When trying to draw traffic to a website a number of factors come into play, but one search engine optimization (SEO) expert says the usability of a site and its SEO need to work hand-in-hand.
Shari Thurow, the founder and search engine optimization (SEO) director for Omni Marketing Interactive, writes in a column for Search Engine Land that those who make sure a website is usable also need to consider that search engine optimization (SEO) tools like keywords are important too.
Thurow says usability professionals often remove keywords from sites, presumably to make the site more user-friendly. But she says in doing so they actually have the opposite effect.
"When searchers click on a link from a search engine results page (SERP) to a website, they expect to see those keywords on the page. And the web page content should appear somewhat focused on those very keywords," writes Thurbow. "If not? Then searchers abandon the web page."
Usability professionals also sometimes complain about the lack of traffic to a site after the removal of keywords, but Thurbow says without those key terms, they make the site more difficult to be found.
A study last month from Practical eCommerce found that a majority of companies do not understand search engine optimization (SEO) with more than half saying keyword stuffing is an effective strategy.
