How Important Is Navigation In A Web Design?

Web Design with a good navigation is the only way you can “keep” website visitors. As a rule of thumb, if a visitor cannot get to the information they were looking for within three clicks, they will drift away – to some site that gives them quick information. With website visitors, impatience is a virtue. So, as a web design professional, you need to remember that simpler the better. Your navigation should be as simple as possible and as easy to interpret as possible. Resist the temptation of creating “clever” graphics. Most visitors are searching for information on the internet, rarely entertainment. So, as a web designer if you have an urge to be overly creative – stop.

Here are the things to remember for effective navigation on your web design:

* Top menus are placed right under the header. Don’t let user guess where the main menu is!

* Right, left or bottom navigations, rare – but if you use it correctly could be ok.

* Internal Links to other pages of your website should be just one click away. And not a series of click to get there!

* In case of ecommerce websites, display shopping carts, login buttons, order buttons very prominently.

* Advertisements on your website should be away from the main matter of the page. They should never interfere with the content of your website.

* Site Maps should be clear and all links double checked!

So, to sum it up, navigation is the most important element of your web design. Pay attention to the little details and you will find that you have created a perfectly navigable and user friendly website!

Lots more Updates to Google’s Algorithm

As Google promised a monthly series of updates to it’s algorithm, here are the most recent search quality updates. We have tried to put together a post (referring to Google’s official blog). So, let’s take a look at the brand new changes and how they affect Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization greatly depends on search algorithms, hence it is important to know the changes and analyse them for our website. Here are some of the important ones:

* Autocomplete previously used to normalize math symbols. It can now include predictions for “+”, “-”, “*”, “/”, “^”, “(“, “)”, and “=”.

* Google’s Algorithm can now index punctuations and symbols too.

* Better ranking for news stories groups. Scoring is now done to determine the ordering of these groups for any given query.

* Sitelinks data refresh now happens more frequently – in terms of weeks.

* Improvements to autocomplete backends, coverage

* When you change your password, your account will now be more consistently signed out from everywhere. (Although this was practiced earlier, it is now more improved and consistent.

* Profile pages from about 200 social media sites are now more effectively indexed.

* UI refresh for News Universal

* For searchers searching for a very specific website or do not type the link correctly into google search, the algorithm has been improvised to include this.

* Panda Update is here again with improved indexing of high quality websites

* Sports score updates for live results – UEFA Champions League and KHL, Tennis,

* Image searches are now improved – even if low quality pages contain relevant images, they shall be displayed in the search results! Image predictions now included in all languages. Image size and quality is also improved in search results

* SafeSearch algorithm is fine tuned to not include adult content unless searcher is specifically looking for it.

* Images Universal Code base is improved

* Application UI on mobile has better ranking

* Video searches are improved for freshness

* Removal of undesired synonyms and results are more faithful to original query

* Better handling of queries with both navigational and local intent

* Freshness of data algo improved

* Improvements to processing for detection of site quality

* Relevency of anchor text to the given query also matters

* Google News results are now improved and finding high quality articles on Google News is now easy

* Google is working on better evaluation of similar synonyms. Synonym accuracy is also improved.

* Update to systems relying on geographic data

* Improvements to detect celebrity names

* Personalization signals now updated

* Old pages are better detected and relevant and useful ones are displayed.

* Language detection is better

* Date detection for blog and forum pages are now improved

* Site links for mobile browsers have been launched

* +1 button appears in search results for more countries and domains now

We as Search Engine Optimization experts need to be aware and analyse our websites against these changes.

Local Search Engine Optimization And Yelp

One cannot emphasize more on the importance of local citations and the impact they have on local Search Engine Optimization. Local citation websites and more importantly the reviews you get on these local sites matters a lot. Yelp is one such local review website. In today’s world, you can find places very easily over the internet – thanks to local listings, you no longer have to rely on yellow pages or a phone book.

Yelp allows users to place reviews for local services and goods and businesses. Yelp also offers local businesses a free listing on their website with a no follow link to their page. They provide an opportunity for branding and gaining visitors that you wouldn’t have otherwise got from an organic search results. This is a different visitor base to tap! Local SEO strategies work well for a locally targeted audience.

It is of utmost importance to keep your local business information updated. Well, if your information is incomplete or incorrect you stand to lose credibility and this is a huge potential loss of revenue. The other important factor is customer reviews. In other citation websites like Google places, the quantity of reviews matter. The more the number of reviews the better. In case of Yelp, positive reviews matter. A negative review can take you down!

So it is important that your local SEO strategies include consistency in information an all local websites and ensure that you work towards gaining many reviews – positive ones!

Internet Marketing and Search Retargeting

In Internet Marketing, users generally find your website be searching keywords for product or services names. Well, even if they find your site and click on it, they sometimes leave your page and go to some other site. Search re-targeting is generally used by internet marketing professionals to remarket their products to users who once visited their site by searching data. The idea is to reach out to the customers who once showed interest in your products / services but for some reason or another decided not to complete the transaction.

So, how exactly does an Internet Marketing professional re-market? Here’s how it works. Whenever a user visits your site, an anonymous cookie is placed on your website. This cookie is then recognized by your advertizing server and you can display your ads to these users again. A really great way to increase conversions.

There are two methods for search retargeting used by internet marketing professionals. One deals with users who have come to your website by means of search, and the other method deals with users who have searched for your targeted keywords.

The main benefit of this type of marketing is that the users who searched for your products or clicked on your website probably are already familiar with your brand and have already taken a first look at your products. This makes it easier for you. They are almost ready to convert. So, you can make the most out of search re-targeting.