As more and more people jump on the SEO and Usability bandwagon and write about it, a few different arguments are presented. In some, one set of skills is more important than the other, or “first”. For others, one can’t live without the other.

Still others think they have a purpose together and create new terms for practicing it.

I’ve written extensively over the years on the relationship between SEO and web site usability. Five years ago I felt that SEO efforts were helpful up to a certain point before a well designed web site takes over. Sort of the “You can lead a horse to water but can’t make them drink” theory.

This viewpoint is also expressed in more and more blog posts and articles. It’s a start but nowhere near the true value of combining SEO with web site usability design and testing.

While more companies grasp that usable web sites bolster their marketing investment, they have a limited understanding of exactly what this means. They’ve figured out that the horse can be lead to water, and they’ve managed to get it to drink, but they haven’t worked out the importance of that horse telling the entire herd about that water source and leading all of them there to drink as well.

Web site usability goes far beyond the user interface. It’s wonderful to hire a search engine marketer who knows how to design web pages that appear high in search results and are smoothly indexed. Even better is the marketer who designs expert landing pages and researches your target customer. They’ve done their job when someone has no problem finding the web site they seek and wants to click into it.

The expected results go from being located in search engines to being visited.

And then the logic seems to stop.

Visiting a web site is one step in the overall user experience, but there are many other steps to consider and build for such as browsing the homepage and conducting a task or two. However, the moment the web site misses a beat somewhere, such as a functional defect, dead-end navigation, loopy information architecture, sleepy content or invasive form requests, the moment of bliss is over.

People know their search engine has other web sites to show them.

SEO and usability is not an either/or decision. It’s a concentrated and blended effort to go above and beyond basic expectations to reach for goals like great customer service, findability, word of mouth advertising or brand building.

Marketing a poorly built web site can be a waste of money, but truthfully, a lot of people will use a web site they dislike because they have time constraints, there aren’t many options, they’re patient, it has the right price, they have no desire to look at competitors or all the sites in that niche are also clunky to use.

You can most certainly hire an SEO and ignore the investment in the web site design. You can go the other way and build a gorgeous web site and ignore SEO, but good luck with that. It’s not a mountain I’d want to climb.

What really counts is bringing both skill sets together for the unified goal of creating a kick-ass user experience.

This means considering the user experience from the moment they fire up their favorite search engine, to the moment they click into a web site from SERPS, to every second they spend on the site and, of equal importance, what they do after they leave.

Could they use it? If they use assistive technology like screen readers, could they move about the web site and understand what it offered? They’ll tell their friends if you made your site accessible.

Was the value proposition presented well? Did they really believe your claims? Could they find your phone number for customer service? Did they stick some sale items into a shopping cart and then have to go make dinner and if so, will your cart remember them if they come back? IF they come back? Does your site let them go or was there a function to remind them to return and finish shopping and oh by the way, here’s a coupon as incentive.

You can just hear the herd of horses stampeding now, can’t you?

Bottom line?

If you don’t show passion for your web site, it will perform that way.

Today’s travels took me to:

No Nonsense Debra - Will The Real Search Engine Blog Please Stand Up?

Come on guys, you want us to follow your webmaster rules then make it official by posting them in one place, on your company blogs. Let’s get rid of the FUD, the crude, and the mud associated with near-miss comments by people trying to share.

No Nonsense Aaron - Why SEMPO is Worse than the Defunct Search Marketing Associations

SEMPO saved my life. If they hadn’t sent my wife an SEO who got her site penalized she probably never would have found me, bought my book, started chatting with me, and saved my life.

No Nonsense Danielle - The Ins and Outs of Forum Marketing

It takes time to build a credible profile, and when participating in a forum you can wind up giving more information than you gain.

No Nonsense Marty - Arrogance & Writing in Self-Center Person

It’s easy enough to be arrogant, especially if a person has little going for him or her. No matter how big a rock star we ALL get turned off by “me, me, me”.

Interaction designers wonder what SEO has to do with it - SEO and Usability

There is theory being preached within my company that if you optimize for search engines, then you are optimizing for the user as well. I disagree. I think they are two separate sets of logic, that may in fact overlap, but are absolutely not in harmony.

Nonsense.

As a volunteer reporter for Barry Schwartz’s Search Engine Roundtable blog, I’m often asked, “Why do you do it?” My consulting work is focused on usability and Internet application testing. Why am I out chasing sessions at search engine marketing conferences?

To begin with, my work began in web design and consulting/online teaching search engine optimization in the 1990’s. Therefore, I know many “long-timers” in the SEO/M industry. It remains an area of strong interest for me, which is why I continue to keep another volunteer, non-paying project, Cre8asiteforums, going. Discussions there cover web design, development, usability, accessibility, search engines, marketing, and much more.

This daily involvement keeps me well informed, which makes me unique to companies and individuals who wish for usability consulting from someone who can see the whole picture. I need (and want) to understand the code behind a page, the behaviors and habits of people intended to use those web pages and the ways in which the final product may be marketed.

Knowledge Fortifies and Enhances Skills

Since in today’s web environment, more and more people are finding web sites from social networking sites, I felt it was important for me to truly understand how advertising, marketing and public relations companies are applying social media to their clients’ marketing campaigns.

This is why I chose this particular conference as my next volunteer reporting “job”. Being there in person allows me to meet industry leaders or speakers who are teaching attendees. The entire time I’m at a conference related to marketing, in my mind, I’m weaving what I learn into what I know about human factors and user centered design.

For example, one of the messages that came from this conference on social media was that success comes from participating in social networking. It’s not something you can pretend to know from the outside, looking in. To truly understand who uses Facebook, Stumbleupon, or the hundreds of niche micro community sites popping up, marketing teams learn and apply campaigns by first getting involved with social media/networking communities.

When a client comes to you, seeking the right profitable course for their brand, a skilled marketer will know which social networking site is the best fit for your company. This may absolutely NOT be Digg, Reddit, MySpace or Facebook.

Choose a marketing company that takes the required time to study your target market and understands their behaviors, language, interests and their favorite ways of communicating with one another. This includes understanding the importance of usability, accessibility and persuasive web design and where these fit into web site promotion and social web behavior. Once again, I’ve reinforced my long-held belief that usability and seo (and all the related tie-in skills to these two areas), are able to join forces and provide a united project plan. A team such as this understands and values your brand reputation management.

They are also well aware that the Internet never sits still. Consider hiring employees and consultants who invest time in keeping their skills and knowledge current. Additionally, make sure to budget for continued education for your present staff. A poor choice in marketing or web design can absolutely crush your business.

This is why I place such value on reporting conference sessions and why I invest my own money to do it.

I want to be sure that those who hire me are getting the best person for the job.

Coverage by Search Engine Roundtable, Rather Than My Own Blog

Another key reason I’m tied to SER is because I’m a contributing writer for that blog. I do that, and conference reporting, because he’s been a great friend and strong supporter to me. So yes, a bit of simple loyalty and friendship certainly comes into play. Barry doesn’t put any pressure on his reporters. He’s always grateful for the help. I’m crazy enough to work for a smile and a hug sometimes…

It’s our tradition, at SER, to get the session information posted quickly. SER was the first blog to try and reach every SES conference and bring it to those who weren’t able to be there in person. Several years later this remains a volunteer project, where reporters offer to help Barry Schwartz (and now Tamar Weinberg), blog sessions. In cases like SES, where there are 3 - 4 days with 4 tracks of sessions, the result exceeds the exceptional when his volunteer reporting team produces nearly complete coverage.

Everyone has their own style. Perfect copy is not a requirement, nor a demand. (I tend to push out the first draft and then go back and edit for clarity and errors.) While the lack of perfection has been sometimes criticized, I feel that many people don’t realize that none of us are paid to do this. We pay for our own rooms, food and travel expenses to “give back” to the community in this way. We try to not make mistakes (like when I got dates wrong on Tuesday), but when we have a chance to breathe, someone from SER manages to go back and catch the errors readers haven’t already pointed out.

Lastly, I do this work wearing my jeans and sneakers if I wish to. (Thanks so much for that!)

Barry’s Recap of Sessions is here

SMX was a two-day, one track conference. The following were covered (all sessions except the last one on Wednesday, which was a clinic. We also don’t report Q & A, which follow each session.)

Social Media Marketing Essentials
Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
A Marketer’s Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging
Keynote Q&A: Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon
Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
Evangelist - The Marketer’s Role in SMM
Micro Communities
Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing

I also linked to additional coverage and photos in Photos Are Up for SMX Social Media NYC

As I’ve mentioned, this is the last conference I can afford to volunteer for. It’s been an honor to serve the Search Engine Marketing industry in this way.

……………………………………

Related:

SMX: Was it worth it? Did I learn anything? Will I go again? by Brendan Picha.

Photos from Liana Evans’ SMX Social NYC 2007 pictures set.

If you are in the business of optimizing web pages and promoting web sites in search engines, in all likelihood you’ve never personally experienced the product or service you’re paid to market.

And yet, your client expects you to make them rich. At the very least, they want their company to rank well in search engine results. They expect you to find the exact keywords their customers are using to find their product or service, but you don’t have access to those customers, do you? You rely on tools and server logs to do your job.

You may be given data to analyze but seriously, if you had the choice, wouldn’t you rather experience the big 10 person party hot tub yourself rather than read dry data on who has purchased it?

Wouldn’t the feel of the warm water, the night sky bursting with stars and the teasing touch of skin nearby just nail the reason for wanting to buy one? Would you know how to target the different sizes of hot tubs and their uses? What if a Bed and Breakfast wants to buy one? Are their needs different than the family of five who want one in their backyard?

How do you advertise what you don’t know about?

SEO’s are demanded to do this. Blind folded. Web site developers are asked to design ways to order products they’ve never held in their hands. Usability consultants are asked to make sure everybody did their job properly, knowing full well in many cases, site designers were never given guidelines, requirements or anything other than a Wish
List by the site’s owner.

Does the Search Engine Marketing industry need to know more about Usability and do User Experience designers need to understand that someone has to market their creation and make it findable and appealing enough to use or buy?

Experience and Marketing

There’s a hilarious scene in the movie, What Women Want, where Mel Gibson is competing with a top woman executive for the best marketing campaign for various women’s products. Everyone on the project has been asked to come up with slogans for the self-care products.

Mel Gibson doesn’t like the new woman, played by Helen Hunt, who came on board to take over the job position he believed he was entitled to. He decides to outdo her.

So he takes the products home and while guzzling wine, begins to use them. He waxes his legs, paints his fingernails, nearly gets killed with a blow-dryer and my favorite part, puts on women’s pantyhose. The experience of the hell women go through to be attractive slowly dawns on him.

Add to this the fact that he can suddenly read the minds of women and you get a marketers dream. His character uncovers their raw emotions, their hidden thoughts, even fantasies and desires that he never knew women had.

While still not as intimately educated on the products as a woman would be, he was able to get enough of a glimpse so he could understand how best to sell not only the products, but the EXPERIENCE of using them.

He had direct access to user experiences and created the marketing campaign based on what he learned.

Marketing Without Blinders On

My son recently asked why horses that pull Amish buggies wear “blinders”. I told him this is because they can see on the side of their heads and they can spook easily, such as when cars come whizzing by on the road. It’s a common practice to blindfold horses when leading them away from fire or other emergency situations because not seeing danger calms them. Once, I needed to tie a shirt over a horse’s eyes just to get him to walk over a bridge. A horse will not go where it doesn’t feel safe.

This same theory applies to customers who make purchases online. Promotional descriptions nearly always focus on an aspect of the product to get the first click through. Once on a page, several things happen at once.

1. The searcher’s expectation for what they think they’ll find must be met.
2. More information must be presented to enable a decision or make choices.
3. The next steps must be clear, such as learn more, change your mind but keep searching on that site, where to go next and where to get customer assistance.
4. The entire experience must feel safe, secure, authentic and believable.

Therefore, it’s important to promote and follow up with a persuasive, logical presentation.

Funny thing is, many SEO’s feel this order sequence also means their part supersedes usability in importance. However, chances are the optimization elements were entered AFTER the design, rather than during. The usability and accessibility heuristics were likely there first, at least in some basic form like site guidelines. If they were not, and the site is truly not usable, then an SEO has an uphill battle they may not wish to climb.

Please continue to read SEO with Usability: What The People Want >

Care to Digg It?

Cre8pc gratefully acknowledges the high number of web sites who found value in this post and republished it.

Everyone has their own way. I’ve been around many development environments and witnessed or experienced the blood, sweat and tears borne by the web development team. Sometimes it feels they get no support or respect.

Someone came to Cre8asiteforums, a community largely made up of search engine marketing practitioners, asking for Your 10 Rules To Follow To Ensure Usability.

I was wondering members’ views on what their 10 definite rules would be to ensure, or at least strive for, good usability. I’m not talking about Nielsen’s heuristics etc. I mean 10 (current and relevant) easy to follow, actionable points that the general developer could follow.

Because he asked for the non-heuristics side, not wanting a re-hash of the zillion lists you see around the Internet on “Top 10 Things to Do To Make Your Website Usable”, we were able to have a different kind of conversation. The responses ignored link colors and font sizes.

Examples:

Unless specifically directed otherwise I develop with the goal to have 100% functionality without having to rely on:

* CSS
* client-side scripting (JavaScript etc)
* plugins

Usability doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s not just your site’s usability. Users are comparing your site against the easiest sites they’ve used …even if they are not in your industry or developed by a much bigger company.

I took the liberty of having a little fun with it:

1. Ignore everything everybody ever told you about what you SHOULD do.

2. Start all over and work out the top business requirement for building it. Hold onto it for dear life. Make every function, every link, every sentence and every breath a page takes traceable back to the original business requirements. This will support you when stakeholders start begging and flirting with you about the cool things they hope you slip in there for them. Just Say No.

3. Decide who it is for and design it for them. Don’t pick the least common denominator. Understand your users and build it for them.

4. Show the mockups to everybody before you begin to code. Walk up to strangers. Ask them for feedback. They may not be your target visitor but they may use the web.

5. Test during the code phase. Regression test every time you add something new. That also means testing designs and functionality on browsers and mobile devices.

6. When you get to Alpha or Beta stage, run it through validation tests for standards and accessibility. Do this now, not later. Keep checking after every code freeze or “I think this page is done” moment.

7. Never ever put up moving things that cover up anything or keep moving without a way to stop it.

8. Put a way to contact you on the site, so you know what’s not working.

9. Do something with it. If you can’t finish a task, neither can anyone else. Accept that everybody will conduct that task differently than you do and how you coded it to function. Have a swig of beer, swallow your pride and polish it up.

10. Usability begins while the site is still in the womb, not after its born. Code as if you’re in labor. You are.

You’re welcome to visit and read the thread to see more responses, or join in and add your own.

Special thanks to Jim Hedger for his coverage of the recent hoopla on Usability and SEO.