Are you thinking about building a killer website that makes your visitors want to return time and again? Or maybe you have a website, but it’s getting lackluster results on the search engines.
Both scenarios present a sticky wicket that all website builders of any skill level face. To be sure, it’s a slippery slope when building a website that pleases your visitors and search engines simultaneously. That’s why we have some tried and true tips on how to build a website both visitors and search engines will love.
Serving Two Masters
Mastering the delicate dance of appealing to visitors, while also getting ranked on search engines such as Google, is the bane of many website developers. If you are new to the website building scene, you might be utterly overwhelmed as to how to champion the hearts of your audience with your website. You may also be fraught with confusion when it comes to implementing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
Fear not. Both objectives can be achieved. Thankfully, search engines such as Google hold websites to a user-based standard. That means Google gives a higher rank to websites that accommodate the user experience (UX). Therefore, when you build a website that search engines love, you’re already well on your way to pleasing your visitors too. Here are a few criteria in building a website that both search engines and visitors crave.
Satisfying Visitor and Search Engine Demands
Google is still the most preferred search engine on the world wide web. They’ve devoted impressive resources and time discerning user behavior to help their artificial intelligence (AI) determine what makes a good or bad website. Google’s determinations and algorithms are proprietary, and many of their analytics are kept secret. However, we do know of these few simple tactics you can take to please both Google and visitors.
Make it Fast and Clean
The number one no-no for both visitors and search engines alike is having a slow, sluggish site. In fact, over half of users will click out of a website if the page does not load within the first few seconds. Furthermore, Google started penalizing slow websites by ranking them lower in search results. You can combat the slow-site syndrome by obtaining a quality, managed WordPress hosting service.
Furthermore, managed hosting can also protect your site from cyberattacks and hackers. This is crucial because search engines, obviously, will not rank buggy websites. And visitors will click off your site in a heartbeat if they suspect its security is compromised.
Build for Mobile Users
Did you know that today, almost 70% of visits on websites are done from a mobile device? It makes sense because most people appreciate the convenience of instant access to information from their phones. Furthermore, more people have smartphones than desktops these days.
While you are building a website that caters to users and search engines, it’s imperative to build for mobile users first. This means making your website mobile-friendly so that it is easily viewed from your visitor’s cellular devices.
In terms of making search engines happy, mobile-friendly sites are now the new norm. In fact, Google started penalizing websites that were not responsive and began lowering site ranks in 2015 if they were not compliant with mobile-friendly criteria.
Content is Still King
If you talk to web developers and SEO strategists, they might tout all manner of tricks of the trade to please your audience while also placating search engines. However, if you talk to the hard-core professionals, they will tell you that content is still king.
Therefore, provide high-quality, valuable content when building your website. Provide search engines and visitors with well-written, informative articles that help your readers solve their problems. This will keep them returning to your website for more. While you write these articles, optimize them with keywords that will attract the attention of search engines.
You may also consider adding value by embedding informative videos on your pages. Google tells us that 80% of users prefer videos and engaging imagery when they visit a website, thus these websites are ranked higher on Google. Consequently, you should think about implementing various types of media to give search engines and visitors what they want.
The Last Word on Appeasing Search Engines and Visitors
In short, your website should be fast, user-friendly, and give your visitors loads of value. It should also inform search engines as to whether or not your website is worthy of high ranking in search results. When you keep this in mind and follow these tips, you are on a path to successfully build a website that both search engines and visitors will love.
