There is a difference between search engine optimization and web site optimization. Sometimes they even conflict. For example, a page with optimal keyword density for search findability may be very clunky and annoying for your website visitors.  In many cases, getting more traffic with lower conversion rates may not be a good strategy (sometimes it is).

Now, those of you who know something about SEO are probably cringing at “keyword density,” considering it is a minor factor, but it is a factor and every little bit helps.

The technical structure of your site is the minimum bar for search optimization. In other words, if it doesn’t meet certain standards then it will automatically decrease your rankings. For example, if you have a Flash Introduction page for your web site and you have not done anything to “help” the search engines through that page it could be the only page that gets indexed. And, worse than that, there is no crawlable content on the page! The ill effects go beyond just search though, the page may not be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and you may not be creating the “user experience” you thought you were. This is not to say you shouldn’t have the fancy flash intro page; just be careful how you do it.

One other example where SEO and web optimization will intersect (or diverge) is the messaging of your campaigns. It is very important that you treat your targeted web searches as questions. If you want to rank high on Swiss Bank Accounts because it gets searched more frequently than Idaho Bank Accounts you can create keyword targeted content and for the sake of argument, lets say you do rank well. That is a fantastic SEO achievement, but will do little for website optimization.  Website optimization is for people not for search engines.

A good website optimization effort will keep things in balance. You need high search rankings, you need fancy web programming, you need a functional web site, you need a pretty web page, and web site optimization is focused on getting all of those elements in the right amounts.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Website Optimization, Organic Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.