{"id":1817,"date":"2014-06-10T18:09:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T18:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/?p=1817"},"modified":"2025-05-20T13:49:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T13:49:48","slug":"five-tips-for-making-your-site-more-navigable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/five-tips-for-making-your-site-more-navigable\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Tips For Making Your Site More Navigable"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

That\u2019s no longer the case. Google updates its algorithms. Each update makes search smarter. It understands what users like. Social media drives much web traffic. People share interesting pages. They share on Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a paradigm shift in SEO.  Search algorithms still matter. But now, focus on users. Don’t just chase tactics. If people dislike your site, it won’t rank well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Appealing to one\u2019s audience isn\u2019t just about producing great content \u2013 it\u2019s about making that content accessible. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve seen a lot of webmasters forget: a website\u2019s navigability plays a key role in user engagement. As such, a site that isn\u2019t easy to navigate is no good at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s go over a few things that can be done to make a website more navigable:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make It Mobile-Friendly<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first and most important piece of advice I\u2019m going to offer is that your website needs to be designed so that users on mobile devices can access and browse it with relative ease.  Mobile device usage is becoming more prevalent with each passing day<\/a> \u2013 currently, there are over 2.1 billion mobile web users in the world<\/a>. In short, you\u2019re alienating a large percentage of your user-base if you aren\u2019t designing your website to be mobile-friendly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s generally not all that difficult to do, either \u2013 there are ready-made solutions that bring touch friendliness<\/a> to content management systems like WordPress, and responsive themes are becoming more common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avoid Resource-Intensive Elements (Where Possible)<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You know not everyone uses a desktop PC. Many use phones. Avoid heavy elements. Flash is one example. Don’t use it if you can. Generally, you should try to keep the size of your pages somewhere below 1500 KB \u2014 any higher, and you\u2019re going to cause problems for a lot of users, who will experience poor performance and slow load times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pay particularly close attention to your ads. More than once, I\u2019ve found myself on a website that caused my computer to slow to a crawl because a not-so-clever marketer decided to pump out a poorly-optimized flash advertisement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mobile
Website Navigation Importance <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t Interrupt The User<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re looking for a surefire way to irritate users and drive them away from your page, interrupt their browsing experience. Load up your website with auto-playing video, popover ads, popups, and background music. If, however, you want your site to be easy to navigate, then avoid being intrusive. It\u2019ll only serve to make your site less accessible \u2013 and less appealing as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Set Up An Organized Sitemap, And Ensure Site Design Is Consistent<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Particularly on larger websites, you want to make sure your audience knows where they are \u2013 and that they can find where they\u2019re going. Set up an organized, generalized site-map, and make sure it remains consistent across all pages. If you want a guide on the best way to do that, you can check out this piece by Michael L Bernard. Although it may be a bit dated, the information it contains is still very much relevant to navigability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t Over complicate!<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Last, but certainly not least, don\u2019t make your website too complicated. Do you really need ten different entries on your sitemap\u00a0 you need twenty backlinks per post, or ten different advertisements a page? Do you need to write ten thousand words every time you publish a new article?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than anything else, modern webmasters should follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). After all, the more streamlined a website is, the easier it becomes to navigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Closing<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Search Engine Optimization isn\u2019t dead, but it\u2019s definitely changed a great deal from what it used to be. These days, it\u2019s all about making sure your website appeals to the user enough for them to share it with their friends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most important factors in this appeal is a site\u2019s accessibility. A page that isn\u2019t navigable isn\u2019t going to get shared \u2013 and a page that doesn\u2019t get shared isn\u2019t going to rank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If content is king, then accessibility is queen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That\u2019s no longer the case. Google updates its algorithms. Each update makes search smarter. It understands what users like. Social media drives much web traffic. People share interesting pages. They share on Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a paradigm shift in SEO.  Search algorithms still matter. But now, focus on users. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webmaster"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4888,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions\/4888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}