SEO Changes That Hurt User Experience (UX)

[Zwielicht]

You'll know from the changelog today that I was working on the SEO for the forum.

Whilst working on this, there was one built-in option that caught my eye that I didn't enable: the "show signatures to guests" box.

However, did you know that disabling this is recommended on the Xenforo SEO page?

The reasoning behind disabling this is as follows: "In order to maximise your 'signal to noise' ratio when displaying threads to guests, you may hide your members' signatures."

I find that whenever I'm doing SEO for any site, I run into potential improvements that I can't add in for similar reasons: it takes away from the experience of using the site.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in optimising things as much as I can. However, SEO isn't everything, and in the case of our forum, we have this feature enabled here so that members can increase the exposure of their signatures.

I just thought I'd share this with everyone as I was wondering if anyone else has any exmaples of SEO improvements that you stay away from because they would negatively affect the user experience of a site

 

[tiiberius]

Thank you.

An option to hide it only from robots would be cool.

As for my SEO improvement that I stay away from:

Using keyword instead of a word Home in the main menu.​

Some SEOs recommend it since that link is present everywhere but it hurts UX.
Turns out it's not very intuitive to click phrase "PBN links" to go to homepage.

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[Octavia]

I would say long content or over use of keywords. ( that is why I suck as copywriter)


I want my information as compressed as possible to get the most out of it. Don't need the extra huff and puff.

 

[Zwielicht]

Thank you.

An option to hide it only from robots would be cool.

As for my SEO improvement that I stay away from:

Using keyword instead of a word Home in the main menu.​

Some SEOs recommend it since that link is present everywhere but it hurts UX.
Turns out it's not very intuitive to click phrase "PBN links" to go to homepage.

-

Yeah, that would be a good option if you could hide it from robots.

I stay away from using a keyword on the homepage as well!

I would say long content or over use of keywords. ( that is why I suck as copywriter)


I want my information as compressed as possible to get the most out of it. Don't need the extra huff and puff.

I have a preference not to be redundant when it comes to writing, so I avoid that as well. It also just sounds weird when the same keyword shows up throughout the same article; it feels forced.

 

[Rem]

themes
unnecessary theme changes just because now you fancy a new theme

 

[polecat]

I try as much as possible make the site for the visitors not for what Google or other SEO claims work.

I think a good example is the Table argument some people put forward the idea Tables are ugly or out of date should not be used or bad for SEO.

I used since I first done HTML I always thought they were good for many purposes such as displaying products,information,drawing attention to things or sports tables.

I think another idea over thought or used wrong is long content being better always. I think the right idea is does the content provide what people want to know such as how to spell a word if 50 words can do that is enough you don't need 10,000 word article on it if all people want to know is the spelling.

 

[Word Wizard]

I don't have an answer to your question, but I appreciate that you consider the interests of your users over analytics. Sometimes those little things can snowball into good things that analytics can't predict.

themes
unnecessary theme changes just because now you fancy a new theme

A white theme user cannot be trusted