Balancing Quaty Content and SEO

The need for quality, well written content can often come at the expense of keyword-rich, search engine optimized pages. Getting the balance right is often difficult.

The two are definitely not always interchangeable. You may be able to make a website that includes all the relevant keywords and backlinks to get it to the top of a search engine ranking, but if you have inserted those keywords at the cost of readability, then viewers will take a quick look at your site and then go elsewhere.

On the other hand, you may provide content that has your viewers glued to their screens for hours, but if you don't have an optimized site, you won't get many people to visit your page. So what's the best way to balance them?

First of all, you probably want to err on the side of satisfying the viewers over the search engines. Of course, if your site is jam packed with keywords you might get more visitors, but if they don't get quality once they are there, they will leave before even considering a purchase?

It is not making you any money.

So, if you design your website's content with the viewer in mind, you may not have lots of viewers at first, but those viewers will be satisfied with the website and more likely to spend money or time with you, and return time and again.

Of course, this raises a issue.

How do you have a site that is search engine friendly and viewer friendly at the same time?

The first thing to do is to focus on a few specific keywords and use them often. For example, the page header for every one of the pages on your site should include your keywords. The key is to ensure that every word matters.

As an example, lets suppose that a keyword (phrase) is "good web design". In this instance, you shouldn't have content that talks about "web pages that get customers and look great." It may be true, but you want to focus on your keywords.

This is a rough example, but if you look through the content on your website, you're sure to find instances where this principle can be applied.

As welll, try to focus on just a few keywords. On the internet, it pays to have a site specializing in one specific segment, rather than trying to apply to a bunch of different keywords.