SEO v.s. User Experience
All website owners who understand the importance of search engine optimization and having a successful running website at some point are faced with a rather large dilemma, SEO or user experience? Often times those tools and gadgets that really help in increasing a user experience harm on-site search engine optimization efforts in a great way.
In a perfect SEO world everything would be black text on white background but in today’s marketplace that just won’t be enough to really convert website traffic. If the game was just strictly all about rankings and rankings prevailed as the leader than this would be all fine and dandy but we live in a time where branding elements and unique presentation are very important to the whole landscape of online success. There are ways to keep your fun widgets and images clean so that the SEO of your website is not jeopardized. A user experience is very important and goes hand-in-hand with all search engine marketing efforts. If you spend the bulk of your energy focusing on driving targeted traffic to your website and forget about updating your user experience your external marketing efforts will not reach their full potential. If your web traffic does not enjoy their experience on your website they are simply going to leave and not come back.
Take the time and research what your audience would like to do once they arrive at the website. You have to know and understand your audience a great deal before you can create a great user experience for them, if your audience doesn’t not enjoy a certain website or communication element don’t make it a focal point on your website. Keep your website scripts clean, too many scripts acting on a website can slow down load time tremendously and really hurt your onsite SEO efforts. Make your user experience clean and efficient. If there are elements you know you don’t need don’t use them on your site. Funnel your web traffic exactly down to what you want them to do and keep your approach interesting yet technically appropriate so that you do not affect your rankings or potential search engine rankings. A successful website has many successful elements and ingredients working to its advantage. Keep those elements clean and efficient.
9 Responses to “SEO v.s. User Experience”
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Hi Nick,
I want to congratulate you with a nice new and clear design of your blog! Well done ..
Ciao ..
Hi Gonzo,
Thanks for your kind words, for reading and for noticing!
Take Care!
Nick
Nick,
I think that part of the problem of UX suffering due to SEO is the inexperience of the content writer. It’s not their fault. It’s just that usually it needs to be the marketer of the business that writes all the content, and many times it is their first crack at writing for SEO. Writing for SEO is a learned skill! I don’t blame anyone for having a hard time blending the art and science that is SEO. That’s where great SEO consultants come in.
Anyway, I just wrote a blog post about how marketers can improve their content strategy by leveraging either a blog or custom-written articles. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts! – http://priorityresults.com/blog/why-search-engine-optimization-services-should-leverage-content/
Hi Brian,
Excellent points and great post! Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts and the post for all of our readers!
Take Care!
Nick
LOL this is so true man, I couldn’t have said it better myself
Hi Manual,
Thanks for reading and your comment!
Thanks for the reminder to keep user experience into consideration and not just the seo aspects only. It’s the human you’re targetting not machines. Great post.
Hi Jimmy,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Yeah, it is about writing for humans…your website visitors.
Nick,
Great post and your right about user experience and bring careful not to jeopardized for SEO. It’s tough to make the experience good for the visitors and keep search engines happy at the same time.