A few days ago, I was looking at the website of a small company in this area.  The design was so-so, but it was painful to read. At first I thought it was just not well-written, but then it struck me that this site had been SEO'd to death.

Search engine rankings are important to most businesses for a number of reasons, and that importance has given rise to an entire process and methodology known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  It's the process of engineering your website (in particular, the text contained in it) to get the best possible ranking for specific search terms and "key words".

But if overdone, it can drive away traffic instead of generating it.

Why?  Because it creates websites which are optimized for computers, but not for people.  When I read "over-optimized" websites, I often find them to be difficult to follow, or unnatural in structure and flow.  They are not enjoyable to read, and so I don't stick around for very long. Even worse, though, is that I leave with a negative overall impression of the company or organization.

Here are some of the common SEO practices which turn me away:

• Placing a bunch of keywords before the actual title in the TITLE tag of a web page.  This makes bookmarking pages cumbersome and potentially confusing, and also makes it more difficult to find pages in the browser history.  Helpful (supposedly) to computers, but not to people.
   
• Using specific keywords and terms many times throughout a page - much more than you would use them in a natural conversation.  If your website sounds awkward when you read it aloud to someone, then it is awkward to read.  One example might be mentioning the city in which your business is located 5 to 10 times on your home page, so that it is associated with local searches.
   
• Excessive use of bold, italics, and "header" formatting tags to highlight keywords, even though the emphasis adds nothing to the readability or understanding of the content for a person. Again, this makes the reading of the site awkward and unnatural.
   
• Using a number of different words or phrases to link to the same sub-page within your site. Supposedly, this will help multiple search terms to be associated with that page, but it is confusing (and potentially insulting) for the user.
   

The bottom line is that computers and people read and consume data differently, and you must remember that when you are optimizing for one, you may be de-optimizing for the other.  A higher search engine rank is important, but should not be sought at the cost of your visitors finding your website cumbersome and / or confusing.  Remember: the people are your customers.

Driving additional traffic to your website, only to turn people off, will actually have a negative effect on your brand and reputation. More people may know who you are, but they also may have a lack of respect for what you do. Since first impressions are so hard to overcome, is it better to have a negative first impression than to not have one at all?

At the end of any SEO process (or any other re-vamp of your website, for that matter), you need to step back and take a look at your site through the eyes of your visitors, and make sure it is still appealing to them.