SEO and Stickiness: In search of successful fusion in website design

A variety of research projects have been done on some aspect of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and on website usability. At the same time the literature has indicated that SEO is crucial as a marketing channel to exploit the Internet's commercial potential. In addition, it has been discovered that website stickiness is just as important as SEO. However, both concepts are seldom addressed simultaneously, since they sometimes are in conflict with each other. One reason for this fact appears to be that designers do not consider the needs of the both the human user and the search engine crawler. Another reason could be that often only one concept is applied and in the future an attempt is made to address the second concept, resulting in degradation of service. The authors believe that both concepts could be applied simultaneously to a single website, without resulting in degradation of service by either of the two concepts. In order to successfully merge the two concepts as a single service, it will require that all SEO elements (on and off page) are identified and weighed against all website usability elements to be included in the design. When a contradiction occurs, it would be important to weigh that particular element in terms of usefulness. Depending on the outcome of the usefulness measurement, a middle ground should be found whereby the element (SEO or website usability) could still be applied to a certain extent.