It's the SEO that counts, not user centered design Options

[cre8pc]

According to a senior CNET editor, SEO is in, and usability is out.

Is search ruining the Web?

If Google tweaks its algorithms just a little bit, thousands of Web sites either have a very good or a very bad day. Search is the big dog; and it, more than standards, usability, or even aesthetics, drives the evolution of Web site design.

Basically, there's a natural friction between the way people think Web sites should be designed, and the way they almost have to be designed in order to make it in the race for page rankings. And in such a battle, design for search engines are destined to win, because it's just bad business to ignore a dog that size.

Bah.

Bad business is forcing rank for a web site that sucks. Sooner or later, the web site will need to earn its reputation by satisfied customers and productive traffic, not satisfied SERPs.

:roll:

[projectphp]

Bah indeed!!!

It seems to me that people get all worked up about a bunch of stuff that is just silly.

And in such a battle, design for search engines are destined to win, because it's just bad business to ignore a dog that size.

"Win" what, exactly? It isn't a battle for traffic, it is a battle for business survival. The two are very different.

Basically, there's a natural friction between the way people think Web sites should be designed, and the way they almost have to be designed in order to make it in the race for page rankings

Rubbish. This is friction between those that believe a website should be built with no concern for marketing, and those who accept the realities of the Web as it is. Sure, some SEO techniques suck and are cpunterproductive, but suggestions like "keep URLs short and meaningful" are good suggestions irrespective of SEO.

Ditto link building. Build a site and tell people about it. Novel concept

Peter_d once said that if you replace the word SEO with Public relations, a lot of the criticisms still makie sense. In this case, take the last few paragraphs and replace Search with IE and it still makes sense. Non-css compliant browsers are just as bad, if not worse, for "the way people think Web sites should be designed" than search will ever, or can ever, be.

IMHO, the article is brilliant in that it probably says exactly what CNET's audience wants to hear, but less than great because it asks a question "Is search ruining the Web?" and then doesn't answer it. I am no more convinced that the title is true than before I started reading, but then I did read it

[bragadocchio]

I'm finding some misstatements about usability in this article. While it bases its premise upon search harming the experience of a site, there's some bad information about usability going on here.

The old usability standards, such as keeping text above the fold, are out the window in that case...

Even Jakob Nielsen has given up on that one, recognizing that people have figured out what a scroll bar is now. From an Alertbox article from 1997 titled: Changes in Web Usability Since 1994

The change from 1994 is that scrolling is no longer a usability disaster for navigation pages. Scrolling still reduces usability, but all design involves trade-offs, and the argument against scrolling is no longer as strong as it used to be. Thus, pages that can be markedly improved with a scrolling design may be made as long as necessary, though it should be a rare exception to go beyond three screenfulls on an average monitor.

On title tags, we get this:

If you want to follow the guidelines of good usability, this field should display an ontological view of your progress through the Web page.  So, on a review of the Siemens S66 at CNET.com, located in the Cell Phones category of CNET Reviews, the title bar should read: CNET.com | CNET Reviews | Cell Phones | Siemens S66 review.

It sounds like someone is confusing a breadcrumb trail with a page title. Someone should point her to this old chestnut:

Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines, which notes that the title should actually be about the page in front of you, and should "be an ultra-short abstract of its associated macrocontent."

There's an ironic moment when the author points to an exchange between Eric Meyer, and some members of the SEO community.

What some follow up of that exchange might have revealed is that the conflict resulted in the two sides learning more about search, CSS, Standards, and Accessibility from each other, and Eric Meyer appearing at some Search Engine Strategies sessions, explaining how CSS and Standards can be used to both increase design, and help people write semantically correct html while making pages friendlier for search engines at the same time.

After all, some SEO experts suggest that one way to trick search sites is to put whatever keywords or content you want in an H1, and then use CSS to tell the browser not to display that text, or to display it in a different size.

Some folks who do SEO recommend that site owners use heading tags in semantically correct ways and only use enough text in heading tags to let site users and search engines know that those words are the most important ones on the page, and are what the text below them are about. Using CSS to style those tags allows designers to not have to use text that can often appear too large for the design of the page (It's called design).

[Adrian]

Just another example of someone who doesn't get it if you ask me.

That or they just had no better ideas on what to write to earn their beer money this week......

[AbleReach]

When I saw Kim originating a post about an article like "It's the SEO that counts, not user centered design," I just had to look.

Wow, talk about short sighted! Of course SE changes are a major shake-up. On the other hand, why should anyone but a SEM choose to base their business heavily on SEO? Even then you'd want a personal network and other tools (WOM, viral marketing, positive branding??) to be productive along side any SE's twitches. Defining most business's potential by SEO trends makes about as much sense as basing a shopping center's hours on the daily weather report - weather has an effect, but does not define the whole shebang.

Why is user centered design vs SEO a bone of contention at all? What would a high SERP be without a decent destination? What would a fabulous destination be without visability? Jeez.... What a lot of argumentative whining goes on over SEO!

Ha! No wonder she sounds stressed.
Is she sincere, or trolling just a wee bit?

Remember when Google was cool and search was a tool instead of an adversary? :?

</rant>


Elizabeth

[travis]

We look at

(a) SEO to bring in the traffic
( The DESIGN to convince the visitor to make contact.
© The MARKETING & SALES people to clinch the deal.

They are equally important in traditional service based businesses. Lawyers, Accountants, Engineers, Mining Consultants.

e-commerce sites cut the C component out a little, but other forms of marketing are still required.

Although SEO is important, we have notices that the design component (when modified by looking at visitor behaviour and demographics) does impact tremndously on numbers of applicants.

The average we get for visitors making contact is 0.4%.

If you focus energy on the design, that number may increase, depending on the market, up to 0.6%-0.7%

So we see a 50-75% increase in traffic caused by good graphic design alone.

[rcjordan]

>It's the SEO that counts, not user centered design

OK, Kim might not be the right spokesperson for that thread title, so I'll pick up the banner. It's ALL about SEO, everything else (at least until the site takes on a life of its own marketing-wise, which does happen) is secondary. Unless you want to go PPC, you're "dead in the water" to quote the article.

>websites that suck
Usability now seems to be part of the new white. You are VASTLY overestimating the 'needs' of your users ...they simply (and lazily) want the path of least resistance.

[cre8pc]

OK, Kim might not be the right spokesperson for that thread title

Ahem.

I may have retired from the SEO business, but I'm not dead. :doh:

[rcjordan]

Yeah, but you have a tendency to throw yourself on the fires of the usability cause, hhh!

[cre8pc]

but you have a tendency to throw yourself on the fires of the usability cause

heh. I'm the accidental usability person. It didn't happen by choice.

The companies and freelancing I worked for in organic SEO (before it was ever called that) put a lot of money into the search engine side, and that included all types of it (before it was ever called "black hat" or "white hat".) I had only Ralph (Fantomaster) to rely on for some of the tough corporate requirements (oops, there goes one of my secrets.)

But, the heavens opened up when my career path took me to new places that involved understanding user behavior. Now, suddenly, I could understand why my freelance clients were so frustrated, even after their sites ranked and thrived in SE's. Their sites were design disasters from the end-user perspective. Even some of the really attractive sites suffered.

Nevertheless, I experienced the other side as well. This is where a corporation thinks that by hiring a usability company, all their design issues will be solved. I witnessed failure in this because the usability side had no concept whatsoever of the SEO/SEM side.

Which is why I'll never truly leave SEO-land. Search behavior, online customer behavior and algorithm technology have to get along and respect that each is vital to web site life.

[Scratch]

I've got slightly more militant views about SEO, in that I think it currently has more importance than it deserves.

Not that it isn't important now - SEO is vital for success in many sectors.

My issue is this: The existence of SEO (as opposed to basic "making web sites search-engine friendly") - the agressive, competitive industry we all know - is just an indicator that something has gone wrong in the world of search engines.

The problem is that, out of a zillion web sites out there, today's search engines return only a one-dimensional list. The site at position #1 does great, the others from #2 to #10 do well etc. etc.

The reason this is so wrong is just proven by the fact that people feel the need to hack web sites around in order to force the SE algos to rate them higher.

This isn't SEO's fault, it's the search industry's fault. They've created a highly competitive scenario, and the SEO fiasco is a direct result.

What should they do? Well, they're starting to do it already, and it's to use richer search functions that take into account more than just dumb information. That means: inferring meaning, taking into account location, relevance, make use of the information that exists!

Keywords and (woo-hoo) phrases are okay when you're just searching for more dumb text. But when you want to find a French language teacher who can travel to your house, is qualified and comes recommended by families like yours, there's no search engine that can cope. The classic simple Google interface falls down. It *needs* more complexity when it comes to more than plain content searching. It needs data that it can compare to other data to garner objective comparisons.

Imagine a search engine that understands that, if you're looking for a supplier of heating oil, you don't want results over 100 miles from your home. And what if it understood your preferences and prejudices, so that it recommended companies that you're more likely to like? What if it remembered which products and services other people in a similar position to you preferred, and promoted those?

I'm currently working on a prototype concept along these lines, but it's not due to see the light of day within 12 months at my current work level. Something like this will happen one day soon: 3-D search, which will make Google Local seem flat.

[rcjordan]

>It *needs* more complexity when it comes to more than plain content searching. It needs data that it can compare to other data to garner objective comparisons.

No doubt about it, but the consumers' *needs* and what they are willing to expend the effort to use are miles apart. As an example, less than 2% of the searches on one of the top 3 major (US) SEs use the currently available advanced search option. I'm told the percentage is roughly the same in UK searches.

[bwelford]

Scratch your ideas interest me. I think you're dead on. More than a year ago I wrote in my blog, I want to search with you, Google. However no-one seems to have picked up on that idea. As rcjordan says, few people use Advanced Search. However Advanced Search is not very advanced. Perhaps if the Search Engines would adopt a more inter-active approach we would all be much f***her ahead.

[travis]

Scratch,

Your an ideas man, no question. Google owns the real estate now.

Its a bit like WalMart or Coles in Australia.

Once you own the realestate, then the market becomes very interesting. Suppliers start paying you for shelf space on which they can sell their products.

In a similar way, so we see people paying Google for advertising space.

If someone has a new search technology however, things are totally different.

Whilst most markets thrive on two or more competitors, I think the search market only needs one. The customer (the searcher) pays no different amount ($0) for using them, so the best search engine is all thats required. Which is Google.

With your search engine, it would be interesting to see the steps involved.

I dont see how a relationship could develop, unless Google buys your business.

You could start it yourself and hope it grows under its own strengths. There are a couple of smaller search engines that have more intricate reporting. (http://www.kartoo.com/)

Either way, good luck and I would be interested to see what you come up with.

[rcjordan]

When Bill Gross first announced Snap (Web 2.0 -Nov 2004, I believe) it was brim-full of columns and capabilities designed give the user more control. Looking at the serps today, that has apparently been abandoned for a more, errrr, umm, "classic" serp. (Though the old tour of features is still up: http://www.snap.com/about/tour2.php )

As for the task (now perhaps more daunting in marketing than technology) of starting a search engine, looking at their numbers I'd be hard-pressed to find a reason to invest time & money. http://www.snap.com/stats_home.php

[cre8pc]

Imagine a search engine that understands that, if you're looking for a supplier of heating oil, you don't want results over 100 miles from your home. And what if it understood your preferences and prejudices, so that it recommended companies that you're more likely to like? What if it remembered which products and services other people in a similar position to you preferred, and promoted those?

Personalized search. All the rage right now and in development by several search companies from what we've heard, but there's a catch. To deliver results that are the just what you wanted variety means knowing all about you.

Since the fact finding is already being done, in ways some people don't even expect, or are aware of, the "imagine" is going to be a brief exercise. The reality is already here.

[cre8pc]

Ben wrote,

It *needs* more complexity when it comes to more than plain content searching. It needs data that it can compare to other data to garner objective comparisons.

Reading your post again (because I felt my first reaction was more knee-jerk than thoughtful), I'm happy to see this part about the complexity. I'm thinking its not enough to deliver calculated, appropriate SERPS (the uptopian scenerio).

I'd like to see that, and the addition of sites that meet certain standards. One standard would be timely information.

While looking for a resturant this week to meet some out of town friends and gather for dinner, Google showed me many sites that contained info on the town we wanted to meet in. Only one was really usable on the first page of SERPs. And, that one had URLs to resturants that had their own web sites, but several of them were dead. I couldn't tell if the resturant still existed.

The other sites failed because their layouts were confusing and I couldn't find what I wanted with ease. But, they'd made the top 10.

For me, timely information is a usability aspect that search engines still don't know how to handle. They don't test the web sites before indexing them, and yet by the mere fact that sites appear in the top pages of SERPS, we're led to believe these results are are the best picks.

Even in Ben's scenerio of a way to add more flavor to a web site that sets it apart, makes it unique, makes it truly relevant to specific search queries, the site still has to come through with someting productive and worthy of being clicked into.

SEO/SEM is the star that gets the glory for getting a site noticed but the buck isn't supposed to stop there.

[bwelford]

Great point you raise there, Kim.

However I'm sure that there are some aspects that 'mindless' computer-based search engines will never get right. Whether a web page is still timely, i.e. relevant now, is one of them. However the basic purpose behind a web page is another.

Just spend a little while looking at the referals to your web pages from search engines. Compare the actual search phrase and then see what page the search engine served up. It's quite amusing. I get a lot of traffic from Google to the various web pages and blog posts that I have now created. However Google is very good at trying to match the search phrase the searcher typed with the words that may occur in an isolated way anywhere on the web page. Sometimes it's OK but more often it's one of those dumb associations that don't work.

Perhaps the best 'idiot' example would be to create a web page with the Title - For search engine optimization, do not come here. The content then could go on to say that you have been waylaid because this web page is not at all about search engine optimization. Without much effort you could get such a web page to rank well for the phrase 'search engine optimization'. Search engines do not understand that the meaning is related to Not or No and so would always serve up such a page among those which have a positive association with 'search engine optimization'. I don't see how the search engines would ever get the right answer on this one.

[mugshot]

Ok, I couldn't resist posting again!

and I realize that they're absolutely dead in the water unless they can somehow show up nice and high in search results.

What the heck! This applies to every stinking business (offline and online)! If your products suck at the store level, your store is dead in the water, akin to search rankings! DUH!

If Google tweaks its algorithms just a little bit, thousands of Web sites either have a very good or a very bad day.

Google IS NOT THE INTERNET, DOES NOT DEFINE THE INTERNET!!! (sorry for the caps)

...I think the standards and usability are going to suffer the most.

What a crock of bull. Usability will not suffer, and if anything usability and SEO will find a common ground and start working together to build a better Internet and websites for users.


Ok, the more I read this article, the more I think this editor can write and did get an A+ in grammar and spelling. However, when it comes to the actual understanding of the industry, she is as clueless :evil:

In nowhere in the article (not that I can see) did she talk about industry research, competitive analysis, heck or even the possibility of seo and usability working together. This sounds like another article from CNET that made it into my "spam" mailbox last week. If she really wanted to talk about usability and usable content, that post shouldn't have left her desktop :-)

Ok, I'm a little harsh! But this is worse than dup content!!! This is a futile attempt to make CNET look better than they really are. Conclusion is: CNET has G.E.S. = Google Envy Syndrome!

So what if their stock is high...geebus :-)

[ArchStanton]

This is a great thread, and it made me want to join so I could post.

In my opinion usability starts before a user visits a site. How and where your site shows up in the SERPs is where usability starts. Making a site easy to find is just as important, and is part of, making it easy to use.

In my experience, a well designed site, using good usability conventions, will already be SEO'd.

As far as weighing out which is more important, SERPs or usability, I would rather have my site show up on the second page and make 2 sales a day, than have it show on the first page with one sale a day becuase visitors can't figure out how to buy something off of the site.