Focusing on Findability to Improve SEO

With great importance placed on SEO, site owners are engaging in a constant stream of optimization tactics that may not be targeting the ideal user. As user experience becomes more and more important, a close relative of Search Engine Optimization – Findability – is seemingly the UX strategy that is often overlooked and rarely seen as an area that should be critically addressed and optimized to make SEO work all the better.

While SEO serves the main purpose of getting a user to the site, the search often lands the user deep within the content and, worse, in the wrong place. Users then must navigate back to find the origination point of the content they are looking for to complete their task, taking them longer than desired.

When a findability strategy is implemented, content is developed from a top-down approach, allowing a user to locate the needed information at any point on a site. Users can be easily directed to information in a variety of ways:

Title Navigation

Navigation is one of the most important parts of findability. It is the true ‘north star’ for a user and helps to build trust, advocacy and build brand knowledge. Every page of content has a message, and the titles must fully represent that message. Ensuring that tiles are representative of the content, it leads to is critical.

Simplified Content

While creating content to populate a site isn’t insurmountable, creating content that will resonate takes some care and craft. Content should be pared down to the essence of the message in order for the user to understand it quickly and concisely. Including SEO-friendly keywords is important; however, avoid keyword stuffing as this can work against the optimization strategy.

Calls to Action

Benchmarking specific areas on a site that require additional conversion tactics should be carefully highlighted. Whether moving a user to conversion or additional information, these areas should be well-designed via well-designed buttons or hyperlinks.

Internal Links

Regardless of the task, users tend to ‘browse’ sites for more information to discover something new. Internal links can be of great help to a user in getting them back on track to the information that they came for. Links must be relevant and accurate to ensure usability.

Tapping into a findability strategy is key to achieving a truly optimized search engine initiative that will lead to conversion. Taking a comprehensive design and content approach to this critical optimization aspect will lead to increased UX and a better overall bottom line.