Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process of making your site easily accessible and understood by search engine spiders. Usability is doing the same, but for human visitors. While many people see these two as a constant conflict they are actually working hand-in-hand because many of the things you can do to improve usability will also improve SEO.

For instance, think of your site’s navigation. If its structure is clean and easy to follow for a human visitor then the same is true for a search engine spider. If it is full of pictures and hard to find links then it isn’t benefiting anyone.

Instead of asking yourself what is more important – SEO or usability you should instead focus on other questions that will help you figure out exactly what your web site needs. Consider what the goal of your web site is and who is your target audience. You’ll have a completely different layout if your site is trying to get people to click on an ad versus if you want them to buy a product or are offering information. By considering what you want your site to do and for who you will get a clearer idea of how to lay out your site and what to include in the content – both of which will improve usability and SEO.

If you can manage to build your site with both types of visitor – human and search engine – in mind then your web site will be stronger, more accessible and easier to navigate for everyone. And that’s when you’ll return higher and higher in the search engine results.

When designing pages and creating content for them, web site owners must decide upon the best balance of usability and SEO (or Search Engine Optimization). Many favor one or the other and put more emphasis on it. But which is more important to your web site’s success, SEO or usability?

First, it should be made clear why such a decision has to be considered. When web pages are created with SEO in mind, keywords people search for must be picked out and used repeatedly in the page’s content. However, to achieve an appropriate density of keywords, some web site owners use awkward or redundant sentences, which reduces usability. Features like menus or user comment areas are sometimes left out to prevent them from negatively impacting the page’s SEO, as well.

It is important not to go too far on either extreme. It’s unlikely that many people will find a very well-written web page with rather poor SEO keyword density and words which hardly anyone searches for, so its usability becomes irrelevant. On the other hand, a page which has been perfectly keyword-optimized for SEO but is barely readable won’t produce many sales or advertisement clicks.

SEO oriented efforts can harm usability in less obvious ways as well. Some readers will find it obnoxious if a large percentage of the words on a page are linked to other pages (related to each word), and the link codes will make the page take longer to load. Adding a large number of words to the keyword META tag (or using large amounts of other code which is only read by search engine spiders) will also increase the page loading time, reducing usability.

However, some changes can benefit both search engine optimization and usability; using text-based links in your web site’s menus both makes it easier for search engine spiders to navigate your web site and enables people who are visually impaired, using older web browsers, or have images turned off to use the site. Adding a Site Map is another measure which is important for improving usability and SEO at the same time.

Generally, it is best to prioritize usability, but not excessively at the expense of SEO. While efforts aimed at SEO are important, it must be kept in mind that (in most situations) you want visitors on the web site to use it, not just click a search result for it.

Following a user-centered approach to web design emphasizes the importance of the user and makes the website easy for its target audience to operate. Properly implementing a user centered design can encourage website users to stay longer or visit the website more frequently.

Some user-centered web design features include polls, the ability to rate website content or recommended links, and areas for submitting comments. One example of user-centered web design is the feature on RadioShack.com which allows users to rate and enter brief reviews of their products, which is to the benefit of some, but not other, products. The potential for competitors or others to manipulate such features should be kept in mind when considering their implementation.

Another component of a user-centered web design approach is creating the website so that it is appropriately designed for the type of people most likely to visit it. Designers should avoid using words or referring to concepts which the user is unlikely to understand, unless explanation is provided. For example, a webpage providing a basic introduction to photography shouldn’t require the user to answer technical questions about his or her type of camera before being provided with information, whereas this might be acceptable in a website design made for experienced photographers.

The most likely response of users to any website feature or design characteristic should be kept in mind. For example, obnoxious advertisements which interfere with viewing the website may be temporarily profitable, but will discourage people from re-visiting it. If any content might be considered offensive by some users, it should be linked to from a page related to its subject rather than being linked from the home page. It should also be remembered that many users are not willing to adjust settings for their web browsers or other computer settings to be able to view a single website properly.

A user-centered approach can be applied to web pages which are search engine optimized, as well. While designing the pages so that they can be easily found in search results is important, this should not be at the expense of quality; some website designers have placed excessive priority on optimization, causing their web pages to have awkward or redundant wording.

Overall, for a web design approach to be user-centered, there should be some sort of interactivity, the web pages ought to be easy to use and understand, the pages should attempt to produce a favorable reaction from as many users as possible, and the content needs to be useful and of high quality.

The Eyetrack III researchers discovered something important when testing headline and type size on homepages: Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior (that is, reading the words), while larger type promotes lighter scanning. In general, our testing found that people spent more time focused on small type than large type. Larger type resulted in more scanning of the page — fewer words overall were fixated on — as people looked around for words or phrases that captured their attention.

This was especially the case when we looked at headline size on homepages. Larger headlines encouraged scanning more than smaller ones.

(Note: We are not advocating that you run out and reduce the size of your font across the board. You should make sure that people can read the font size you select in order to achieve the appropriate balance.)

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Particularly interesting was people’s behavior when there were headlines and blurbs used on homepages. Eyetrack III test participants tended to view both the headline and blurb when the headline was bold and the same size as blurb text and immediately preceded the blurb on the same line.

With a headline larger than the blurb and on a separate line, people tended to view the headlines and skip the blurbs; they scanned the headlines throughout the page more than the group that looked at the smaller headlines.

Researchers believe that it is the contrast in type size that accounts for this behavior, as well as the type size itself. When a headline is larger than its accompanying blurb text, it’s perceived as the important element of the headline-blurb block — so people appear to decide that viewing the headline is sufficient and they skip the blurb.