of these coveted positions at the top of the search result pages. People like Google for the quality of their results and to have a “Google-friendly” site you too must have quality.
A User Focused Approach
The very first listing of Google’s philosophy holds true for not only how you should run a company, but how you should optimize your website as well.
Focus on the user and all else will follow.
If you focus your site on providing accurate, updated, focused content for users, then you’ve already completed one of the most important steps in Search Engine Optimization. The genius of following a rule like this is that you are planning beyond the search engine. Even if tomorrow every search engine in the world refuses to acknowledge your site, you have a site that the customer finds valuable. You have given the customer something to not only frequent, but also to tell their friends about. They tell their friends and before too long, you have a steady stream of loyal visitors as well as other webmasters around the Internet that link to your content from their websites and blogs.
It is the process
User experience design shouldn’t just be part of your process, it IS the process. Applications that focus on the user’s experience can drive increased return on investment by simplifying and improving user interaction. This enables users (and Search Engines!) to find information more easily. The easier and more structured your content is, the easier Search Engines will find it to process and index.
This is why it is important to focus on User Experience in every project. User Experience should be used even on portal projects that feature content that will never be found by Google and was never meant to. Perficient’s User Experience Experts still use proven user research methods and implementation techniques to drive customer engagement. This is optimizing beyond the Search Engine. So next time you are asking yourself how to gain Google’s favor, you’ll know what to do. Don’t try and hammer a new technology into your web strategy just because your CTO thinks it’s great. Don’t launch a complete rebranding campaign because your CEO has a hunch that a fresh coat of paint will increase conversions. Do what Google does.
“Focus on the user and all else will follow”
