3 ways a human-centric lens can improve your SEO performance with Amy Broadfoot, This Is Human

3 ways user-centric web design and content development can help improve your SEO rankings

When most people think of the term ‘SEO’, they imagine some sort of cyber dark art, understood only by website experts, coding gurus, and Google’s indexing bots.

The truth is that while SEO may be measured by machines, it's actually built around human behaviour.

As Amy Broadfoot of This Is Human explained during our recent client workshop: if you bring your website design and content plan back to the needs of the audiences consuming it, you’ll have a great starting strategy for improving your rankings.

Here are 3 ways you can use this insight to optimise your SEO performance and website UX:

1/ Focus on making your content accessible and valuable

While Google’s algorithm and ranking factors are constantly evolving, one thing remains the same: they are designed to locate and order web pages in a way that best answers the user’s query.?

“The best content and website design strategies are focused on making information as accessible and valuable to the user as possible,” says Amy, Managing Director of This is Human.

Before you even start looking at content, it’s vital to ensure your website and pages function properly to provide a good user experience (UX).?

For example, does your website:

• Have a mobile-responsive design?
• Use size-optimised images with alt text, descriptions, file names and captions?
• Load quickly?
• Have a sitemap to help Google and users navigate?

Once you’ve mastered your website’s UX, you can optimise your content using four guiding R’s:

• Readable: is your content easy to find and consume?
• Relevant: does it include detailed information on the subject, without requiring the user to scroll through endless chunks of useless content?
• Reputable: is your information trustworthy and accurate?
• Recent: have you kept your information and website up to date?

“People often associate SEO with the old practice of ‘keyword stuffing’, where writers would overload their pages with keywords to try to game the system,” says Amy. “Google’s algorithms today are far more advanced. Keyword stuffing, copied content, and all those other shortcuts will only hurt your rankings. Instead, you need a high-quality content strategy.”

Which brings us to our next point:

2/ Build trust with your audiences?

In the age of fake news, it’s more important than ever for audiences to be able to find truthful, trustworthy content. To help achieve this, Google gives each website and page an ‘authority score’, which goes towards its final ranking.?

“You can use free tools such as Moz to check your website’s authority score, and track your improvement over time,” says Amy.

You can boost your score in a range of ways - for example, by gaining more ‘inbound’ links from pages with high authority scores, e.g. respected industry news sources, peer brands or well-known influencers in your market. This helps prove to Google’s algorithm that other reputable organisations in your sector value and trust your information - which means audiences are likely to as well.

3/ To reach #1 on Google, look at what #1 is doing now

Not sure why other pages are outranking yours on Google? It’s time to try skyscraping.?

“Skyscraping is the practice of comparing your content to that of your highest-ranked competitors,” says Amy. “Start by identifying what they are doing well, from an audience-centric point of view - then use their success to guide your optimisation strategy.”

Skyscraping is especially effective when looking at 'long-tail keywords’, which are longer-form queries audiences might use to find your content. For example: “What are the top B Corp Certified branding agencies in Melbourne?”

To practise skyscraping for content related to this long-tail keyword, we’d pop it into Google, then assess the top-ranking results using factors such as:

• inbound and outbound links
• content length
• keyword density?
• page authority
• user interactivity
• anything else that might add value and accessibility for the user.

From here, you can use the findings to improve your content and UX. Offer more value, more accessibility and more authority than your competitors, and over time your rankings should improve.

“Investing in improving your website and content might not offer the immediate gratification of paid advertising on socials - but in the long term, it’s more sustainable and cost-effective,” says Amy.?

Need help with your SEO strategy?

If you’re looking to improve your SEO performance using human-centric web design and content strategy, we can help. Why not drop us a message today to find out how we can support your organisation.