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.

Working toward making your web site more credible can potentially produce a number of benefits, such as gaining more advertisers and/or customers, enhancing promotional cooperation with other web sites, or persuading more readers of a particular belief. Here are some useful suggestions for making your site more credible…

1. Try to gain links to your site from other web sites, preferably those which are viewed as credible and legitimate. People seeing these links, especially if they frequently see links to your site, will begin to feel that it is more credible.

2. If your site provides a service, such as web hosting or design, look to see if any previous customers have put positive reviews of the service elsewhere on the web. If so, provide links to these reviews; testimonials on the website can be somewhat effective but aren’t as credible as positive reviews on pages outside your control.

3. If the website has many customers, consider making a message board or forum which they can use to ask questions about the products or services you have provided. If potential customers can see you (or your employees) solving current customers’ problems it makes the website appear more credible as well as letting them know that other people have thought it best to purchase from you.

4. Having a professional appearance/design is helpful in making a site more credible, along with updating any outdated information and keeping the copyright date (if it has one) current; this will also prevent the website from appearing as if it might be “abandoned.”

5. Consider placing “badges” from other credible, well-known web sites on the site if you qualify to use them. These include such badges as “PayPal Verified”, “Trust Worthy Web Site Certification”, a Google PageRank indicator (use this if the site’s PageRank is high), or various web site award logos. If your web site has an eBay or Amazon seller account with a good feedback rating, consider making a link to it.

6. If you have a telephone number and/or address associated with your business or organization, making them available on the website will inspire confidence that potential customers or advertisers will be able to contact you if necessary. A mailing address specific to your business also makes it seem more credible and established.

7. Don’t link to other web sites which are considered questionable by many people, such as schemes offering massive amounts of income or conspiracy news sites. Even if you feel one of these sites offers beneficial content, the perceptions of most people and the possibility they will associate linked web sites should be kept in mind.

8. Using secure (https) transfer of data (if the web site requires personal information, especially financial) will increase the cost of running your web site (unless your hosting service already includes this capability), but is useful for making it appear more credible, especially if a badge or line of text is used to advertise its security.

Applying one or more of these tips should help your web site achieve greater success by inspiring more confidence in its credibility among users.