11 Usability Mistakes SEOs Make

Usability and SEO are not mutually exclusive.

There’s no reason you can’t have a website that both A) brings in high amounts of relevant search engine traffic and B) gives those users a great experience.

But we all know the story about the guy with a hammer. Everything becomes a nail. And sooner or later he’s broken all the windows.

So when your hammer is SEO the tendency is to think most problems have SEO solutions. The result, unfortunately, is often a website that is optimized to the teeth from a search standpoint but ugly as sin and with an awful user experience.

Here are 11 mistakes SEOs make that sacrifice usability – and what you can do to avoid them:

1) Letting “Keyword Density” infect your content

Let’s not mince words: if you’re thinking about “Keyword Density” you’re wasting your time.

If your goal is to get your users to actually engage with your content, then every word in every sentence of copy you hope they’ll read is crucial. After all, if it’s not there to engage your users, what purpose does it serve?

Write for users, not search engines. Optimize some key elements afterwards, but don’t change your message because it’s not hitting some arbitrary keyword density.

2) Killing the graphical user interface in order to use “text links”

Text links are important – without them you’re losing out on a big opportunity to optimize your site and tell search engines what keywords your pages are related to.

But that doesn’t mean the user experience should go out the window.

There are ways to keep your text links AND the graphic integrity of your website. Most of them require the clever use of CSS – something any SEO worth her salt should know.

3) Convoluting the conversion process in the aim of grabbing “long tail” traffic

A bigger site casts a wider net for long tail keywords. There is no shortage of SEOs out there expanding websites to bring in more long tail traffic. And it often works.

But consider the user path. If you’ve added sub-sub-sub-pages describing your product/service, and if these pages are built into your navigation system, you may be confusing your users with too many choices. And confusion is a core reason users ditch websites (and don’t come back).

The rule of thumb here is not to add a page unless it helps your users. At the very least, check your conversion metrics after adding a page for SEO purposes – and ensure you haven’t just squeezed off a round into your own foot.

4) Driving users away with big blocks of text

Search engines like text. Generally speaking, the more text on your page, the more opportunities that page has to rank for some combination of words a user might enter in a search box.

But a big block of text, online, is about as important to users are wallpaper: it’s there, but nobody looks at it.

If you’re going to add text to your pages, make it scannable and focus on readability – not just writing clearly, but writing in a straightforward, conversational tone that leaves the dictionary under its layer of dust on the shelf.

5) Using keywords in action-oriented links

Optimizing your internal link text can be a powerful way to get your internal pages to rank. So many of us set out to target our keywords with this technique.

The problem: especially for Call-to-Action (CTA) links, the text of the link makes a big difference in clickability.

Your CTA is important – it’s likely the most crucial engagement point on your website. So if you’re changing the link text in the hopes of getting the linked page to rank better, consider the clickability implications.

6) Packing keywords into Title tags

Search engines put extra weight in Title tags to tell them what pages are about. When webmasters get wind of this it seems obvious to cram as many keywords as possible into these tags.

If you do so the problem you’re creating is two-fold:

1. You’re violating search engine guidelines – and can be penalized for it
2. You sacrifice the clickability of your listings in search results

This second point is central. Your Title tags are displayed as the blue, clickable links in search results – and so their readability to search users is key.

The answer is to hit on both cylinders: include your keywords in your Title tags, but keep make sure humans can read (and hopefully be enticed) by them.

7) Using the Description tag to target keywords

Meta Description tags might seem to be a good place to work more of your target keywords in.

But by most accounts Meta Description tags are no longer used by search engines for ranking.

More importantly, the description tag is used in the search results. This is another clickability factor – it would be a shame to sacrifice a chance to convince users your page is the best result for their query by cramming in keywords (that search engines will ignore anyway).

8) Pushing the CTA around to make way for “optimized” content

As above, content expansion is often on the menu for on-page SEO – it’s a primary way to increase search traffic.

But the placement of Calls-to-Action (CTAs) is often vastly important to your click-through rate.

There isn’t one “right answer” as to where you CTA should be – it’ll depend on your product/service, the demographic of your users, etc, and should be tested.

But don’t make the mistake of “making room” for more optimized content – you may pull in a few more users, but if you’ve sacrificed your click-through rate you’ve gotten precisely nowhere (and may have taken steps backward).

9) Refusing to make choices about language

There are usually going to be at least 2-3 different phrases that describe what you do or offer.

What, for example, is the difference between “web marketing” and “internet marketing?” Nothing.

The tendency here is to think we should rank for all possible synonyms.

But by optimizing for multiple phrases that essentially mean the same thing, you’re running the risk of confusing your users.

Language is important – it’s how you frame your message and offer. If you’re using two terms interchangeably to refer to the same thing don’t be surprised if your users grow confused and go elsewhere.

10) Using text where an image does a better job

An image is worth 1,000 words – so why not swap out an image for 1,000 words and optimize the crap out of those words?

Many SEOs fall into the mode of coming up with any way to expand content at a website. As a result, if they’re driving the content strategy, they’re often thinking, “text first, graphics second.”

The problem with this thinking is that graphics often do a far better job of telling the story – and users often respond better to them.

11) Adding “SEO pages” that do nothing but target keywords

How do you target a new keyword? Either A) rewrite an existing page or B) add a new one.

So why not start adding new pages to the website to target those fresh new keyword opportunities?

Because if you’re a page that doesn’t help users accomplish something, answer their questions or help them in some other way, that page has no business on your website.