A website without value is a website without traffic. Truer words could not be spoken, but turning those words into action is not a care-free endeavor. Brands and businesses all over the world understand the need to attract the attention of search engines while also pleasing the visitors those search engines send them.

However, it isn’t always possible to please both groups with the same individual strategy. Despite the fact that search engine optimization is designed around the tenets of building quality websites people will love, there are some differences.

Today, let’s look at some actions and strategies that’ll ensure you’re maximizing influence with both search engines and visitors.

Accommodate Mobile Devices

The single biggest functional change you can make to your website that’ll please both visitors and search engines is mobile responsiveness. As more and more people continue to adopt and prefer browsing the web via mobile devices, the need for accommodating this traffic grows.

With so many mobile users now pinging search engines for products, services and brands, search engines have implemented SEO standards that effectively require websites to be mobile-friendly. By ensuring that elements such as navigation and media are properly formatted for every visitor possible, search engines will in turn be more likely to rank your website more prominently in search results.

The inverse is also true here: sites without mobile-friendly elements can be penalized by Google and others in their targeted SERPs.

Use Alt Tags and Meta Data

Ensuring that content is organized, relevant and descriptive is something everybody can appreciate. As it turns out, search engines love it, too!

Alt tags are perfect for indicating what exactly is happening in an image or piece of content. While search engines have become quite adept at identifying images, these descriptions can further improve classification and help you rank well for various results. Your visitors will also appreciate any descriptions as well.

Meta data is also useful for both search engines and actual people. This information is used to identify what each web page contains and also facilitates the same for people who are browsing search results. Potential visitors will appreciate being able to easily identify the content of a page from the search results and will thereby be more likely to click on your links.

Sensible Design and Structure

Last but not least, every website that implements sound design and structural elements tends to out-perform the competition. Most visitors to your website don’t want to spend copious amounts of time looking for their preferred content or figuring out what the site even offers. As such, websites that ensure their content is well-structured and easily navigable attract and retain more visitors.

Search engines also recognize the value in this, as it helps them more accurately identify content that is parsed and easily scanned.

Ultimately, every SEO effort should strive to please both search engines and users. Considering that search engines’ algorithms are now largely based on user experience, there are a number of strategies that can placate both groups. By pinging search engines with descriptive text and meta-data, using intelligent design elements and accommodating mobile users, you can ensure that any website is appealing to both entities.