Fusing website usability and search engine optimisation

South African Journal of Information Management

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Fusing website usability and search engine optimisation
 
Creator Visser, Eugene B. Weideman, Melius
 
Subject Information Science —
Description Background: Most websites, especially those with a commercial orientation, need a high ranking on a search engine for one or more keywords or phrases. The search engine optimisation process attempts to achieve this. Furthermore, website users expect easy navigation, interaction and transactional ability. The application of website usability principles attempts to achieve this. Ideally, designers should achieve both goals when they design websites.Objectives: This research intended to establish a relationship between search engine optimisation and website usability in order to guide the industry. The authors found a discrepancy between the perceived roles of search engines and website usability.Method: The authors designed three test websites. Each had different combinations of usability, visibility and other attributes. They recorded and analysed the conversions and financial spending on these experimental websites. Finally, they designed a model that fuses search engine optimisation and website usability.Results: Initially, it seemed that website usability and search engine optimisation complemented each other. However, some contradictions between the two, based on content, keywords and their presentation, emerged. Industry experts do not acknowledge these contradictions, although they agree on the existence of the individual elements. The new model highlights the complementary and contradictory aspects.Conclusion: The authors found no evidence of any previous empirical experimental results that could confirm or refute the role of the model. In the fast-paced world of competition between commercial websites, this adds value and originality to the websites of organisations whose websites play important roles.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2014-03-14
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — website measurement
Format text/html application/octet-stream text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajim.v16i1.577
 
Source SA Journal of Information Management; Vol 16, No 1 (2014); 9 pages 1560-683X 2078-1865
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/577/682 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/577/683 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/577/684 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/577/681
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2014 Eugene B. Visser, Melius Weideman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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