According to Josh Hoopes, an SEO expert and the founder of CrazyNet Marketing, a perfect balance should be sought when it comes to Search Engine Optimization initiatives, just like the other facets of life which also strives to attain balance.
Despite the continuous rise of various social networking sites nowadays, most businesses still find it more effective for them to get their traffic from the search engines when they try to market their products and services. But beware of developing a tunnel syndrome which will make you focus solely on the SEO strategies instead of looking out after the needs of your readers, who should always be your first priority first and foremost, otherwise you will be harming your business over the long run instead of improving it.
Josh Hoopes stresses that the dilemma for most sites has always been how to find that right balance between usability and SEO.
SEO is comprised of items which are either visible or invisible to the users.
Invisible SEO activities are defined by such things as optimizing your site’s page speed, meta-description modifications, or title tag revisions, among others. Even though they initially appear on search results, for all intents and purposes they quickly become practically invisible as far as the reader’s consciousness is concerned.
You must be conscious not to fall into the trap of focusing singlemindedly on the SEO strategies to the point where you may already be taking for granted the usability of your site, which is actually more essential as far as your users are concerned.
One of the aspects where you may experience conflict between optimizing your page for SEO or for usability is in the area of navigation. Sometimes it could be very tempting to design your site’s layout where it would get the maximum results for SEO purposes, but if you would be implementing these in such a way where it may go against the natural flow for users to navigate the page then you will only be doing your site a big disservice as you will surely turn off your users and losing them eventually over the long run.
Website publishers sometimes have the tendency of trying to appease the search engines too much as they try to over-analyze how they could possibly make it even more convenient and easier for these crawlers to find all of the site’s relevant pages. This scenario illustrates the problem perfectly, as the emphasis is now placed on the robots’ needs above those of the site’s actual users; the right mindset should have been to prioritize usability and accessibility first, above all others, as these are the things that will be appreciated by your customers, who will ultimately be purchasing your products and services after all. The site’s contents, layout, features, placement of products, and navigation should first make sense to the actual users. Only after you have the customers’ needs taken cared of can you direct your attention towards the SEO side of things.
The important thing is to find the perfect marriage between usability and SEO for your site.
One area where you may be able to execute this is when it comes to choosing the appropriate keywords to utilize. Along this line, Internet Marketing and SEO expert Josh Hoopes emphasizes that you should try to come up with keywords which will not only be relevant for your site, but it should also be popular for your target audience; instead of doggedly going after a keyword which you think is popular but may not actually be related to what your site is all about.