Doing SEO without understanding searcher goals and behaviors is like doing math without knowing how to add.

Many people believe that SEO is simply optimizing a website for search engines. In reality, SEO is optimizing a website for people who use search engines.

Saying that you know SEO without understanding searcher goals and behaviors is like saying that you understand math without knowing how to add.

Likewise, many people believe that website usability is simply making a website easy to use. Easy to use for whom? The developers? Website owners? Web searchers? SEO professionals?

Search engine optimization has fundamenal building blocks. So does usability. Website usability professionals typically measure:

• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Learnability
• Memorability
• Error Prevention and Recovery
• Searcher (User) Satisfaction

Let’s look at each of these items individually and how they pertain to the field of search engine optimization.

Effectiveness

Contrary to what many search engine marketers believe, website usability is not about ones’ personal opinion. Usability is about achieving objectives and task completion. So when search usability professionals measure the effectiveness of a website, they evaluate the following:

• Can searchers achieve their objectives and complete specific tasks via the commercial web search engines and your website?
• Can searchers easily find their desired information, destination, or activity on a website?  
• If searchers cannot or do not achieve their objectives, what were the roadblocks encountered? Can those roadblocks be eliminated or minimized?

Navigational queries are very important to search usability professionals because the searcher goal is to go to a specific website. And website owners should help searchers achieve that goal very easily.

One way for me to evaluate this is to perform navigational queries to see which pages appear in search listings.

• Pancreatic cancer cancer.gov
• Cancer pancreas National Cancer Institute
• “pancreatic” site:www.cancer.gov (with and without the quotes)

If I do not see the most appropriate page appear at the top of search listings for navigational queries, then I know that the labeling system and other information architecture items need tweaking.

Efficiency

Once usability professionals determine that task completion is possible, they want to see how efficiently searchers were able to complete their desired search objectives.

• How quickly can site visitors perform specific tasks on your website?
• How many steps were required to complete simple search tasks? (Too many, too few, just right)
• What elements on your website discouraged or prevented searchers from attaining their search objectives?

SEO professionals should be careful about over-generalizing efficiency. Even today, I still hear and read SEO professionals touting the 3-Click Rule. The 3-Click Rule basically states that every piece of content on a website should take no more than three clicks to access.

Well, SEO professionals and website owners, the folks at User Interface Engineering disproved that rule a long time ago. (See Testing the Three-Click Rule at UIE for details.)

Information scent and task completion are more important to searchers than the number of clicks.

Learnability

Usability professionals also evaluate how quickly and easily searchers learn how to use your website the first time they encounter it. They review and evaluate webpage items such as:

• Site navigation (placement, formatting, and labeling)
• Clickability (visual affordance)
• Content labels and descriptions (aboutness)

Simply put, if searchers have to spend time learning how to use your website, they are spending less time on achieving their searcher goals. If a website is too hard to learn, then searchers hit the Back button.

Memorability

After a searcher has learned to use your website, how quickly and efficiently can that searcher accomplish his or her searcher goals?

For example, if the searcher goal is a quick fact, where might the searcher look for that information on your website? The FAQs section? The Tips section? If the searcher goal is to log in, does the searcher want to go to a specific login page? Or does the searcher just want to arrive at your site and quickly scan the utilities navigation for the Login link?

During usability tests and evaluations, I have personally observed web searchers exhibit re-finding behaviors.

Searchers might not remember the name of the website or the webpage where they initially found their desired content, but they remember the keyword phrases used on Google (or another search engine). Once they see a title, snippet, URL, image or video thumbnail on a SERP, they immediately click on it.

If your site is memorable, it can make re-finding search queries easier for web searchers.

Error Prevention and Recovery

Granted, there is no such thing as a perfect website. Nor is there a perfect search engine. Search engines might not display the most appropriate page. And searchers might go down a less-than-ideal browse path. Nevertheless, error prevention is a critical part of website usability.

Website usability professionals regularly monitor and evaluate:

• What errors do searchers and search engines typically make and encounter?
• How frequently do these errors occur?
• How severe are the errors?

Some errors are dealbreakers. And they absolutely must be addressed and fixed, such as missing content (a 404 Page Not Found Error) with quality link development.

Conversely, some errors are infrequent and not so severe. They should be on a to-fix list but are not necessarily at the top of the list.

SEO professionals might not realize that by monitoring data from web analytics data, webmaster tools, site search analytics, and SEO software, they are actually analyzing items that are important to usability professionals as well.

Searcher (User) Satisfaction

The searcher experience has never been as simple as, “I like this website” consensus in a focus group. Nor is it a, “This is cool!” exclamation during a usability test. Searcher satisfaction is tied very heavily to goal achievement.

In other words, if searchers are able to achieve their goals and complete search tasks efficiently, they rate their searcher experience as high. If searchers encounter too many roadblocks and do not find their desired content, they rate their searcher experience as low.

So Search Engine Land readers, this is what website usability is all about: effectiveness, efficiency, memorability, learnability, error prevention, and searcher satisfaction.

Next time you read or hear an SEO professional make any statements about website usability, make sure that he or she understands these usability fundamentals. If you don’t hear this terminology or understanding? Well, then, maybe you will know which search usability professionals to listen to…and which ones you can dismiss.

“What is your SEO archiving plan?”

Do you know what the typical response is? Stunned silence.

Then I ask another question:

“Who is in charge of archiving your blog content as well as your corporate website content?”

Do you know what the typical response to that question is? Continued silence. More stunned expressions. People looking at each other to see who might have the answer to that question.

You see, to too many people, SEO is all about keywords and rankings and freshness and the latest flavor-of-the-month tactic. A topic like archiving does not appear on an SEO professional’s radar until a specific situation arises, such as a site redesign or a migration to a new content management system (CMS).

The Costs Of Not Having An Archiving Plan

Long time Linking Strategist Eric Ward, who also publishes LinkMoses Private, shared this URL archiving horror story with me:

“I worked with a client for many years, each month seeking links for the new content they added each month. This new content was always subject specific, and was placed within a subdirectory at a nice short URL that made the link seeking process easier. In this company, the marketing departments and IT departments didn’t communicate every decision they made to each other.”

“Well, the IT department made the decision to change web content delivery platforms, but they did not share this with the marketing folks, who had no idea it was happening. Overnight thousands of URLs changed, with no redirects in place. Nothing but 404s.”

“This meant that all the deep links I had obtained over the course of several years became useless. There was no migration or archiving plan in place. There was no old site map or list of previous URLs. The lesson from this is Web sites demand planning and cooperation across departments. One decision can wreck a lot of work.”

Unfortunately, I encounter this type of situation all too frequently. There is a mad scramble to put together properly programmed 301 redirects without considering the searcher experience.

Web pages that should return 404 File Not Found errors are redirected to the home page in the chaos to retrieve lost link juice. 301 redirects might have to be implemented and re-implemented, diminishing their value. Web content that had solid link development and easy access is suddenly buried in the revised information architecture.

The costs of not having an effective archiving plan results in lost search engine visibility (temporary and long-term), diminished brand credibility, and considerable staff/outsourcing time and expense to repair the damage. Ultimately, these items lead to lost prospects and lost sales.

Archiving Blog Content

Many pre-formatted blog templates offer archives by date, but this feature is not enough for effective SEO and overall findability.

So let’s go back to my original situation. During the wave of enthusiasm for launching a blog for increased freshness, spidering, and (hopefully) increased search engine visibility, an archiving plan is never discussed.

And if archiving is mentioned? The answer is a typical brush off — just use the pre-programmed archives in the blog software. End of archiving discussion.

Well, I can tell you that pre-programmed blog archives is not an effective way to archive content because users/searchers generally do not discover or locate desired blog content by date.

They search for it by keywords using either a commercial Web search engine or a site search engine. They browse by categories and related content. Therefore, it is important for blog content to contain both parent-child and sibling-sibling links to related content.

Too many blogs remain uncategorized or rely on tagged pages as a poor substitute for an effective information architecture.

(Note: Tagged pages on blogs typically lead to duplicate content delivery. Duplicate content delivery to search engines can result in less pages being indexed, important pages not being available to rank, and a compromised searcher experience.)

Furthermore, blog content should not be written once and discarded. If you want your blog content to have long-term search engine visibility and grow stronger over time, archiving and categorizing are a necessary part of the SEO process.

“Posting valuable website content is not for a one time, getting attention driving endeavour. It’s also about long-term value,” said Ezra Silverton, Website Architect at the Canadian-based 9th Sphere. “One key attribute to long-term content value is making it easily accessible to visitors and crawlers long after its posted.”

Think about this: every blog post you write is going to eventually disappear from the home page and top-level category pages. When those links disappear:

• How are you making that content accessible to both searchers and search engines?
• What parent-child links are available on blog template pages?
• What sibling-sibling links are available on blog template pages?
• If you cannot put these links in the template, how else are you accommodating natural finding behaviors?

If you didn’t have an archiving plan from the outset, imagine the amount of work it would take to implement these items and achieve the long-term benefits. Not having an archiving plan or strategy ultimately hurts all types of websites…not only blogs.

As SEO professionals, we understand that SEO should never be an afterthought during the site design or redesign process. SEO works the best when it is addressed during the planning stages of website development. Archiving is no different. Archiving is an important part of the SEO planning process. It shouldn’t be an afterthought.

In other words, the answer to, “What is your SEO archiving plan?” should never be stunned silence.

Some SEO professionals are more technology (search engine) focused. Some SEO professionals are more searcher focused…and there are various shades in between the two extremes.

When I train or consult clients on how Web documents more search-engine friendly for users, I often run into another dilemma: user-centered design vs. usage-centered design. At this point in time, I feel that SEO professionals lean heavily on usage-centered design.

Usage-Centered Design & Activity-Centered Design

Usage-centered design is a term coined by software developer and professor Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood that focuses on user intentions and usage patterns.

It is very similar to activity-centered design (ACD), which is also concerned more with the activities of users but not the characteristics of users.

I admit I was very excited when I first encountered the topic of usage-centered design. I grasped it immediately because, as an SEO professional, I am very focused on how people search.

Is the searcher behavior navigational, informational, transactional, commercial? What are the keywords that searchers genuinely type into the major Web search engines? What are the clickstreams?

Many SEO and analytics tools are built to identify, troubleshoot, and understand user behaviors and activities. In my opinion, I believe SEO professionals are light years ahead of usability professionals and information architects because they do not ignore or discount searcher activities. SEO professionals do not ignore findability as a facet of the user/searcher experience.

However, and I’ve said this many times over the years in conferences and articles, these tools show us searcher activities—how people search.

But they do not tell us why people search. And that is where user-centered design fits into the SEO equation.

User-Centered Design (UCD)

Now, as a usability professional (putting on my website usability hat right now – it’s not black), I absolutely understand the value of usage-centered design. If any of you have had to do any work with personas, you might know how difficult it might be to explain the need for them, identify them, and create them.

For example, I often have problems explaining personas and usability tests to a marketing team. A usability test is not a focus group, and a persona is not a market segment. CennyDD Bowles and James Box, co-authors of Undercover User Experience Design, explained the difference:

“Personas represent the other side of the marketing data coin. Segments cluster individuals into groups. Personas create individuals to represent groups.”

I have a confession to make. When I was first educated and trained on personas, I thought my instructors were full of hooha. I felt that they were more concerned with the personal characteristics of users rather than their behaviors and activities. I was dumbfounded that no one seemed to put searcher characteristics (newbie vs. expert, etc.) in their personas. And I did not understand why findability and SEO were discounted or ignored when creating relevant scenarios.

In other words, I was not a persona and user-centered design fan for quite some time.

Then I started conducting usability tests as both an observer and a facilitator. I was absolutely dumbfounded at how people performed tasks (different from me, at least). Keywords were ignored when formatted and positioned in various places on a webpage…and these keywords seemed so obvious to me. On the flip side, I was also gobsmacked at what keywords test participants did notice.

Ultimately, I grew to accept that when I designed or developed an interface, I should not create or conduct any usability tests because of my lack of objectivity. That entire learning experience was so eye opening.

I understand that many SEO professionals have limited knowledge and experience in website usability, information architecture, and user-centered design. I understand that my SEO journey is unique. Others become better SEOs by following a more technical path. Other SEOs become very skilled link developers and social media experts. All in all, I see that the field of search engine optimization has clearly been a part of usage-centered design.

What do you think? Is search-engine friendly design: user-centered design, usage-centered design, or both?

References

• Bowles, C. and Box, D. (2011). Undercover User Experience Design. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Book website at http://undercoverux.com/.
• Constantine, L. and Lockwood, L. (1999). Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Models and Methods of Usage-Centered Design. New York: ACM Press.
• Constantine L. Activity Modeling: Toward a Pragmatic Integration of Activity Theory with Usage-Centered Design, 2006. (PDF)
• Designing Web Applications for Use – User Interface Engineering article/interview.

I want to know whether test participants can truly complete their search tasks more efficiently, more effectively and with greater satisfaction. Were any roadblocks encountered? If so, what were they? Can we minimize or eliminate some roadblocks? If so, the result is better search results pages.

For search optimization professionals, the result is better optimization because, for the most part, search engines get content for search listings from your website. Better content, better labels, better aboutness, better search listings.

However, I am always troubled by usability studies that are not conducted properly. So for today’s article, here are some things you should look out for when hiring a usability firm to conduct eyetracking tests on search interfaces.

Characteristics Of Test Participants

Whenever you conduct a usability study, it is very important to conduct the study with participants who fit a persona or profile. For example, if a website’s primary target audience consists of women who makes major health care decisions for their families, then adolescent boys should not be among the test participants.

Testing SERPs is no exception. Characteristics of Web searchers vary by gender, age, experience and so forth (see resources below).

Quantity Of Test Participants

I admire the knowledge, experience and writings of usability guru Jakob Nielsen very much. However, I almost feel that his research, Why You Only Need To Test With 5 Users, was greatly misinterpreted — especially by SEO professionals.

Nielsen has published more recent and more detailed work on usability testing. In his Eyetracking Methodology Report — How To Conduct And Evaluate Usability Studies Using Eye Tracking (2009), he stated:

“… heatmaps can be dangerous because they appear to be qualitative representations of multiple users’ fixations, when in reality they are quantitative because they are based on statistics. If you are using heatmaps to actually draw conclusions based on an aggregate of users’ experiences, or if heatmaps are the main deliverable, then eyetracking requires many more test users than traditional usability studies. If using heatmaps to analyze data, ensure that you have 30 users per heatmap. Thus, you should include about 39 users (as opposed to five or so for a traditional qualitative study).”

For those of you who wish to conduct valid, high-quality eyetracking tests on SERPs, please recruit the right amount of test participants who fit a persona or profile. Don’t overgeneralize.

Scenarios

As I mentioned in a Search Engine Land article earlier this year, usability test participants should be presented with the same scenario. Eyetracking tests are no exception. According to Usability.gov:

“A scenario is a short story about a specific user with a specific goal at your site. Scenarios are the questions, tasks, and stories that users bring to your Web site and that the Web site must satisfy. Scenarios are critical both for designing Web sites and for doing usability testing. (Source: Create Scenarios.)

“Eyetracking is an interesting technology, but it can be very misleading,” says Dr. Susan Weinschenk, founder of the User Experience Institute. “One problem with eyetracking is that researchers underestimate the effect that the wording of instructions has on where participants look. Early research by Yarbus in the 1960s showed that the pattern of the eyetracking depends on what you say to the participants during the study.”

(Please see Susan’s blog article 100 Things You Should Know About People: #18 — What People Look At On A Picture Or Screen Depends On What You Say To Them, for interesting photos from Yarbus’ research.)

As we all know, search listings are different from person to person. If a keyword or keyword phrase shows local intent, a Web searcher in Chicago will get considerably different search results that a Web searcher in San Francisco.

Furthermore, if a Web searcher is logged in, search results are further personalized. So the usability firm should ensure that test participants are presented with the same scenario, the same instructions, the same SERPs and the same search environment.

Foveal Vision, Peripheral Vision & Attention

According to design researcher Jim Ross in the article Eyetracking: Is It Worth It?, from UX Matters:

“Eyetracking can be misleading, because it does not capture peripheral vision. Eyetracking records and displays foveal fixations, in the small part of our visual field that produces the sharpest vision. It does not record peripheral vision, which makes up 98% of our visual field. This is significant, because we use peripheral vision to choose where to fixate our fovea next.”

The fovea centralis, also known as the fovea, is responsible for sharp central vision (foveal vision).

Foveal vision, peripheral vision, saccades, fixations, the eye-mind hypothesis — these are all terms that I would expect a firm conducting a usability study to know. In the1980s, Marcel Adam Just and Patricia Carpenter came up with the eye-mind hypothesis, which states that there is a strong correlation between where one is looking and what one is thinking about.

Well, I am thinking about giant, pink, fire-breathing dragons right now. I’m not looking at one. OK, I admit I am being a bit sarcastic. The eye-mind hypothesis does have some validity.

However, I do believe SEO professionals need to evaluate eyetracking studies more critically. Searchers might seem to ignore a search listing or a search engine ad when they might see (and remember) one of them with peripheral vision.

Although it might seem that I am a naysayer of eyetracking studies, I am not. I don’t believe eyetracking is a fad. A well-conducted usability test has always provided me with insights into creating better and more useful search-engine friendly websites.

But I am critical of search firms that conduct this type of research. Make sure they are qualified. Make sure they are not overgeneralizing. Make sure they are conducting eyetracking studies properly.

“Just as with any research, you have to make sure that the research had enough participants, and ask whether the participants were representative of your audience,” Weinschenck concludes. “It’s very important that you stop and think about what the eyetracking results mean and be cautious about changing your whole design strategy based on eyetracking research.”

For those of you who are interested in eyetracking and searcher characteristics, here are some useful resources below.

Resources

• Eyetracking Web Usability book companion section on Useit.com.
• Fidel, R., Davies, R.K., Douglass, M.H., Holder, J.K., Hopkins, C.J., Kushner, E.J., Miyagishima, B.K., & Toney, C.D. (1999). A visit to the information mall: Web searching behavior of high school students. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(1), 24–3
• Holscher, C. Strube, G. (2000) Web Search Behavior of Internet Experts and Newbies. International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking, 33(1–6), 337–346.
• Lazonder, Ard W. et al. (2000) Differences Between Novice and Experiences Users in Searching Information on the World Wide Web. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(6), 576–581.
• Large, A., Beheshti, J., & Rahman, T. (2002). Gender differences in collaborative web searching behavior: an elementary school study. Information Processing & Management, 38 (3), 427-443.
• Lorigo, L., Pan, B., Hembrooke, H., Joachims, T., Granka, L., & Gay, G. (2006). The influence of task and gender on search and evaluation behavior using Google. Information Processing & Management, 42, 1123-1131.
• Maghferat, Parinaz, & Stock, Wolfgang G. (2010). “Gender-specific information search behavior.” Webology, 7(2), Article 80. Available at: http://www.webology.org/2010/v7n2/a80.html
• Poole, A., and Ball, L. J. (2006). Eye tracking in HCI and usability research. In C. Ghaoui (ed.), Encyclopedia of human-computer interaction. Idea Group Inc., Pennsylvania.
• White, R. and Morris, D. (2007). Investigating the Querying and Browsing Behavior of Advanced Search Engine Users. In Proc. SIGIR 2007, 255-262.
• Yarbus, A. L. (1967). Eye Movements and Vision (B. Haigh, trans.), New York: Plenum.

Search engine optimization (SEO) merges user-centered design (UCD) and technology-centered design. Image created by Omni Marketing Interactive, used with permission.

I then told him that I am a Web developer who makes website content easier to find via the commercial Web search engines, like in the green part of this diagram.

However, as you can see in this diagram, I don’t design for search engines only. I also understand what people search for, and what they expect to see on webpages after they click on a link from Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

That is quite a mouthful (and an eyeful), isn’t it?

As hard as I try, I just can’t seem to explain search engine optimization easily on an elevator, at least not without a diagram.

Nevertheless, I have used this diagram for quite some time now, to explain what it is that I do for my client websites.

The Perceived Definition of Search Engine Optimization

Many people have preconceived ideas about SEO, and I try to surface those preconceptions with a short quiz question:

True or false: A search-engine friendly website is a website that is written, designed, architected, and programmed for primarily for top search engine positions.

I have presented this question at the beginning of my Search-Engine Friendly Web Design session at search engine conferences worldwide since1999. I pose this question to understand the audience’s mindset.

Are they there to understand purely how to make sites rank, or do they really want to learn many of the “it depends” that are involved with the optimization process?

Recently, I realized that part of my problem is how many of my colleagues and I have defined search engine optimization over the years. Even in my own book, When Search Meets Web Usability, I realized that I left out searchers in my own definition:

Search engine optimization is the process of designing, writing, coding (in HTML), scripting, and programming an entire website so that there is a good chance that web-page listings will appear in web search results for selected keywords.

From Thurow, S. and Musica, N. (2009). When Search Meets Web Usability. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p. 5.

For all of my harping-and-hemming-and-hawing about users for many years, you’d think that I’d include searchers and user-centered design (UCD) in my definition. But I didn’t.

Perhaps that is the reason why so many people misunderstand search engine optimization. We unknowingly take the searcher out of SEO.

User-Centered Design Is Not SEO

For years, many SEO professionals have touted that user-centered design is naturally search-engine friendly.

But as my noteworthy colleague Danny Sullivan has pointed out to me for many years, a perfectly user-friendly website just might not be accessible to the commercial Web search engines. There is still plenty of great in the “invisible Web” that isn’t accessible to both searchers and search engines.

Danny is right. SEO helps to alleviate that problem by providing accessibility and limiting duplicate content delivery.

Technology-Centered Design Is Also Not SEO

One of my biggest beefs with the SEO industry is that “advanced SEO” has come to mean technical SEO. When in reality, copywriters, information architects, usability professionals, and link developers have plenty of “advanced” SEO skills, some skills that technical SEOs might not possess.

Additionally, if you look at this slightly updated diagram, I often find that a great number of search engine spammers fall into the technology-centered design category.

Search engine spam tends to happen among those who focus on technology-centered design. Image created by Omni Marketing Interactive, used with permission.

Of course, I do not believe that all technical SEOs discount searchers – not at all. So what is it I am trying to say?

My Elevator Pitch

My elevator pitch was this diagram. I have been excited about SEO as a legitimate industry and field of study since 1995 because I believe it merges user-centered design and technology-centered design.

At the 2011 IA Summit, usability guru Jared Spool gave a presentation on The Most Valuable UX Person in the World.

In his presentation, he said that he believed that the most valuable UX people in the future are people whose skills combine the human experience with technology. Guess what? That’s us – search engine optimizers, SEO hybrids. I was thrilled to know that we are a critical part of the future of user experience.

In the meantime, I will have a somewhat difficult time explaining what an SEO hybrid is as well as SEO in elevators. My diagram helps me explain what we do for a living.

What’s your elevator pitch? How do you explain SEO to others?

Inevitably, someone on the technical team kindly points out that the content is crawlable, and the architecture is fine. And since I don’t know Google’s algorithm, I must be wrong.

Result? A whirlwind series of conversations that yielded bruised egos, a poorly architected website with little or no search engine visibility, and frustrated clients.

How did that happen? Where were the disconnections and miscommunication?

Believe it or not, many SEO professionals, developers and other IT professionals do not understand the role of information architecture (IA) in the SEO process. In fact, this group often does not understand the role of IA in the Web development process.

These misunderstandings and misconceptions lead to bruised egos and frustrated clients. To get all web professionals on the proverbial same page, let’s review some of the differences and sources of confusion.

Understanding Information Architecture

I believe the simplest and clearest definition of information architecture comes from the Information Architecture Institute website. Information architecture is the organization and labeling of website content to support usability and findability.

There are four words you want to hear when you work on an information architecture project:

• Organization
• Labeling
• Usability
• Findability

The determination of a website’s information architecture should occur long before a site is coded and programmed.

In fact, if I read or hear the following geek-speak, I am reasonably sure that I am not talking to a qualified information architect:

• Crawlability
• Indexation
• 301 redirects (.htaccess, etc.)
• Canonicalization
• Robots exclusion
• URL workarounds
• NOFOLLOW attribute

All of these aforementioned terms are parts of technical architecture, not information architecture.

Web professionals constantly confuse information architecture with technical architecture. Because of that, technical architects end up making information architecture decisions…and that is a critical mistake. I believe user-centered design (UCD) and architecture is far more cost- and time-effective than technology-centered design.

“In the long run, technology-centered design is generally counterproductive to project and business goals”

~ James Kalbach, author of Designing Web Navigation (2007, Wiley)

So let’s go back to understanding what information architects do. Organization is grouping related content into categories and providing user-friendly access to that content via global, local, and contextual navigation.

There are many ways to organize content including, but not limited to:

• Date/time
• Alphabetical
• Geography/location
• Topic
• Target audience
• Task/process
• Attributes/facets
• Combinations

Why did an information architect choose to organize and label content on a website via facets or by target audience? Did the information architect iteratively test the organization and content labels with participants who fit the primary personas? That’s what information architects do. They do not determine content organization based on crawlability or the flowage of “link juice.”

Adapted from Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld. Used with permission.

Here are some items I wish to know during a website’s information architecture project:

• Primary navigation. What are the labels to be presented in primary navigation? How many navigation labels will be in primary navigation? What is the order that primary navigation labels will be presented? Where will primary navigation be placed?

• Secondary navigation. Is there secondary (local) navigation for each primary navigation label? What will those labels be, and what order will these labels be presented? Where will secondary navigation be placed? If a page doesn’t contain secondary navigation, what will the layout of the page be?

• Third- and fourth-level navigation (as needed). Continue with naming conventions, order in which labels are presented, and the number of labels.

• Contextual navigation. What types of contextual navigation will be on different page templates (category, product, help, service, form, etc.)? Contextual links such as alternatives, upsells, most popular, and other related links are just as critical for findability as a primary taxonomy and associated local links. Is there an effective balance of parent-child links as well as sibling-sibling links?

• Number of links per page. How many links per page is too many for users/searchers? For example, I would expect a category page, (wayfinder) site map, and a site index to contain more links than a product or a help page. On the flip side, how many links are too few? Orphaned–page content appears less important to search engines (because there is only one link to them). And orphaned-page content seems less important to users because that content is difficult to locate and discover.

Notice that in this list, I did not once mention canonicalization, 301 redirects, NOFOLLOW attributes, and so forth. I am certainly not saying that these technical considerations are not important for SEO and the searcher experience.

Even though it might seem as if I am dismissing technical architecture, I am not. I understand the importance of providing access to content via both browsing and searching. As Peter Morville stated in his book, Ambient Findability (2007, Wiley), “You can’t use what you can’t find.”

Technical Architecture & Findability

I agree with Morville. Many technical architects agree with Morville…but with blinders on. A perfectly architected and usable website might not be accessible to search engine spiders. And technical SEO decisions should be considered and implemented.

As a Web developer, I have to make many technology decisions for clients such as:

• Server types
• Content management systems (CMS)
• Navigation types (text links, graphic images, menus)
• Coding and scripting
• Troubleshooting individual pages

Even if I don’t make final technology decisions, I am often asked to consult about those decisions from the perspective of searchers and search engines. I do not make a technology decision purely based on how a search engine interprets navigation systems and content.

First, I want to know what the IA, marketing, and usability teams have determined. Then I make technology decisions. In other words, I believe that information architecture should guide technical architecture.

Duplicate content delivery, for example, can limit direct access to desired content via the commercial Web search engines. And duplicate content delivery typically annoys and frustrates users. I know that user-generated tagging and faceted classification typically lead to duplicate content delivery.

So if I or another qualified information architect determine that a website’s content is best organized using faceted classification or user-generated tagging, I know that I will need to get a technical architect involved early in the development process to minimize the negative SEO impact.

Here is another example: menus. I hear the pros and cons of using menus for a navigation system all of the time. As an SEO, I understand why the technical team wants to implement menus: it preserves screen real estate, some search engines can crawl them (it depends on how they are coded/programmed), and “people love them.”

As an information architect and usability professional, I have to consider the failure rate of different menus (fly-out menus are more error prone than drop-down menus), the paradox of choice, and the technology used to access content.

Usability guru Jared Spool recently wrote about the 6 Epic Forces Battling Your Mega Menus, both from a human and a technical perspective.

Information architects don’t need to know Google’s algorithm or the latest URL workaround to provide SEO guidance and effective labeling advice to a technical team. They don’t need a degree in computer science. I have seen too many technology teams dismiss information architecture and usability guidance because it might harm rankings.

In reality, the organization and labeling of information will increase sales, conversions, and (yes) even search engine visibility. “It’s high time to put the ‘I’ back in IT,” said Louis Rosenfeld.

Smackdown: Which Is More Important?

I believe that a successful website architecture is a combination of an effective information architecture and corresponding technical architecture. I do not believe that technical architecture trumps information architecture. I do not believe that information architecture trumps technical architecture. I believe that technical architects and information architects must listen to and support each other.

“Information architecture is concerned with the structure and arrangement of the content and a great deal of it can be done without knowing anything about the implementation,” said Dorian Taylor, researcher, consultant and current board member of the Information Architecture Institute. “Technical architecture is concerned with the implementation of the system and a great deal of it can be done without knowing anything about the content.”

“In some ways we can say that SEO is about creating structures that are meaningful to machines—in this case, search engines—so that those machines can in turn generate structures that are meaningful to people,” Taylor continued.

We need to listen to each other instead of dismissing information architects with, “I think you are more of a UX person than an SEO,” as if their contributions to findability is less important than technical implementation. I know plenty of information architects with superb technical skills. They might know more about findability and SEO than you realize.

In Part 2, we discuss relevancy scores, site search analytics that can improve navigation, some insightful tests you can use on your own site. Enjoy!

Q. Relevancy is important for both Web search engine optimization (wSEO) and site search engine optimization (sSEO). How can site search analytics (SSA) help website owners identify relevant content that can be more relevant? Can you give an example?

Rosenfeld: Analyzing common queries that retrieve zero search results may help figure out why you content isn’t being retrieved. But it also can tell you about content that you should make available (but don’t). And where you find content gaps, you find opportunities.

For example, if users are failing to find information on specialized insurance policies on your extreme mountain biking site — well, maybe they should? Even if you don’t start selling them insurance, you should redirect them to a partner who can (and who will gladly compensate you for the business you’ve generated for them).

The Financial Times puts a different twist on this opportunism. They analyze their most recent week’s queries for spikes in searches for companies and people. Then they compare these trends with their recent week of editorial coverage. If there’s a discrepancy, it might indicate a breaking story. FT’s editors can then decide whether or not to send a reporter to investigate. In effect, FT uses SSA as a predictive tool, rather than solely as a tool to diagnose and improve its content.

Q. Why do both SEOs and information architects need to understand relevance (or relevancy) testing and precision testing?

Rosenfeld: Relevancy testing is limited—it involves testing the subset of queries that actually have something close to a “right” answer. Precision testing is also limited in how it measures search success. But both are better than no testing at all. And it’s always useful to have even a few metrics to help you to tell a story—in this case, a story about a new search engine that wasn’t quite ready for prime time (see the Vanguard example below).

It’s also important to remember that relevance is in the eye of the beholder–in this case, the user. And it’s the responsibility of everyone involved with search–including and especially SEO experts and information architects–to make sure their search engines retrieve results that are relevant to their users. Relevance and precision testing are just two tools for keeping your search engine’s relevance ranking honest.

Q. Can you give us a brief example of a relevancy test and a precision test?

Rosenfeld: Relevance testing and precision testing are a pair of measurable approaches we cover in the book’s first chapter–using a case study from The Vanguard Group. Vanguard used relevance testing to make sure common queries that had “best matches” retrieved them at or near position #1 of the search engine results page (SERP). And they used precision testing to measure the relevance of their common queries’ top five search results.

These simple metrics helped the company identify some important problems with a newly-installed search engine and how to fix those problems (as well as avoid a disastrous launch).

Q. I agree. Back in the 1990s, I discovered that when site search results were accurate, the “best” pages were selected to rank on the commercial Web search engines. That came from really defining what each page on a site was about, and connecting related pages to each other via formal and supplemental navigation.

In turn, helped us identify microconversion points and KPIs (key performance indicators). What are some search metrics website owners can use to beef up or use as KPIs?

Rosenfeld: The most obvious of these is the percentage of queries that retrieve zero results. It’s a great indicator of likely search failure, and can be incorporated into any KPI where findability is (or ought to be) considered. Other failure-related metrics include the percentage of queries where users fail to click on a search result, or the percentage of queries that lead to users immediately exiting the site (a.k.a. bounce rate).

Of course, we’re not just interested in failure–ultimately, we care about how successfully we’re engaging our users. The average time spent on the site after searching, and average number of pages viewed after searching may indicate engagement, though in some cases they’re counter-indicative–users may be happiest with you when your site engages them as little as possible.

There are many, many more search-related metrics covered in chapter 7; kudos to my friend Marko Hurst for coming up with them.

Q. For SEO professionals and conversion specialists, there were 19 search metrics, their purposes, and notes for each of them. Some of those metrics include the percentage (%) of sessions that use search (which compares the usage of the site’s search system vs. browsing), and the average number (#) of queries per session (which tracks how frequently users search during a single session).

So what is a search session? Why should SEO professionals and information architects be concerned about search sessions?

Rosenfeld: We study search sessions to learn how users’ information needs change as they interact with a site’s search system. This is especially useful in the Age of Google, where users are understandably unwilling to invest much effort in crafting an initial query.

In session analysis, we go beyond that first query (e.g., “patio furniture”) and see how the user, after examining search results, follows up with new queries (e.g., “metal patio furniture” or “patio furniture under $500”). If we see patterns in how sessions go, we can start determining how to improve how we support search refinement. For example, perhaps our site should support filtering by material (“metal”) and sorting search results by product price.

The problem with sessions is that it’s often tricky to tell what exactly a session is. Usually we combine IP address, query content, and time/date stamping to draw reasonable lines around sessions—for example, semantically-related queries that take place within a few minutes might constitute a session. But sometimes users make radically change the nature of their query within a few seconds.

When they switch from “metal patio furniture” to “flagstone,” have they begun a new session, or are they worried about whether or not metal patio furniture will scratch up their flagstone patio? Similarly, a user might search for “flagstone” on Monday night and search the same thing on Wednesday afternoon. Is that one or two sessions?

As with all analytics data, SSA leads to interpretations are, at best, educated guesses at what is going on. In my book’s last chapter, I beg readers to combine SSA with other, more qualitative research methods to figure out why things are happening.

Q. I like the example of how quantitative data can help you identify where a problem is on your website, but qualitative data (such as field research and task analysis) tell you why there is a problem. And then you can fix your interface. Are there other ways that SSA can improve the search interface?

Rosenfeld: My favorite example is simply to use query length as a guide for ensuring a wide enough text entry box. Common queries can also be really helpful for populating “type-ahead” lists that are increasingly common to search interfaces.

Example: Search boxes where the text-entry field is not wide enough, and many searchers might not recognize the magnifying glass (a symbol for ‘search’ or ‘find’).

Q. How can site search analytics improve site navigation?

Rosenfeld: So many sites do a terrible job at contextual navigation—the “horizontal” routes that connect your deep content. This is increasingly important when so many users bypass reach that content via Google, Twitter and other social media, and ad campaigns, rather than your site’s main page and upper layers.

SSA can help you establish data-driven “desire paths” for helping users move through your deep content. For example, you can study the queries that begin on your site’s important content types, such as product description pages. If you sense patterns in those queries—say, users seem to be frequently searching for product specs from those pages—you now know to make sure each of your product overview pages links to its corresponding product specs page.

I would like to thank Lou for a great interview. And SEO professionals? Take his words to heart. “Relevance is in the eye of the beholder,” and “where you find content gaps, you find opportunities” are my particular favorites. Which ones are yours?

*use Discount Code “SEL” to receive 15% off the book now

Editors Note: We would like to thank Rosenfeld Media for the 15% discount for our readers. Neither Search Engine Land nor Shari Thurow has any financial interest in sales of the book, although Ms. Thurow has endorsed the book as a top read for SEOs.

SEO professionals utilize a variety of resources to understand the words and phrases that users/searchers type into the commercial Web search engines, as well as to understand searcher behaviors.

One of the untapped places to conduct keyword research effectively is the analytics data from your site search engine. In his book, Search Analytics for Your Site: Conversations with Your Customers (*use Discount Code “SEL”  to receive 15% off the book now*), information architect Louis Rosenfeld describes how website owners can implement various metrics on their site search engine to:

• Better understand searcher needs
• Improve your website content, site navigation, and search performance
• Understand keyword phrases in context
• Get useful qualitative and quantitative metrics

Lou has graciously agreed to an interview for Search Engine Land readers. For the next two columns, I wanted to sum up what came out of our phone conversations, email, and other correspondences.

Q.  What are site search analytics (SSA)?

Rosenfeld: Your users are telling you what they want from your site—in their own words—when they use your site’s search engine. Are you giving them what they want?

SSA is simply a set of tools and methods to help you harvest users’ queries, test and measure how well they’re performing, and actually see how well you’re serving users. That’s it in a nutshell.

Q.  That is what your search analytics book is all about. How are web searchers different from site searchers? How are they similar?

Rosenfeld: Searchers often have a better idea what we want from a specific site than they do from the Web in general. So, as you’d expect, site search queries tend to be narrower and more relevant to the site itself.

For example, if you’re examining the University of Michigan’s SSA data, you won’t see nearly as many name queries (e.g., “UM,” “univ michigan”) as you will with Web search keywords. Instead, you’ll see queries that are unique to you (e.g., “football tix,” “get my transcript”).

Interestingly, knowing these more specific queries might help you invest in search engine advertising more wisely—you may be able to avoid broad, expensive keywords (e.g., “University of Michigan”) and instead bid on less expensive, more precise ones (e.g., “Michigan football tickets”) that may still be under your competitors’ radars.

Q.  What types of patterns do you look at when you review site search analytics?

Rosenfeld: It really depends, as there are so many ways to categorize queries; here are just a few:

• Audience type: who seems to be doing the searching?
• Topic: what are the queries about? Products versus tutorials versus forums versus something else?
• Content type: what kind of content do they seem to want to retrieve?
• Tone: technical jargon versus marketing jargon versus plain language terminology
• Seasonality: does the nature of users’ information needs change over time?

Because different people see different patterns, it’s ideal to have many people do the analysis—at least enough to start seeing if consistent patterns emerge. You might even have the individuals on your team do a card sorting exercise with a set of your site’s queries and then compare results.

The good news is that even if one or two people look for patterns in your site’s query data—for an hour or two every quarter—you will learn something useful. I guarantee it.

Q.  I truly understand that. On a number of our client sites, we discovered that users/searchers keep going to the same blog articles over and over again via site querying. From that data, we were able to pinpoint keyword phrases that never occurred to us, even with all of the Web-based keyword research tools available to us. On that note, what is a search exit? How can website owners utilize search exit data to provide a better searcher experience?

Rosenfeld: I like Google Analytics’ definition just fine: “The percentage of searches that resulted in an immediate exit from your site.” The percentage of search exits per query is a common failure metric, along with measuring queries that retrieve zero results (which I happen to like even more).

It’s useful to flag and study queries with high search exit rates—in fact, it’s one of those things to do on a regular basis. Look for patterns—are there types of queries (e.g., product names) that have surprisingly high search exit rates? Better take a deeper look at how product name queries are performing and why they’re failing. That’s where qualitative research—specifically user studies involving task analysis—work really well hand-in-hand with exploring your analytics data.

 

Site search analytics for "zero site search results" can reveal keyword opportunities for website owners.

Q.  What do search queries (keyword queries) that get zero results typically mean? Why is that a problem for website owners?

Rosenfeld: Zero search result queries are generally due to one of two varieties of failure:

1. You don’t have the content. This should lead to a follow-up question: why don’t you? Your customers are searching your extreme mountain biking products site for an insurance policy that’ll cover them if they fracture their skulls on the way down Pike’s Peak. Maybe there’s a business opportunity here that you’re missing by not offering such a policy?
2. You have the content, but users can’t find it. Your content may not be written in plain language. Or your content authors don’t or won’t follow guidelines for titling and tagging their documents. Forget the constant cajoling: now you can reverse engineer the process and show content owners what happens when they don’t follow those guidelines.

Q.  I have often stated that “How + Why = ROI” which means that website owners should understand how people search (which we can get from interpreting log file data), and why people search.

Rosenfeld: Absolutely. But keep in mind that SSA, like other types of analytics, can’t tell you how or why; it can only tell you what. Site search analytics data gives us a fantastic perspective on what happens when users search our sites. But it’s just one tool in the user researcher’s toolkit.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Lou’s interview, where we will go into more depth about search sessions, precision scores, relevancy scores, how to use site search analytics to improve navigation, and some insightful tests you can use on your own site.

*Editors Note: We would like to thank Rosenfeld Media for the 15% discount for our readers. Neither Search Engine Land nor Shari Thurow has any financial interest in sales of the book, although Ms. Thurow has endorsed the book as a top read for SEOs.

Image from Rosenfeld Media, used under Creative Commons license.

There are a number of free and paid keyword research tools at our disposal. Of course, as a search usability professional, I use many of these keyword research tools all of the time…but not in the way one might think.

Keyword research tools provide data. They tell me what web searchers type into the text-entry fields in the commercial web search engines. The data and corresponding graphs from these tools can help me discover patterns which might not have occurred to me, which can be very helpful when architecting a website and determining potential scenarios for usability tests.

However, keyword research tools do not tell me why a web searcher formulated specific queries. I have listened to many colleagues present their reasons for keyword usage.

A search engine advertiser’s opinion? Well, then I am listening to the mental model of  a search engine advertiser, not a web searcher. A search engine optimizer’s perspective? Now I am hearing the mental model of an SEO professional, not a web searcher. And don’t even get me started on the mental model of a web developer or even a search engine software engineer. Seriously, does your target audience share the mental model of a Google software engineer?

I do not solely rely on data from keyword research tools when I come up with content, architecture, and optimization strategies. Keyword research tools do not provide context. However, data from usability testing and diary studies, in conjunction with keyword research data, can provide SEO professionals with a clearer picture of web searcher behaviors.

Personas, Scenarios, and Usability Testing

According to Kim Goodwin, author of Designing for the Digital Age and a well-known UX (user experience) professional:

“A persona is a description of an archetypal user synthesized from a series of interviews with real people. Each persona provides goals that drive product design and strategy, from the original conception and feature list, all the way to the visual interface design.” (Source: The User is Always Right:
 Making Personas Work for Your Website.)

As a search usability professional, I also use personas to get all stakeholders (marketing, design/development, copywriting, management, etc.) on the proverbial same page. Because when you architect, design, and optimize a website, you should ultimately architect, design, and optimize the site for your target audience, carefully balancing user expectations and business goals.

When you perform usability tests on a website, you present the same scenario to each test participant. According to Usability.gov:

“A scenario is a short story about a specific user with a specific goal at your site. Scenarios are the questions, tasks, and stories that users bring to your Web site and that the Web site must satisfy. Scenarios are critical both for designing Web sites and for doing usability testing. (Source: Create Scenarios.)

I believe SEO professionals should understand search environments. Are web searchers at home or at work when they perform web searches? Is a keyword query a repeat query that occurs on a regular or semi-regular basis? Or is the query a quick-fact informational query done on a mobile device during a lunchtime conversation?

These search environments are potential scenarios for usability testing.

Search Scenarios

According to Usability.gov, usability test scenarios should not include information about how to accomplish a task (in our case, a search task). Usability tests will reveal how participants go about accomplishing the search task, roadblocks encountered (if any), and whether the website facilitates completion of the scenario.

Personally, I have observed test participants come up with creative, convoluted ways of finding or locating desired content via the commercial web search engines. Many times, they do not go directly to the destination website. They might:

• Remember a site that provided the best guide to content
• Use Google (or another web search engines) to go directly to the guide site.
• Locate the desired link on the guide site.
• Click on link on the guide site.

I know that isn’t exactly the most efficient way to pinpoint desired content. However, I observe this behavior. I see how important browsing is as much a part of search behavior as querying. And these observations reinforce how aboutness and information scent are a big part of search engine optimization.

When you write scenarios, it is incredibly important not to lead test participants into your way of thinking. You want them to use their keyword phrases, not ones you put into their heads. Observing web searchers in their natural search environments, using their own language and tools to locate and discover desired content — it is amazing what you can learn.

Over time, your test scenarios will evolve, as search interfaces and searcher behaviors evolve. Ultimately, these scenarios can help you better understand the needs and goals your target audience…and you can build better websites that both searchers and search engines love.

However, there seems to be confusion among search engine optimization (SEO) professionals, information architects, web designers/developers, and usability professionals about what constitutes an effective system.

Here’s an example: if I asked these aforementioned groups to write down their interpretation of the phrase navigation labels, I would probably get a wide variety of answers.

Most people assume that a navigation label is the text that is placed on a navigation button (formatted either in CSS or as a graphic image). While navigation button text certainly is a navigation label, other web page elements are also navigation labels, such as:

• Titles
• Headings and subheadings
• Breadcrumbs
• Embedded text links (in content)
• URLs (web addresses)

When navigation labels contain keywords and are used consistently throughout a website, they effectively communicate aboutness of both page and site content, as well as provide a clear information scent to content that is not available on the web page. Navigation labels also appear in search listings on search engine results pages (SERPs), particularly title-tag text and URLs.

However, when I asked a client last week, “What are the naming conventions of your website’s URL structure?” he could not answer me.

When he went to his tech team and asked them the same question, he was met with blank expressions. When I asked the same question to a different client in a completely different industry, his answer was an oversimplified, “We put keywords in our URLs.”

Which brings me to this month’s article topic. Navigation labels are important to both web searchers and the commercial web search engines. How effective are your website’s URL labels? Here are some important points to consider.

Consistent Labels & Duplicate Content Management

One of the many duties SEO professionals have is managing duplicate content delivery to the commercial web search engines: identifying it, canonicalizing (when necessary), and excluding it from search engine indexing.

On smaller websites, URL naming conventions are pretty straightforward. If a web page contains content that is about the company? Then the URL can be:

• http://www.domain.com/about.html

If the website contains a news section with press releases, then the URL can be:

• http://www.domain.com/press-releases.html (category page)
• http://www.domain.com/press-releases/2011/XYZ-announces-new-website.html (press release issued in 2011)

Sounds simple enough. Web searchers can understand the aforementioned URLs. The aboutness is clear. The URL about.html leads to the About Us section or page on the domain.com. And the URL press-releases.html leads to a web page that contains a list of press releases. The third URL communicates that in 2011, Company XYZ has announced a new website. In terms of information architecture, grouping news by topic and by date is normal.

However, URL naming conventions often are ignored or are based on the perceived logic of the boss’ son or a developer who is only trying to make his/her job easier. URL naming conventions should at lease be partially based on how people locate, discover, and label desired content.

I understand that many website owners are at the mercy of content management systems (CMSs) that do not allow for consistent and customized labeling. I understand that tech-team members typically do not have information architecture skills and are resistant to outside help. I understand that determining URL naming conventions often takes time due to considerable research and testing.

However, I have seen the results of ineffective URL naming conventions time and again. The workarounds cost far more in time and expense.

For example, we are dealing with a client whose use of capitalization in URLs has no consistency. Due to the lack of consistency, the .htaccess file is horrendously long, and the amount of time it takes us to manage the URLs that deliver duplicate content in the search engines’ webmasters tools is also considerable. For those of you who manage URL structures on a website, you know that it is very easy to overlook a single character, making troubleshooting another time-consuming and wasteful task.

The lack of consistency is so bad that we told our client to have us come up with a new information architecture and URL naming convention because it would be far less expensive for them to maintain in the long run. Plus it would help them with search engine visibility and conversions.

Exact Hierarchies

Part of an effective information architecture is a taxonomy, which is a hierarchical (vertical) classification. All websites should have a primary taxonomy. However, it is not necessary for a URL to express an exact taxonomy. Here’s an example.

On a travel website, it is common to have a taxonomy based on location and neighborhood. Look at this URL:

• http://www.domain.com/vacation-rentals/usa/states/new-york/cities/new-york-city/neighborhoods/chelsea/chelsea-apartment-1525474.html

From a user standpoint, even though this URL reflects a straightforward taxonomy, the URL is difficult to type (132 characters) and difficult to remember. An easier URL for users/searchers might be:

• http://www.domain.com/vacation-rentals/ny/chelsea-1525474.html

I am certainly not saying that this should be the definitive URL structure for this type of website. All information architecture projects require keyword research and user testing. I just wanted to point out that URL names do not have to be long and unwieldly in order for both searchers and search engines to comprehend them.

If SEO professionals, information architects, and others determine naming conventions before a site is build or redesigned, it can make duplicate content delivery more manageable.

Key Takeaways

• Navigation labels are not only the words placed on navigation buttons. Navigation labels are also titles, headings & subheadings, embedded text links, and URLs.
• Whenever possible, URLs should contain keywords that make sense to both searchers and search engines.
• Consistency is extremely important for aboutness, information scent, and search engine visibility. Consistency also makes it easier to manage duplicate content delivery.
• Don’t purchase a CMS that does not allow you to customize your URLs. Workarounds can be difficult to manage.
• Hire an information architect to assist you with labeling systems. Their experience with research and testing is far more objective than than your tech team…and your boss’ teenage son.

Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license.