In this article, we offer the best, often overlooked- yet absolutely crucial seo technique every website owner should deploy, without delay. Once mastered, you will wonder how you ever did without it- and it might even keep you a step ahead of Google’s every tweak!
Invite a select group of friends over for an evening, and ask them to search within your website for information you have provided somewhere in the content. Ideally your target group should be from the same genre of people who would in fact, use your website to fulfil a need they might have.
You will be amazed at what this will teach you about your website- and human interaction. You should carefully note any stumbling blocks the visitors encounter- and remember- it’s them doing you the favour- so don’t try to blame them if they are not getting to their objectives easily.
So how does this affect search engine optimisation?
Regular readers will know by now, of the increased emphasis Google is placing on visitor experience.
This focus group is your opportunity to tweak the user experience. You, as the website creator- can anticipate where everything is. Total newcomers to your website might not know that something is “obviously” in a particular place. If their human experience is less than ideal, you can bet your clicks that the Googlebot with his pseudo-human evaluation methods, will return your website a less-than-ideal score, when he reports back to base.
Note all problems- ask your focus group to not spare the horses on this one- you really need to be in the hot seat here, with the heat turned up. Top level consulting costs many thousands of dollars, here you are getting it cheap for perhaps a case of fine spirits and some pizza. The more impartial and foreign to your internet presence the focus group can be, the better your results from the testing will be.