Simpler. Simpler. Simpler.

Websites that intend to sell; websites that intend to inform; websites that attract repeat visitors, in other words, most websites will be simpler.

Robots read the Internet.

Search engines are robots and do nothing but read what's on websites.
Machine readers read websites and say aloud what's on them for the benefit of blind surfers.
Machines are simple and dumb. They don't require much, but what they require, well, they really require.
Here are a few tips to make your site more readable by machines and humans too by learning a few code concepts!

Code

Machines don't know a headline from a picture unless they are told. Html code is what tells what it's reading.

Jacob Nielson just released a study of college students and how they use the Internet.

Nielson is perhaps the world's foremost researcher when it comes to user experience on websites. What he found out about college students confirms several things about web usage. Here are three elements I took from reading a summary of the study.

Provide your customers with what they want as you would have others provide you with what you want. Money is valuable. Having it gives us a sense of well-being. We think mighty hard about giving it in exchange for something. Yet many business people turn this simple truth on its head and comically think that customers should want what they have to sell. Unless you know what your customers want and do everything in your power to deliver to them, profitably, your business is headed for trouble and you for disappointment. This brings us to the second rule.

If you own a store, you learn what your customers want by asking them. "How can I help you?"

 

Five Things You Must Make Sure She Knows

 

Unfortunately, many people who need SEO¹ services and many people who sell it operate under the illusion that an SEO consultants is a wizard and can transform any website into a money fountain.

Hardly.

 

Sometimes it's good to think of your site as part of the Internet.

In that sense a keyword or keyword phrase would function as a sort of dynamic menu item. Let's call it a keyword question.

A seeker types in a keyword question. For example, "road bike tires tampa." She's asking the question, "Search engine, where can I find out something about road bike tires in Tampa?"

Content management¹ systems for websites like Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla provide simple forms for website content providers to fill out. When the content is ready to be published, the content provider hits a button and, poof, new content for the website. CMSs allow people to focus on content, the real heart of a website, and not be impeded by coding and technological barriers.

You can't really use something until you learn how, right?

So user satisfaction with a website in most cases is going to depend on how fast your visitor can learn to use the site and its fetures to get her what she wants. It is the place usability¹ begins and it begins most happily when your visitor didn't give it a thought. Read Steve Krug's very powerful but simple book, Don't Make Me Think.

Recently a prospective client was told by a developer, "Drupal¹? No one uses that anymore."

Whoever said that is at best really misinformed. Drupal powers thousands of sites around the world. Now the communications team that supports the leader of the free world has chosen Drupal to run the White House website.