I’ve been studying physics. For me to understand any of the science and newer theories, such as “string theory”, I try to picture it in my head. Have you tried to imagine what a blown apart atom looks like or the so-called “11 dimensions” that string theory strives to prove? Why do I even care?

Have you noticed how one dimensional social networking is? Or how the sense of Time feels awkward when you crank up Twitter and see comments from “0 seconds” ago, “4 hours ago” or the huge gaps of nothingness that occurs in Space when Twitter goes down and all is silent? You just know that in another dimension somewhere, somebody is trying to type into Twirl, only to get the message saying the message quota is on overload. We can’t see the people banging their desks, but we know they’re there.

We also can’t see the performance engineers sweating over Twitter server load balancing issues. We do get to see a picture of a whale, for reasons I never understood, when Twitter is down. Our senses are out of earshot to all the users screaming that Twitter isn’t there for them to talk about their dinner, the cat sleeping on their head or the next blog post they just uploaded. That dimension exists. We know it does. We can feel it and even participate in the ruckus for a universal, communal “HOLY CRAP” moment.

Ethics

I just said a word I spent years telling my kids they weren’t permitted to say, but they do anyway. This small action is now open to the public and I am subjected to the court of online ethical behavior.

Was it ethical for me to say “crap” in my blog? Why is she talking about physics in an SEO and Usability blog? Will my business suffer because I went off-topic? How many people will race to their computers to write a post calling me names or questioning my sanity?

I’ve done it. I may see a blog post or comment and think, “Whoa! Who spiked their peach tea?” Is it ethical for me to pass judgment on them? Is it within my rights as a citizen of the Internet to complain about someone I take issue with, for whatever issue I believe they violated?

In the whole life scheme of things, is it more valuable for me to manipulate public opinion or ponder the beauty of flower petals?

At Cre8asiteforums, we’re talking about ethics and reputation management for business and people in a thread called Online Ethics - What Say You? There’s lots of ground to cover when it comes to ethics and I don’t for a minute think I’m educated on all of it, nor am I free from dents and lack of wisdom. I asked some questions and the answers and feedback go everywhere.

There are ethics issues like justice, freedom, values, consent and trust. For me personally, trust is huge. It’s why I don’t “friend” everyone who comes along my path in some online social sites. For some reason it’s assumed that I “should” be everyone’s friend because I’m someone else’s friend or run forums or own a business. I disagree. And if I’m manipulated to be a “friend”, I respond by forming my body into an ice cube. Earn my trust. Don’t pretend you know me.

Ethics includes animal rights, the environment, human rights, legal issues, business standards, marketing, religion and Internet ethics, the latter which is still in the discovery stage. The key thing about these ethics is they change and evolve. To early Native Americans, it was unethical to believe that the land belonged to people and could be sold or traded for. To them, there was enough land for everyone. And yet their integrity came into question because they didn’t believe in the same God as the white man, who apparently told HIS people that land was not free.

Who was right?

In theory, ethics represent “good”. It’s good to be kind. It’s bad to call people names. It’s good to investigate and document experiences. It’s bad to engage in revenge tactics and try to influence opinions without facts to back it up.

In the forums thread, I talked about our rule about not attacking people or businesses by name. It’s been the number one rule. While we know Community members practice this behavior on their sites, we don’t permit it on ours. Why? Because everyone is responsible for their own experience and interaction. Everyone’s situation is different. While it’s true many hosting companies are total rip-off’s, they don’t mess up every single account. Some customers get along fine with no problems to report. In the case, however, of RegisterFly, who created a riot with their customer service violations, the sheer majority and scope of the bad experiences supplied enough proof that something was terribly wrong there.

Personally, I have no impulse to cause anyone financial, emotional and physical harm. I try to not speak unkindly online of my industry peers. Some deserve to be slapped around. My choice is to ignore them or in some cases, support their good actions and not support their bad decisions.

Do you have a personal code of ethics? Is your business committed to integrity, quality and customer relations? How do you communicate this online? Can you control what others say about you or your company? No, you can’t. When I found my own business appear with a negative statement about me by someone who never used my services and has never met me, I was stunned. I wondered if I had legal recourse.

When did it become legal to purposely and systematically wreak reputation havoc on a company you never did business with?

Recently I learned of a linking practice based on purposeful deception. The idea is to leave logical, helpful, polite comments in blogs and earn the blog owner’s trust. Some bloggers will learn to trust the commenter and let them post comments at will, with no moderation. Suddenly and without warning, the commenter begins to spam by linking to “bad” sites and writing comments that are completely uncharacteristic and uncalled for. This behavior is becoming an actual business practice. When does this sloppy treatment stop?

One of my favorite discoveries with my forays into physics, science and spirituality is the theory that at the very basic of core of our Beingness, we’re all made of the exact same Thing. A teeny tiny microscopic part of us is part of the One Thing that made it all possible in the first place. We share this thing. We can’t see it, can’t measure it, can’t hold it in our hands and can’t manipulate it to be different than It is.

Not only that, the computer you’re using to read this has that same invisible Thing in it. “We are all Relatives”, Native Americans believe. They include the two-legged (us), four-legged, rocks, plants, sky, and The Ancestors, who are technically dead but possibly in another dimension, so we just can’t go to the movies with them.

So if you spread hate and think ill thoughts or force anyone to do something they don’t wish to do, you’re hating and forcing yourself as well.

The reputation you try to manage may someday be your own.

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.