Having good usability on your site is a key aspect towards generating success. With this is mind, it is strange then that only a fraction of the agencies that offer SEO appear to offer usability consultancy. The reason for this could be that agencies do not have the ability to consult on this, or do not see it is an integral part of their business.

However not only does usability impact upon the user experience, it also can impact upon your sites performance in the SERPS.  Google wants to show sites with a good user experience, not just ones that are the most relevant (although the latter is much more important that then former in terms of rankings). This is why it weights down sites that have slow load times for example or are over-laden with code.

Another example of where Google might weight-down a site for poor user experience in the rankings is with regard to internal links.  Ill use for an illustrative example here – a car leasing company in Manchester. Manchester is of course a big place with several surrounding areas that are classed as “Manchester”.  To garner more traffic some SEO’s might advise that it would be useful to either list every surrounding area or create a page for each of these, for example,

-Car leasing in Trafford

-Car leasing in Didsbury

-Car Leasing in Prestwich

-Car Leasing in Droylsden

Whilst this might seem wise as you will pick up more traffic, it can cause problems for usability.  This tactic should only be used when it is relevant to the user, e/g in commercial property, where these is a real benefit of the user visiting these pages.  Blindly listing dozens of links to generic pages, could be detrimental to your ranking ability.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites