SEO, brand authority and user experience
In recent times web designers have come round to the idea that boosting pages up SERP rankings is about more than maintaining good search engine optimisation practices. Professionals in the field of SEO, such as Cardiff website designer Amber Couch, understand this and focus on bringing brand authority and user experience (UX) to their clients alongside traditional optimisation practices.
Building an authoritative and trusted brand
An article on a digital marketing information website by Lisa Buyer explores how companies go about garnering authority and trust in their communities. Ms Buyer discusses the concepts of social tie-in and search tie-in, which work cooperatively to build brand authority. Social tie-in is about fostering a community that routinely reads, comments and shares content from a source it respects, while search tie-in is about the relevance and timeliness of such content.
Providing quality user experience
Brand management director Anca Bradley warns SEO professionals to maintain a balance between SEO and UX when designing webpages. Ms Bradley passes on Google’s advice that pages designed for the user allow SEO to follow naturally; however, she emphasises the need for balance by discussing website attributes that are known to be good for the user and points out that infinite scroll and click-to-expand sections can be detrimental to page crawling if used to excess.
The power of three
Providing a good UX as users navigate a page or site with a view to forging a brand that is trusted and authoritative within its community has become part of the SEO solution. Website design in Cardiff by Ambercouch, among other website/SEO professionals, has a challenge to combine SEO and UX-friendly website characteristics that will deliver brand recognition in key target audiences for its clients.
To achieve the SEO/UX balance required to generate good brand authority, a number of factors must come together through the efforts of the web designer, the client and possibly selected third parties. Web copy is tailored to the search needs of the client’s target audience through keyword analytics and other research, while the web designer can use techniques such as responsive web design to increase usability on a range of devices. Cultivation of links and content should be encouraged, as should the hiring of guest third party contributors who have established themselves as respected authors.
