It’s enlightening to look at SEO alongside those not within it (especially others in digital marketing).
They say things like…
“Why are there so many links?”
“This word doesn’t represent our product.”
“Why is there so much text?”
“This headline makes no sense.”
“The whole page is misleading.”
This disconnect matters! Your site must serve users foremost.
Many in SEO “can’t see the forest for the trees.” It makes sense then when many companies deprioritize it, despite huge potential, when it ends up looking so bad.
Furthermore, search engines track returning to search results. If a visitor decides your content is spammy then leaves, your rankings suffer too.
However, there does need to be compromise. Without SEO input, you often won’t be specific enough to boost organic traffic (+ sales & leads). When done thoughtfully, SEO improves UX and doesn’t harm it.
Here are some important considerations:
- Be careful overdoing internal links in the body. This looks spammy and presents too many choices. Being selective is smart anyway, since you just dilute the value of each link.
- Keep functional links like “click here” but also include a keyword-focused anchor text link or at least context.
- Never reduce site speed so that your design loses functionality & appeal… Core Web Vitals aren’t even a major ranking factor.
- Only delete pages that truly don’t help the user; noindex ones that do but have no keyword value (unless users navigate to these pages through search results).
- Balance headlines with both keywords & copywriting, often compromising a product vs. SEO debate.
- Don’t use keywords you don’t want associated with your business just to include LSI keywords.
- Avoid exact match keyword phrases that look awkward… search engines will understand your page’s theme.
- Perform A/B or multivariate testing to determine the right course of action, as you can better weigh pros & cons through real data!