SEO, Design, UX and Accessibility with David Pisarek

I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge , hints and tips I've amassed over that time . Hello and welcome back to SEO is not that hard . It's me here , ed Dawson , hosting , as always , and on today's episode I'm joined by David Pesarek .

He's a design and programming expert who's been smashing the nonprofit sector for 30 years . He's taught at college level and he's found his passion for sharing knowledge while helping his clients transform their digital presence .

So , as the founder of Wow Digital Inc , david and his team have completed over 225 projects in the last five years , bridging the gaps between IT , marketing , communications and fundraising to streamline operations and drive digital success , particularly for

non-profits . So today we're diving into something SEOs often overlook , and that's design , aesthetics and usability . So first impressions matters . And usability . So first impressions matters . And you know , david is going to tell us in a bit how users decide , in just over 0.05 seconds , whether they trust a website .

So that's real first impressions , and we'll cover how design impacts conversions , where accessibility is crucial for both SEO and user experience , and how to create high converting landing pages . Plus , we'll discuss mobile first design and the role of ai in web design and the biggest mistakes to avoid .

So if you want a website that not only ranks but actually works for your users , then this episode is for you . So , hi , david , thanks for coming along to the show and I'm really keen to get information from you all around kind of design , aesthetics , usability , accessibility , that kind of thing , because it's a .

It's an area where lots of people in SEO get very focused on technicalities , on content , but they don't always think about how you know science , look to people , how content looks , what's the important thing .

So I'm really keen to get you know sort of drill into the knowledge you've got around this , and I suppose the first thing I want to ask you is what should we be thinking about when we're trying to make first impressions ? Because first impressions count , for obviously people will come to a site they're going to learn .

How do we make a good first impression on people design wise ?

So you go to a website within 0.05 of a second , you know whether it's uh what you're looking for , you know whether it's trustworthy uh , and you know whether it kind of feels right , like the , the visceral gut reaction that you have to it Uh , and there's a number of factors that come into that . I've been in the game uh for a very long time .

We got dial up internet in the early nineties a very long time . We got dial-up internet in the early 90s and I kind of went on the asia's road , uh , and I just went okay , this is kind of cool , and I just started like playing with it and like the first sites I built were with notepad , uh , in windows , like raw , just html , uh .

So I've seen a lot of shift over the last . Oh my God , what is it now ? Maybe 30 , 32 , 33 years of web ? I've been working professionally in web since the early 2000s . I started working full-time in 2000 . So I've seen all the trends and fads . If your website doesn't work on a mobile device , that's a big problem .

If you're looking at your analytics , you need to . You need to take a look at your . If you don't have analytics , go get Google analytics . It's free . I would bet that anywhere between 30 to 40% uh , what your website is for will be getting traffic from mobile . So open up the website . Do like your own kind of like self audit .

Take a look at other businesses or organizations in your niche . What are they doing ? What do they look like compared to yours , right ? So the first thing you want to look at is what do people see when they land on your site ? But what pages are they landing on ?

Usually only about 30 to 40% , maybe 50 if people are familiar with your brand , like your company name , your organization name , they'll land on your homepage . Google wants to send people deep into your website . It used to be that Google would send people to your homepage and then they had to navigate to get , and the rule was like three clicks , right .

You should always be able to get wherever you want within three clicks , and that's where like drop down menus and all that kind of came from , because it was fewer clicks for people . But Google over the last decade probably a bit longer than that , now that I'm thinking about it wants to send people to the content they're actually looking for , right ?

So most websites it's usually like five to eight pages that get the most traffic . So what ?

So for your homepage , for example , you don't want to talk about and I met with a client last week , or prospect , actually last week , who their website , when you went to their homepage , talked all about what they do . Right , it's not really engaging , right ?

You want to frame things in a way that makes people understand what you do , but that it's for them , right ? So if it was like a dentist's website or maybe not a dentist's website , yeah , sure , we'll go with the dentist's website , right ? Maybe they're a pediatric dentist .

Maybe they're a pediatric dentist , right , we've helped , I don't know , 2,700 children over the last 10 years with their teeth . Okay , not bad , pretty compelling . But we will help you with your children's dental needs , or , instead of , we will helping you with your children's dental needs really engages them more and creates an empathetic hit with them .

Subconsciously , that will make them go . Oh , okay , like I'm interested , I want to find out more .

Yeah , yeah , so it's getting that messaging across in the first instance yeah , right , so that's part of it .

That's a problem , because your competition is staying up to date with modern design , look and feel . Also , color palettes , right , that changes every year . I think Pantone comes out with a color of the year every year . I think the one for this year is actually really kind of gross of the year every year .

I think the one for this year is actually really kind of gross looking , but I have no say in that whatsoever . But you know , staying up to date and I'm not saying you need to rebrand your organization year after year after year but you can introduce tertiary colors into it you can .

If there's a big trend where you have a black and white photo and all of your photos are color , right , you can apply some style sheet to that to change it to uh , to black and white , or you can reshoot . Maybe there's a specific style of of photo or angle or things like that you're into , like architecture , for example , right .

So I think , um , staying up to date with the look and feel is important . Staying up to date with the current trends is important , um , but also knowing your audience . So , uh , I worked at a hospital that was focused on geriatric care very different audience than where I came from before that , which was a university .

Right , I worked at a college and university , you're you're hitting like younger ages for the people . So you need to be maybe a little bit more trendy or you need to be in . Maybe you need an app , because that's the right thing for your business , based on the persona that you're trying to connect with .

And that's kind of like the next piece of this , which is identifying who your audience is and I know this is like a little bit off topic , but super related yeah , it works , it definitely works . You need to know who your primary , secondary audiences are , and maybe you have two or three primary audiences . That's okay , but what motivates them ?

Yeah , what drives them ? What is going to make them want to buy from you , get your research from you , interact with you in some kind of way , shape or fashion Ideally to get their email address , their coveted golden email address , right .

Your research from you interact with you in some kind of way , shape or fashion ideally to get their email address , their coveted golden email address , right so that you can market to them or you can fill them with information , with insight . If you're a nonprofit we work a lot with nonprofits what the impact is that you're having ?

What are those points that are going to really resonate with them that will get them to keep you top of mind and to comfort , come , come to you for whatever it is that you do yeah , yeah , yeah .

So , yes , I can imagine like , yeah , if you're working for a geriatric hospital , people are looking for geriatric hospitals are going to be of a much older age . Um , then people look at universities , but I suppose in the middle you've probably got parents and children , like , obviously , the children , the older people , are the parents of the younger people .

There's also an audience . They're like your secondary audience . You've got to hit in that . So you've got to try and make sure you get the right yeah , yeah , okay , yeah , I can see that . Yeah , yeah , yeah , that's . That's a really interesting way of thinking to start about it .

So if you've got that now we've got that , look , we know who , who we're talking to we're obviously coming on to that kind of user usability , user experience kind of thing . So what are the key things you guys think about when it comes to user experience , especially things to maybe to avoid ? Are there any kind of like red flags ?

User experience wise , you've gotten . What would you say , are the key points you've got to look for when it comes to that kind of UX point .

Think of sitting on the couch , you're watching a movie , or you're watching a show or a sporting event or whatever it is , and you've got your phone beside you and it dings . You get that dopamine hit , you pick it up , you use it for something , or you're playing games on it , right ?

So we've all got these devices , for better or for worse , at our side a lot Data Reportal . Also in I think it was the same report said that 58% of global website traffic is from mobile devices . They've been with us

for a couple of years and their website was designed for sideways scrolling on desktop . We're like what ? No , nobody is swiping on desktop right on mobile . Sure , it's really easy to flick with with your thumb on mobile . It was the inverse on mobile . You had to swipe up and down and it was like this is this .

This is a really weird interface , so we we just like rebuilt everything for them . Uh , there's an occasional slider with a sideways , but everything is just regular up and down . Uh , because that is what people are used to when they're browsing a website .

As soon as you start introducing a different way of interacting , it becomes maybe confusing , but hard and difficult to use . Yeah , right , um , so follow , follow the trends of the big businesses , like what is amazon doing online , what is microsoft doing online , apple , etc . Etc .

Um , and follow suit , because they're the ones they're spending billions of dollars on research , making sure that what they're doing is optimized for user experience , because Apple doesn't want people to have a hard time using their product . They actually pride themselves on making amazingly uh , easy to use systems , platforms , devices .

Implement things that way companies are using when it comes to designing your UX . Implement things like this Don't do anything novel unless you've got a really good reason to , and you can test it and back it up , I suppose .

But I suppose for most people who won't have the resources to be doing that kind of thing , it's like yeah , don't try and do something that goes against the grain . Yeah , I know that's really , really cool and mobile first . So you would always go mobile first for design .

So if you were going to a designer , would you be wanting to essentially say let's mobile first first , and then we'll think about how it will look for the desktop ? Because I think , having worked with so many designers over the years , it always seems to have been desktops first and getting them out of that mindset , I think has been a bit tricky .

So go mobile first with design . Think about the desktops they've got . I mean , there probably are some exceptions to that , I know . For example , we have a SaaS tool and we get 90% of people on that are coming on the desktop because they're people working , they're researching on that . So there's always exceptions to every rule , isn't there ? Doesn't it depend ?

We've got other sites which are consumer focused , and then 90% plus mobile , um and and yeah , the desktop's just a complete afterthought , you know .

They've never designed something we can't build , but sometimes it's the case . We have to say to them yeah , we could build that or you could do that , but it would have negative effects SEO-wise because of the way Google crawls . I know it gets better nowadays and this has changed over time . I mean , I remember way back in the day there was lots of Flash .

In the day there was lots of flash Everything . Designers at one point in the early 2000s wanted to do everything in flash and that was death . But unfortunately flash is long dead . Um , but what ? What nowadays are the kind of design choices that you want to avoid that could negatively impact your SEO .

Something with uh I forget the actual words but with cls and like first paint and all that type of stuff , so that that will affect your , your rating . So there are some technical things that need to be done , uh , to the websites that you're working on or you're building . Uh , to help with that .

A lot of times it comes down to an underpowered server or a server with like thousands of sites on it , so you can't dedicate the resources to it . Uh , so make it making sure you've got a powerful enough backend . Uh , so that's that's the first thing I want to mention there . The second thing I want to mention is around accessibility .

Um , inherently and it's kind of interesting but if you make your websites more accessible , they tend to rank higher than websites that aren't , because you can do some kind of like white hat seo kind of tricks in the site . So one of the big culprits that we've seen with our clients is alt text on images , right .

So if anybody doesn't know what accessibility is , not everybody can see , right . There's blind users out there that use the web . They don't typically use a mouse for browsing . Right , they'll use keyboards . They'll use screen reader software .

There's one person actually that joined my webinar about a year ago who had like a braille uh output device wow we're like it would . It would just take it and turn it into braille and like , oh , that that's , that's really kind of cool . Um , I'm super geeky , so like I found that cool .

But , uh , you know if , if you have an image on the page , you need to have alt text so that the screen reader software , the braille software , will read it out to the person so they know the context of the image , as opposed to it being like the file name , like IMG , underscore nine , seven , five dot JPEG . That's useless for anybody .

But if you can insert the keywords that you want to be found by into the alt tags , where it actually works organically .

You don't want to just like keyword jam , uh , uh , the alt text or the long description or anything like that on images , um , but inherently , uh , google is using the alt text , uh , for images show up in image results but also will help with page results . So you know , that's kind of one of those little , I guess , tricks that you can use there .

But yeah , in terms of SEO , I don't know , ed , if I've touched on answering what it was that you were asking about .

The keyboard , um , because , yes , that's that's another set of people use the mouse , these keyboard commands , people who , who you know , maybe , uh , you know they can't even use a keyboard , but they , they have the , the eye movement recognition software . You essentially navigate around with keyboards . That's really important .

I just really have to potentially any things , um , kind of red flags that people have done on sites nowadays where the design might look nice for design but it has had a negative effect on SEO . Is there anything there ? If not , I know Google is getting smarter than it used to because it renders pages now where it didn't used to .

It used to all be about the HTML . Now they'll render it and the JavaScript is used . I know it's becoming more flexible , but I wonder if there's , and then your JavaScript you suppose to choose on that issue is becoming more flexible . But I want to do this in any red flags that you could think of .

I find that you know , from an SEO perspective , a lot of organizations are not in businesses that they don't have like a blog on their website . Right , google is actually ranking sites higher One if they're mobile friendly , because they're sending more .

More people are using mobile , so they write Okay , uh , I think I've talked enough about the importance of mobile . But , um , if you are consistently and frequently adding content to your website , so think of a blog and they don't have to be big . We're talking like five , 600 words . If you can do it weekly , that would be ideal .

If you could do it a couple times a week , great . If you can only do it once a month , I would say that's kind of like the minimum .

But Google wants to see that you're adding content and you're updating content on your website on a regular , consistent , frequent basis , even if it's just rewording a sentence on your home page or two sentences , so you have the same context . You can use ai for for that . You can take it , put it in , go , reword this . Give me five options .

Pick the one you like , put it in right , tweak it a little bit , um , but for blogs , ai , I would say , would give you maybe 70 of the way there . You still need to spend the time humanizing it . Um , because google , they've got gemini , they've got other things in the back end .

I'm sure they're they're very tight-lipped on what is in their algorithm and what isn't . But I'm sure , uh , I've seen articles that talk about , um , uh , how google is de-indexing pages that it determines were created by AI .

You know , like before obviously before a few years ago like you have to go through human design what's the landscape when it comes to AI and creating designs and modifying and generating designs , that kind of thing .

What we found is there's I'm not going to name names , but there are some websites that you can go to and we'll create a AI-based social media graphic for you every day . We'll give you 10 , we'll give you whatever it is . We tried it a few times . They are all templates .

The only thing it does is it changes the color , changes the copy that goes in , but it's basically the exact same graphic . We've tried some of the webpage generators . They're mediocre . They don't output what I would think would be something that I can sell to somebody , or even something that I would build a landing page for somebody for free , or something .

It's not good enough quality , yet what you can use it for is to do research . So , hey , we're building a landing page for X . We can go back to the dentist , right ? We want to build a landing page for a dental clinic for a new patient promotion , cool .

You can use AI to research what should be on that page , come back with a list of 10 urls of other dental clinics that have that type of thing , uh , and then have it . You know , create an initial draft of what should be in the header , what should be in the about , are there faqs , etc . Etc . But to put that all together .

I haven't found a way to do that yet . That could come next week , that could come in five years from now .

So it's interesting that you concur on that . One thing you just touched on there was obviously landing pages , and obviously the core purpose of most websites are to convert people . There's a business goal behind a website .

So this is a key thing where I think design is really important , because persuading people to take the action that you want them to take and which will benefit them . What's your approach to building landing pages ? The kind of calls to action , the lead magnets and that kind of thing what works well for people ?

Like CTAs that look like buttons , that look clickable will increase the click-through rate by 45% , right ? So , as opposed to just having like a blob of text and you've got a word in there that's linked right , make it look visual um and the uh . The way to do that is if you complete this sentence . So I want to blank , right .

I want to buy a new pair of shoes . The call to action would be buy a new pair of shoes . The call to action would be buy a new pair of shoes , right ?

So that's kind of the first thing to think about is what is it that you want people to do ? And then what is the wording that will get them to do that ? Unfortunately , people don't really want to think when they're looking online .

Maybe that's like the start of the demise of humanity , I don't know , but we don't have to get there , obviously in this podcast , but people , people don't want to think . Make it easy for them to take . Whatever that next step is , you don't want to repeat the same call to action through the page . It can take you to the same thing .

It could be like a Calendly booking form or it could be a checkout , it could be a whatever um reword .

It have it different throughout the page because people are at different points in their life cycle journey with you , right , and they might not be ready to book a consult , but they might be ready to sign up for a newsletter , for information , or they might be willing to read an article , um article or something like that .

Okay , so earlier in the episode I was talking about the talk about your audience , not about you . So you want to have something there . You want to have a call to action . You want to talk about the uh , the benefits of X , y and Z .

You want to talk about , maybe , the process of what it is that you do , how you do it , why you do it Right , and then continue those call to actions . Okay , cool .

So if people are coming at different points in the funnel , the first people you want them to get , you want them to read an article , and then further along , you might want them to sign up for you might offer them some tips .

Like I have an SEO tips called back from my website , so that's where people don't necessarily want to get in touch for a strategy session or something like that . They can . Oh well , I'm interested in the tips , and then they'll read the tips and then , because they come back later , they go .

I was just going to think is it like creating a sort of a conversion ladder ? So right , I've heard someone once say it's like when , when you first meet this prospective partner , you don't immediately ask them to marry you . Yeah , you're . Basically , you start off small and you work your way up , basically over over a period of time .

So is it's like thinking in terms of yes who your prospective customers are , where you want them to get to eventually , and some might get to different levels and just work out that level rather than being wham . The only thing after is this big , super expensive package , and that's all I'm going to tell you .

You're going to offer people different things with different costs and values along the way .

So , if it's like a lot of websites , websites like these are our latest blog articles that we have right , when they're on that right , have an option for them to subscribe , to get it into their email instead of having to come back to your website .

I think there's a lot of opportunity to market and remarket and connect with people in a more meaningful way than just like by now .

I mean the way that there's the process here we're going from understanding at the start what people are , giving them a good user experience , making sure that we don't go into silly SEO wise , getting that accessibility in there , which is good for SEO but also great for people who have disabilities , who have impairments that they can't work with and then thinking

about how we get people from first contact to being the customer client . Whatever action we're hoping to take , because there's a real process , is really really key to it . That's really fantastic . So , thanks so much for that . We obviously we've we've only managed to cover so much in this period of time .

If people looking for more help on this is there anything you know they could come to you to find more help , tips , advice , that kind of thing . Where can they go with you ?

We work primarily with non-profits and charities . We do work with some select agencies , some select businesses and consultants as well . So come check it out . At the end of the day , like the work that we do , it doesn't really matter the sector . So we're just like focused on the nonprofits because we love helping and that's kind of like our goal here .

But , yeah , wowdigitalcom , you can check out all the content there . You can book a free consult with me , uh as well . If you'd like an audit of your website , we do uh , free audits , um , and the link for that is wowdigitalcom slash audit . Pretty straightforward and uh and easy . Um , come book a consult , happy to you know , chat with you and connect .

David Elikwu Brilliant .

We mustn't forget it is something really important to sort of keep top of mind when we're making any decisions what we do with our website . So , yeah , yeah , really great that David came on and yeah , that was fantastic . Now I'm looking for reviews .

If anyone's got reviews , want to give us feedback , you can now go to ratethispodcastcom slash SEO , which is a real quick link that will help you find the right place to leave a review of the podcast we're always trying to find . Get more reviews , boost of visibility , get to more people , and the more people we can help , the better .

So that's ratethispodcastcom slash seo . Also , that's in the show notes . Yeah , and now , until next time , just keep optimizing , stay curious and remember seo is not that hard when you understand the basics . Thanks for listening . It means a lot to me . This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my SEO tools and services .

You can find links to all the links I mention here in the show notes . Just remember , with all these places where I use my name , that Ed is spelled with two Ds . You can find me on LinkedIn and Blue Sky . Just search for Ed Dawson on both . You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast the link is in the show notes .

You can try our seo intelligence platform keywords people use at keywords people usecom , where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online .

Post those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority and finally , connect your google search console account for your sites so we can crawl and understand your actual content , find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimize and continually refine your content and targeted , personalized advice to keep

your traffic growing . If you're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice , then visit wwweddawsoncom . Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is Not that Hard .