One of the keys to getting more traffic to your website and to converting more visitors to customers is to make your website more relevant.
Depending on the reference, relevance has two slightly different but certainly related meanings.
If your reference is humans, the definition you already understand is suffice.
For search engine optimization, especially for Google, the definition is a little more narrow yet slightly less refined.
We’ll start with the Google definition of relevance, then look at the human aspect.
Search Engine Optimization, Relevance, and Google
Relevance is the key to getting more traffic from Google.
If your website appears to be about many things, as far as Google can see, then Google assumes your website lacks focus and the quality of information about a specific subject might be less relevant to searchers.
I’m sure you’ve seen examples to the contrary. The point is that keeping your website as relevant as possible to the subject at hand gives you the best chance of ranking high in search engine results.
For example, let’s say you were a web designer, and your website was about web design.
You can talk about graphic design, HTML, the latest trends in web design etc. If you start talking about gardening, then you’re off-topic, and this could dilute your search results for terms related to web design.
This does not mean to say that you must only talk about one thing. It does mean that most of your articles should be about one thing.
The techniques for telling Google exactly what your site is about is a separate subject, but for now just accept the fact that your website must be set up a certain way so that Google knows what it is about.
By the way, why did I choose a web design company in the above example? Because it is more relevant to the subject of what this whole site is about. Since I can choose any example in any industry, I may as well choose something related to improving your website and making it work for you, which is what this whole site is about.
Relevance and Converting Visitors to Customers
Relevance is also important to getting people to your website and getting them to stay.
When people do a search, they are looking for specific information that is relevant to the problem they are trying to solve.
The first thing they see when they look at search results is the heading for your web page. Not only must this be relevant to Google so that it gets listed, it must also be relevant to humans so they click the search result. The same goes for the description under the title.
Once a visitor lands on your site, they must quickly judge that the whole website is relevant to them, or at least that the page is.
If your website is about real estate, along with an appropriate header, yet for some reason you had a great article about website design that showed up in Google, someone landing on your site would likely feel they had arrived at the wrong place.
A header that obviously supports the idea of web design, along with a headline that is both relevant and makes visitors want to start reading are first steps in demonstrating relevance to visitors.
Of course the way your content is written may bore readers to tears, no matter how relevant. How to write content is the subject for another article.
The point is that to get listed in search engines, to get people to click your listing, and to get people to start reading, you have to demonstrate relevance and consistency all the way through.
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