SES slammed by designers Options

[Adrian]

By way of Eric Meyer's Silly Expert Opinions blog entry, I found a review of one of the San Jose SES sessions.

The craptastic adventures of SES San Jose 2004 is mostly about one session, Advanced Design Issues: CSS, Javascript, and Frames.

The blog (and I don't know who's it is) then goes on to slate a lot of what was said in the session, from a pro Web Standards designers point of view, it would seem the session raised some cause for concern.

This is only one review of the session, and it would be nice if there is anyone else out there who also attended it to confirm whether the review in the blog is accurate.

If it is an accurate assessment of the what was said, then personally, I have to agree with it, and I'm disappointed that the well known names running the session were giving that kind of advice.

This seems to be part of the reason for the big deal being made about the reputation of the SEM industry. It doesn't seem particularly odd that the industry has a bad external view if some of the big names are giving advice along the lines of backward design principles.

I worry that this is a case of people focussing too much on SEO, and not enough on the other aspects of web design. It seems that they are willing to sacrifice a lot of the plus points of things like Web Standards to gain some SE Rank, though it may end up offering a lower ROI as a site may then require more work to maintain for example.

There are some things I would argue with Meyer a bit. He does display his lack of knowledge of SEO when he proudly mentions that he comes up Number 1 in Google for his name, but one of the panelists doesn't. Not really a good test at all as I would suggest there are a good few more people with the name Matt Bailey than there are Eric Meyer.

Molly Holzschlag has also blogged about it, and if you look at the comments of the Compooter blog, you'll see Danny Sulivan has responded with a view to checking out the comments on the session and seeing if its accurate and how similar sessions in the future can be improved.

Anyone else at that session with some thoughts on it?

[bragadocchio]

Thanks for pointing this out, Adrian.

It's good to be able to air these types of things out, and address them, and build upon them. The SEM/SEO industry has been getting a lot of bad press. It really is time to start learning how to respond to that type of press, and to build something better.

Danny Sullivan's response is a good start.

The article was about SES, and the class, but it was also an attack upon SEO and SEM. I suspect that the attendee who wrote that blog post expected something completely different from what was presented.

It does raise some questions. How are people chosen to become speakers for SES? Does their material go under some type of review? What exactly is the purpose behind the SES conferences?

I understand that the SES shows have been attracting more and more people. Having looked at the lists of topics covered in classes, most of them are things that we already discuss in a lot of detail here in the forum. I'm not sure that there's much that would draw me to one of thoses shows based upon presentations, and the list of topics to be covered. The one reason why I would attend one is to meet other attendees, and get a chance to place faces to forum user names.

While that's a good reason, I'd want to see some classes that present something new. At the costs of the classes, I'd want to walk out of one thinking it was worth every penny. The last class I took on the paid speaking circuit was the User Interface Enginneering group - and it was worth every penny. Not for the people I met, but rather for the ideas I was able to take from it and appy to my everyday work, in a positive way - to build better sites.

I'm sure that not everyone walks out of a seminar with the same sense of excitement. Having heard Compooter's gripes, I think I might have left that one pretty upset.

As with Adrian, I'd love to hear comments about the session, or about SES shows in general. Is the quality of the material worth the cost? Do they need some improvement and freshening?

If you have suggestions about them that you don't want to air here, by all means contact Danny Sullivan. Help make those better, so that we don't see reviews like the one this thread points out.

I'd like to attend an SES, but I'm not goint to until I see a list of topics that make me excited about what is going to be presented. Of course, I could want until next April's IMC conference. If the list of speakers is as strong for that next year, as it was this year, I'd be happy to attend. Though I'd be a little upset that I'd have to choose between three sessions, because so many of them look interesting.

Maybe it's time to get some designers and some usability folks to join in with the SEO folks teaching at the SES shows?

[bwelford]

I could wait until next April's IMC conference.

Just as a point of information, you'll have to wait until May 2, 2005 for the next Internet Marketing Conference (IMC) in Montreal.

[Adrian]

The article was about SES, and the class, but it was also an attack upon SEO and SEM.

Yes, that's the general impression I got from that, and the blog posts by Eric and Molly as well. There is a severe distrust of SEM as a whole there because they see it as using smoke and mirrors to get traffic. Being quite evangelical about good standards coding, it's little surprise that they feel a site should earn its ranking by having good content thats worth being listed top, instead of trying to manipulate the results to make something average appear higher.

[bwelford]

This whole SEM/SEO reputation thingy has almost become an industry in itself. There's talk of ethics and standards. It's taken much more time and ink than it deserves. Every profession has problems, even lawyers. That prompted my blog entry this morning, No sex please, we're SEO's.

[bragadocchio]

May is even better, Barry.

Thank you.

[projectphp]

To be fair, SEO and design have very different goals. This fact is made extremely well by both sides, in the quotes lifted from SES and this quote:

After all, I’m more of an SEO expert than at least two of these SEO “experts\": Googling for “Eric Meyer” gets you my home page as the #1 result, but searching for one name returns his site at #3, just behind an Assistant Professor of Engineering Management at University of Missouri-Rolla and a blog written by a fan of Howard Dean.

Oh, you rank well for your name... bravo!!!

This is the wrap on all this: people create designs that in turn create SEO problems, whose solutions create design problems whose solution....

I tend to believe the quotes are out of context, or at least lacking the context required to judge them. Thsi one especially:

Don’t validate your code under any circumstances because hierarchically correct and valid markup is of no use to a search engine.

I would bet a pretty penny it went more like: "You don't need to validate your code, because unless you have major errors, search engines don't place any importance upon code validation".

While I support fully standards, in all endeavours, SEO and designers have far more in common than not, and seeking out these similarities is what we need, not highlighting, without of context, the differences.

[dannysullivan]

It does raise some questions. How are people chosen to become speakers for SES? Does their material go under some type of review? What exactly is the purpose behind the SES conferences?

This page explains a lot about how the speakers are selected for the shows I chair: http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/summer04/...4/sessions.html

The short answer is I get a billion people asking to speak. I also have people who in various ways have come to my attention. I mixed it all into a big pot, look at what's pitched, review feedback of those who have spoken before and try to come up with good panels. Every session at our New York show rated 4 or above on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being perfect. That's to me a pretty good record.

Of course, with SEO (and frankly, web design in general), you can have differing opinions. That's why, as the page I mentioned above says, I tend to have panels so there's a variety of opinions.

I'd encourage everyone to be sure and read the blog comments that have since been posted. The author explains he's put his own spin on what was said. One of the speakers flat out counters some of the things she was cited as saying or suggesting.

It's hard to get anything perfect, so feedback is always appreciated. That's the only way to improve things. But with over 1,000 attendees, it's a fact we're not going to please every single person. I'll still aim for that, however.

While that's a good reason, I'd want to see some classes that present something new. At the costs of the classes, I'd want to walk out of one thinking it was worth every penny.

Well, that's what I want anyone who comes to think, too. It's harder with people who are really advanced. But I have also had even advanced SEMs/SEOs say they find sessions useful.

You asked for the opinions of others. After every show, there seems to be threads and articles that appear. I'll leave it to others to post or direct you to them -- I think there's been plenty in the past here, as well.

Maybe it's time to get some designers and some usability folks to join in with the SEO folks teaching at the SES shows?

The show is about search engine marketing. It is designed to help you do your search engine marketing better. However, it has had to take on areas that go beyond this. For example, we've long had sessions on improving conversion. That's not necessarily an SEM skill -- but it can be closely tied to it. A number of people have suggested sessions on usability in the past. I'm still considering it. But at what point does it turn into a web marketing/web design conference? I'm not knocking that -- but the more you get away from a search-centric focus, the more you lose the focus overall that's made this particular show successful with many people.

[Ransak]

There are some things I would argue with Meyer a bit. He does display his lack of knowledge of SEO when he proudly mentions that he comes up Number 1 in Google for his name, but one of the panelists doesn't. Not really a good test at all as I would suggest there are a good few more people with the name Matt Bailey than there are Eric Meyer.

I think Eric Meyer was being sarcastic.

Frank V.

[Adrian]

I don't know Frank, perhaps, but he's already demonstrated his lack of understanding of SEO by asking about the Header Tag thing, and it is a fairly typical retort.

And thanks for commenting Danny, even as the standards advocate that I am, I got the impression it was a bit overly biased, and yes, as you say some of it was not direct quotes at all, more just what he picked up on.

As another side note, the validation point isn’t a direct quote by any means – it is basically a paraphrase of all the code samples given throughout the course of the 1½ hour session.

Quite an important addition after Meyer's comments I think.

The main thing I picked up on, was the severity of the attack on the session. It seems to be 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, 2 groups with some, but seemingly little, knowledge of the other, making some wild comments hat would inflame the other.

This seems to be brought about by the generalistic distrust of SEO. It would be much better if the 2 groups were talking to each other, rather than at each other.
In both cases, they have to see that the other has its place. I've talked before about how I feel some people focus too much on one aspect of creating a web site. If more SEO'ers saw the benefit of things like web standards, and more standards evangelisers saw the benefit of SEO ideas, I'm sure we wouldn't get into these kinds of situations.

That's why I think the 'holistic' approach we try and promote here is so good.

[bragadocchio]

To be fair, SEO and design have very different goals.

It bothers me to see comments from people in the design field whom I respect write such bad things about an industry as a whole.

I'm not quite so sure that there is that big a difference between what a designer does and what an SEO does. Both are attempting to help fulfill the business objectives of the site owner, and site stakeholders. One focuses mostly upon verbal and visual communication, and the other upon the outer framework of the design - how it interacts with the world around it, including search engines.

I guess this forum tends to look at SEO and SEM from a little broader perspective than many others in the field. But, it's difficult to segment a site into tasks that different people perform upon it, often at seemingly cross purposes to each other. Understanding different approaches can really be beneficial.

I don't understand some of the vitriol that I see some designers aim at all people who practice SEO. There are indeed some folks selling snake oil out there under the label of SEO. But there are a lot of honest, helpful folks in the industry, too.

If more SEO'ers saw the benefit of things like web standards, and more standards evangelisers saw the benefit of SEO ideas, I'm sure we wouldn't get into these kinds of situations.

It's great when someone like Mark Pilgrim writes a site on 30 days to better accessibility and demonstrates how improved accessibility can help a site show up better for the words it uses in a search engine. More efforts like that are needed. Web standards are a frequent topic around here, and they can be helpful. I see designers sometimes build pages that don't work well with search engines, and I'm convinced that those folks would be helping their clients if they understood more SEO. A well-crafted, intelligently made site will incorporate some level of findability into it.

Danny,

Thank you for explaining how speakers are chosen, and about the feedback mechanisms you have in place at the seminars.

I'm not knocking that -- but the more you get away from a search-centric focus, the more you lose the focus overall that's made this particular show successful with many people.

One of the interesting things about the UIE presentation that I saw was that one part of the presentation was on what they called "trigger words" or words that people searching for the site will expect to see on pages. The concept is very similar to keywords, but applied to human visitors instead of search engines.

Another was that a quarter of the day long show was dedicated to brandbuilding. I think that some cross pollination of ideas can be very beneficial. I understand that the brandbuilding presentation they gave was something they also presented at last years IMC, which I refered to earlier.

There might be some more overlap to some disciplines than we all suspect. It also wouldn't hurt us, as Adrian suggestions, to find some more common ground.

[peter_d]

Both web design and SEM fall (mostly) within a marketing framework.

However, just as there are divisions between direct marketers (buy now!) and brand marketers (feel & impression), so too will there be division between designers and SEMs. There is a point where both design and SEM work well, and that is the sweet spot a good designer and a good SEM will find. BTW: Designers don't immediately occupy the moral high ground simply because they're designers - I've seen many web projects compromised by the Flash kids' fixation with impressing their friends

Maybe it's time to get some designers and some usability folks to join in with the SEO folks teaching at the SES shows?

There are points of cross-over, but I suspect it would be like having road builders at a car manufacturers conference. The markedly different agendas would ultimately result in a loss of focus. For example, I've seen well designed web sites fail to do any business whatsoever (too slick) and "unusuable" sites make plenty of money (deliberately don't give the user what they want, but make the shopping cart really easy to get to)

All comes back to the marketing objectives. You can't be all things to all people.

[cre8pc]

I go for the team approach, but I've been in enough work situations to know that the idea of teamwork is often more lip-service than reality.

Stakeholders (web site or app owners) know what they want to build, often by concept only.

Web designers create the interface to make it real. They know what they like, and they like to be creative.

Programmers construct the back end, the force that makes the project active and alive. They know what they like and they like to make things work in ways that seem logical to them. They often must comply with what designers laid out for them.

The SEO knows robots and what it takes to make pages findable by people and indexable by technology. With some luck, they work with designers and programmers who understand the importance of this.

The copywriter explains it all - from anyone searching for a page to the people figuring out what a page is about once they find it.

Marketing was out selling the thing while it was still in white board stage.

And for years, this is all that existed.

Some companies stopped to consider what their web site or web app users and visitors wanted. Like, some people refuse to register when asked to do so before they're permitted to browse. What a surprise to the web designer and programmers who adhered to this specification, only to learn some of their target market consider it an invasion of their privacy. (Who in their right mind would require a phone number just for the right to browse a web site? Use-case scenerios and understanding target market are important here.)

A user centered trained person on the team could have told them that, before roll out.

I see, via my SEO partners, companies who are worried that SEO isn't enough. They know the design is part of the problem. They know they forgot to consider user habits. Its just occured to them that they never thought of a persona, or a few of these, to help their designers and programmers design for visitor needs.

The designer who knows that people use the Internet for bargain hunting, with muliple windows open for price comparisons, is the designer who builds a site that will sell because the pages will resize gracefully and the usability person made sure prices and call to action prompts were included.

It always comes down to who will use it, whether you spend money on ranking high to find pages, or you design to make it easy for someone to use. When the focus is less on the company mission and more on the user or customer's goals, the better it is for long-term success.

People drop sites online with no real plan for sustaining them. We did it here with the forums. We put it up, with no real plan. When our members began to offer feedback on how they use it, we complied and still try to. It's an ongoing process any web site must consider if they take pride in what they present. We also have staff who make it crawlable. Our goals are make it findable and make it user friendly once they get here.

I don't reject the stance that an SEO conference wants to stick to that topic, same as I wouldn't reject UPA from refusing to add an SEO workshop, but I do see the value of opening the doors by either industry.

I see the value of teamwork that is more than just lip service.

[sanity]

But, it's difficult to segment a site into tasks that different people perform upon it, often at seemingly cross purposes to each other. Understanding different approaches can really be beneficial.

Agreed. Too often design and SEO are broken down into separate tasks to be performed one after the other. From experience combing the two makes far more sense. We design with users in mind (or we should!) so why can’t we design with search engines in mind too. It’s not hard, in fact I’d argue it’s easier, it just needs far more teamwork. As Kim said:

I see the value of teamwork that is more than just lip service.

Spot on! 8)

[peter_d]

While the notion of teamwork means different things to different people, teams work well only when they have clear direction and a common agenda. Otherwise, teamwork often creates a mess on a scale that individuals can only dream of.

What I think Danny is saying is that with inclusion comes loss of focus. Trying to be all things to all people and give everyone a voice does not necessarily provide additional benefit, and may very well confuse because SEM is a complex area and time is limited. In any case, strict adherence to web standards simply isn't an important consideration in SEM. I don't think I've yet had a site that has validated, neither have many developers who preach adherence to W3C standards. That is not to say web standards are unimportant (I've read Jeffrey for years), but other factors may take precedence depending on the project.

In business, what is most important IMHO, is having workers who understand the higher level objectives and can work to accomplish them using their particular area of expertise, be it narrow or wide.

[Adrian]

I can see why it's good to keep the focus of the event overall, nothing wrong with that, to introduce a whole other range of subjects would either require it to get that much bigger and more difficult to manage, or to filter out some of what's already there.

However, we seem to have a case here where the panel has perhaps misjudged some of its audience. It appears they talked about design purely from an SEO viewpoint, some of which goes against a lot of good coding standards/semantics advice, and made the mistake of finding some of their audience were from that design/standards crowd.

In a sense, its good that there were 'designers' there, people who aren't exactly SEO people, but clearly want to learn something about that aspect of things. Effectively telling them that what they have spent much time trying to encourage people to do is irrelevant and no good for search engines.

Not to say that, at times, these same designers don't do the exact same from their own point of view....

Both web design and SEM fall (mostly) within a marketing framework.

Exactly, everyone is meant to be working towards the same goal, building and managing effective sites that attain their goals. And as mentioned there as well, it seems to me, that the sites with the best chance of sucess are the ones where the good designer and good SEM find a 'sweet spot'

BTW: Designers don't immediately occupy the moral high ground simply because they're designers - I've seen many web projects compromised by the Flash kids' fixation with impressing their friends

I'm going to steal that and use that elsewhere Peter I think its an excellent point. The designers concerned here have tarnished all SEO/M with the same brush, even though there are some quite vast differences. I doubt its unusual for all designers, or even just all web standards advocates to be lumped together and described as arty f***y, FLASH intro lovers or moaners about validation.

[rustybrick]

Looks like the SEM industry is getting slammed from all sides. Designers (this case), marketers (seth godin), search companies (give us standards ), and the list goes on.

Maybe a new topic, but is the industry's reputation improving or declining?

[MattB]

Well, I just had to say something, being a part of that panel.

What was published as an opinion has certainly taken a life of its own. So much so, that issues being talked about or quotes attributed do not even reflect the true nature of the actual discussion, IMO.

The regulars here have certainly seen thru what was written, as you have kept this in a very realistic and grounded discussion. From my part, the session was designed to help the attendees better understand the implications of using certain design techniques and elements and how they impact the search engines and usability.

Shari spent most of her time talking about menu's, flyout menus, DHTML menu's and how they can be improved. We all touched on CSS and how our experiences have shown that it affects search engines, user experience and alternative browsers. In my time, I talked about optimizing frames in order to fix the orphaned pages in the search results. I also discussed how forms are designed - basically, how conversion rates can also be tied to the usability of contact or purchase forms. Specifically, by showing users the format you want them to use (date, currency) and also making forms usable for international users. I specifically said that these were my opinions gathered from working in an agency. Dan went into detail about the benefits and potential of CSS.

Now, there were questions from the audience about using CSS, no frames and other "tricks" to increase rankings All of these were met with warnings about the potential for penalty from the search engines. Yet, these are the things that seem to have been taken out of context.

Working in an agency with artists and programmers has made me a much better SEO, and rarely is there disagreement between SEO and design. In fact, SEO and design have been able to compliment each other more than any other part of the sitebuilding/marketing process. Just as was echoed here, everything works together for a better user experience - no one part is more important than the other.

This was my philosophy in presenting the session. I wanted to give all of the issues we have faced as a design/programming/SEO (marketing) company and let the audience draw their own conclusions on how they would proceed. As what works for me, may not work in their situation. I was very clear when I presented a statement that it was all an opinion based on my company's experience.

I hope this helps to clear things up as to what was presented in the seminar.

BTW - I had to create a new registration as I completely lost my user/pass. Can I merge my old stuff as the former SEO Guy into my new profile?

[cre8pc]

Peter wrote:

What I think Danny is saying is that with inclusion comes loss of focus.

I was thinking about this morning while trying to wake up , and came to the same conclusion. The only way I decided it would make sense to toss in other ingredients into the SEO/SEM conference salad would be with workshops like SEO and The Value of Adding User Centered Design or something like that.

The idea I had was finding relationships and promoting the business value or value to the customer.

But, loss of focus. That would concern me if I was Danny. Perhaps now isn't the time for branching out.

Matt wrote:

Well, I just had to say something, being a part of that panel.

Bravo to you for doing so too! There are always many sides to a story.

As for the tech question, I don't think we can combine but I'm sure Dave (ILoveJackDaniels) or Stock (Grumpus), our Tech Admins, can help you, one way or another. Will follow up on it for you

On teamwork, I don't remember liking the idea at first, but my work in companies (in web design) usually required being on a team, so I came to love the challenge and even seek it out. When people disagree, or share different viewpoints, or skillsets, I always learn from that. And learning stuff always trips my happy-happy, joy-joy trigger :flasingsmile:

[sharit]

Hi everyone-

Shari Thurow here, one of the SES speakers that was slammed by that group of designers.

Boy do I have my opinions of that awful blog. But I'll get to the point. I was misquoted ALOT. Anyone who knows me or has read my book knows that I would never tell anyone to put half of their site content in an h1 tag and the other half in an h2 tag. Let me see...here's my presentation. Bullet number 2:

"Remember that the content of a true <h1> and <h2> tag is a headline."

Nowhere in my presentation did I recommend using the font tag instead of CSS. What I did point out was that since end users might not have an uncommon font installed on their computers, it might be better to use graphic images for some items rather than CSS. I think I might run out of space if I write out everything that was misquoted in that session.

Matt did a very eloquent job at explaining our position on the topic. Kudos to Matt, and thank you.

If any of you have specific questions about my section of the presentation, please feel free to contact me directly. I am more than happy to communicate what I really said. I'm sure Matt and Dan feel the same way.