Website Spider and Visitor Usability - Make Finding Stuff Easy
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Keep File Size Small
Both search engines and visitors love pages that are small in size and quick to load. Optimize images where possible. Put CSS in a separate file.
Search Engine
If your website is pretty big, include an internal search engine. Check out Google Custom Search.
Information Scent
Brian and Jeffrey Eisenberg talk of information scent. Their theory (proven by practice) states that people are like bloodhounds. We pick up the scent of information and follow it until we find the information we want.
"As we scour about, trying to figure out how to frame and solve our problems, we become like bloodhounds. We try to pick up the scent of an associative trail that will lead us to the information we want. And when that scent evaporates, we begin to lose interest in the trail. If the scent dries up, we disconnect." - Waiting for Your Cat Bark
That information scent is represented by KEYWORDS. When we search for "California mortgage broker" on Google, we NATURALLY look for that exact phrase in search results. We scan the headlines and select the one that closely matches the phase. We also scan snippets of the pages featured in search results and look for the phrase.
Once we land on the website from the search results, we again look for the information scent in the form of keywords. The best way to show visitors they're on the right track is to feature keywords in the headline in the opening paragraph. Luckily, the information scent principle simply means following good SEO practices, so by including keywords in prominent places, you make search engine spiders and visitors happy.
Also notice that when search results are hollow, you naturally pay more attention to the listings with bolded keywords and consider them more relevant. Those listings are more likely to get your click.
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