He asked for some books to read, online courses to take, webinars to attend, and so forth. I gave him a partial list as a solid starting point.

When I sent him an upcoming webinar list (with descriptions and agendas) that had me excited, he replied, “I looked at these agendas, and I didn’t see anything related to search engines and SEO.”

My heart sunk. Smart man…very smart man…stuck inside of a SEO bubble.

As SEO professionals, we have conditioned ourselves to believe that if a document (webpage, image, video, webinar, etc.) contains a keyword phrase, then that keyword phrase must somehow describe the document and/or that document’s content.

As SEO professionals, we have conditioned ourselves to believe in, "No keywords? Not related!" Sometimes, there are connections we do not see because we view websites inside of an SEO bubble.

And vice versa—if a document doesn’t contain a keyword phrase, then the keyword phrase must not be applicable to that document.

One usability topic, in particular, might not seem as though it is related to search engine visibility, but it is: emotional design.

Visceral, Behavioral & Reflective Design

One of my favorite usability books is Donald A. Norman’s Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things.[1]  In his book, he discusses 3 different aspects of design:

• Visceral design
• Behavioral design
• Reflective design

According to Norman:

Visceral design concerns itself with appearance. The visceral level is fast: it makes rapid judgments of what is good or bad, safe or dangerous….  (p. 5 and p. 22)

Behavioral design has to do with the pleasure and effectiveness of use. The behavioral level is the site of most human behavior…. [It] is not conscious, which is why you can successfully drive your automobile subconsciously at the behavioral level while consciously thinking of something else at the reflective level. (p. 5 and p. 23)

Reflective design considers the rationalization and intellectualization of a product. The reflective level is the contemplative part of the brain. We can remember previous experiences and tell others about our problems. (p. 5 and pp. 22-23)

Usability professionals are mostly concerned with behavioral design. And Web designers are concerned mostly with visceral design. Interestingly, users/searchers are more tolerant of errors in attractive designs than in ugly ones.

“…although poor design is never excusable, when people are in a relaxed situation, the pleasant, pleasurable aspects of the design will make them more tolerant of difficulties and problems in the interface.” [2]

As a pioneer of search-engine friendly Web design, I have not focused primarily on aesthetic design. I have not focused primarily on accommodating search engines only because optimization involves both searchers and search engines.

Visceral Processing & Google Gullibility

I constantly observe 3 levels of processing all of the time when people interact with search engine results pages (SERPS) and websites.

The visceral level is hard to ignore on a Web SERP because of our instinctive human perceptions. If a site’s listing appears at the top of search results right now, it must be the most relevant, right? And if Google or Bing put that listing there, the link(s) must be safe to click, right?

How many times have we, as searchers, been constantly inundated with inappropriate search listings? Was it the searchers’ fault because we did not formulate an accurate query? Or is it the search engine’s fault, not able to filter out search engine spam? Or both?

Website usability guru Jakob Nielsen stated his article, User Skills Improving, But Only Slightly:

When it comes to search, users face three problems:

• Inability to retarget queries to a different search strategy
• Inability to understand the search results and properly evaluate each destination site’s likely usefulness
• Inability to sort through the SERP’s polluted mass of poor results, whether from blogs or from heavily SEO-optimized sites that are insufficiently specific to really address the user’s problem

Given these difficulties, many users are at the search engine’s mercy and mainly click the top links — a behavior we might call Google Gullibility.

In Emotional Design, Norman said that the visceral and behavioral levels are about the “here and now,” a user’s feelings and experiences when he/she is actually seeing or using a product. In our context, that product is a web search engine. What do searchers see? What do searchers do based on what they see in SERPs?

On the flip side, the reflective level is long term. On the reflective level, users/searchers remember past experiences with SERPs and corresponding websites.

Therefore, to overcome Google gullibility, we have to rely on a different part of our brain: the reflective level.

Reflective Design In Search Listings & Landing Pages

In Emotional Design, Norman said:

Of the three levels, the reflective one is the most vulnerable to variability through culture, experience, education, and individual differences. This level can also override the others. (p. 38)

I observed reflective processing in full force in the last month on an ecommerce website.

The searcher task was to purchase a box of blank-ink markers from a particular brand. Interestingly, one persona in their target audience loved this particular brand of markers so much that they constantly wrapped the markers with colored tape (so no one else in the lab would steal them). And they kept secret stashes in their lab stations.

I understand. I worked in biochemistry labs for about 10 years. These markers are perfect for labeling test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, beakers, and the like.

The brand owner of this marker created a separate website for these markers. And guess what searchers clicked on when they viewed the Google SERP? The mini-site’s listing, of course.

Searchers thought that going right to the source of their prized markers would save them a lot of time and (hopefully) money instead of browsing through a bunch of online stores.

However, the homepage of this branded marker site was a Flash-based splash page. I will summarize the basic response to the landing page:

“Oh hell no!” (Immediately clicked the back button)

This response clearly shows a reaction to reflective design because the searchers remembered what it was like to experience Flash-based splash pages. They didn’t want to watch a Flash movie in order to buy their prized markers.

Throughout the month, we performed other search tests. Do you know what happened when the searchers saw the mini-site’s listings appear in search results? Again, I will summarize the basic response:

“I’m not clicking on THAT link again!”

Search engine optimization isn’t only about the here and now. SEO is not a quick fix or a flavor-of-the-month set of strategies. SEO is about consistent, long-term findability.

Emotional design is an important part of the searcher experience from the very first to query to subsequent queries months later. Search engines do not have emotions…but searchers do.

References:

1. Norman, D. A. (2004). Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York: Basic Books.
2. Norman, D. A. (2002). Emotion and design: Attractive things work better. Interactions Magazine, ix (4), 36-42. Retrieved at: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/emotion_design.html.

When it comes to keyword classification and context, it is far too easy to inject our personal opinions onto keyword phrases. It is not a “bad” thing to want to relate to, engage, and connect with your target audience.

As search optimizers, we sincerely hope that searchers’ mental models of desired content matches the content we have on our own and our clients’ websites.

Nevertheless, the ability to be objective about keywords is vital in order to truly understand web searchers. As SEO professionals, we not only need to understand the words and phrases that our target audiences type in to search engine, we also need to understand the context of keyword phrases.

Searcher Mental Models & Search Conditions

What exactly do I mean by context? By context, I am referring to a searcher’s mental model and the conditions under which he or she is searching.

Questions to consider:

• Is the search being conducted at home or at the office? Or both?
• Is the searcher using a desktop computer, tablet, or mobile phone?
• Is there a time constraint on the search query, such as needing to change ones hotel reservation due to a delayed flight?
• Or is the search session one that lasts over a period of 2-3 weeks, such as when a person is researching a product before purchasing?
• If the search session is long, are the keyword phrases repeat queries, possibly re-finding queries?
• Is the searcher a newbie, experienced, or expert Web searcher?

Some context can be gathered via Web analytics data and other types of software. But not 100% of searcher context. All too often, Web searchers do not type in their keyword context in a search box.

Keywords Without Context

Here is an example from some usability tests my firm conducted last year. We presented over 100 participants with a search box with a single keyword. The first word we presented was the word gas.

Here are a number of images that came to their minds (not presented in any particular order):

Images associated with the word gas.

Most participants immediately thought gas meant the gasoline that they put in their cars. We observed facial expressions of amusement when participants were thinking of belching/burping or farting.

Then, we changed the context. We told participants that the context was a medical/heathcare context.

None of them thought of natural gas or car fuel. Some participants thought of oxygen. Some (again) thought belching or flatulence. And a couple of participants thought of Group A Streptococcus (abbreviation is GAS). So even though the context was more specific with the second question, the keyword associations were quite different.

We next used something possibly simpler than a word: the letter K.

Here are a number of images that came to their minds after being shown the letter K in a search box (also not presented in any particular order):

Images associated with the letter K

I can tell you my immediate association with the letter K. It was file size, as in kilobytes. I am a Web designer/developer and an SEO. I optimize PDFs as part of my job. So that is my personal mental model.

Around 10% of participants associated the letter K with Vitamin K, which can be found in some of the foods shown above. Keywords associated with Vitamin K include vitamin(s), diet, supplement, vegetables, food, and so forth.

If you put a number in front of the letter K, it can completely change the context:

• 401(k)
• 18K or 14K

What are the words associated with 401(k)? They are probably words associated with savings, retirement, financial planning, and money.

What are the words associated with 18K and 14K? Probably jewelry, metals (gold, silver, platinum), gemstones, and so forth.

Notice how something as simple as a single number or a single word affects context. Notice how users/searchers expect to see different words on webpages based on their search conditions and mental models.

And, as I mentioned previously, searchers do not often type in their context into search queries.

The Untyped Context

Labeling is an area where the areas of information architecture and search engine optimization overlap. Part of my job, as an information architect and an SEO professional, is to understand how a client’s target audience organizes and labels content on a website.

One of my most eye-opening and humbling experiences as an information architect was to recognize that Web searchers do not organize content based on keyword research data. With every card sorting and other usability tests, I heard (and recorded) comments that were contrary to keyword research data.

People do not categorize insurance, travel, real estate, healthcare, food and recipes, etc. by topic but via other means. They might first categorize themselves as a part of a group and then search by topic.

They don’t type in their personal information (What group am I in?) in the search box. But they expect to see their context in search results and corresponding landing pages 100% of the time. They expect to see text, images, and even color associated with their context.

I constantly observe SEO professionals and website owners use volume of queries to architect a site when users/searchers organize content by less common keyword combinations.

In the examples above, look how a single word or a single letter changed the searcher context…and you might not see these words in analytics data or in the right volume.

I am not saying to discount keyword research tools. I have used them since 1995. They provide useful data, particularly for labeling. But I urge SEO professionals to consider alternative means of understanding searcher context.

• Field studies
• User interviews
• Usability testing
• Observing users/searchers in their “natural” search environment
• Diary studies

As information architect Peter Morville stated in his User Experience Design article years ago,”…we must strike a unique balance on each project between business goals and context, user needs and behavior, and the available mix of content.”

Adapted from information architecture guru Peter Morville’s 3 Pillars of Information Architecture. Image used with permission.

And from noted search expert Richard Zwicky in his Context Within Search and Optimization article, “This process of helping guide the search engine to better understand the context of a document, so that the engine can properly direct searchers to the right document, and thus ensure relevant results, is a the core of what any good search engine optimization firm must do. It should be at the core of every search engine algorithm, but obviously context is not yet there.”

Help search engines understand context. Open your eyes to other research methodologies. You won’t regret it.

How is it possible, you may wonder, that a website representing a popular brand could experience a day of lost sales during the busiest shopping time of the year? What did they lose, in addition to customer trust and revenue loss? Consider what they did to become that famous brand.

Most likely, they have a marketing company that handles everything from print advertising, PPC, sponsorships, social media marketing and organic on-page search engine optimization. They’re also more than likely to have user interface engineers hired to design attractive websites and programmers assigned to scripting and coding interactive forms, applications and pages.

Were the individuals in each of these areas testing together? Do they communicate any strategy that may interfere with something another department is working on? Unfortunately, the answer is often no.

In cases of large corporate website development, entire departments are working on the exact same project and each feels they have the most stake, power and investment. You can bet that when changes are made to the design and performance of an order process, starting from a product page, that along the way to final production, something wasn’t tested for both search engine and user reactions.

Objective Approach To Testing

If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re already on board with the idea that Usability and SEO procedures do, in fact, blend together well. It wasn’t always accepted and there are some people who still insist the two practices can’t live together.

Frankly, unless you’ve mastered one, you can’t succeed at mixing the other into your personal practice unless you’ve spent time in the other camp. Nothing bangs you over the head with an “Ah Ha!” moment better than when you realize that to truly make your client or employer’s Web based project successful, you must understand how search engines index and rank, and how people search and make choices from search engines and webpages.

As simple as this might sound, finding people with both usability and search engine strategy and testing skills is quite difficult. In addition, there is an understandable lack of understanding what usability and search marketers do because there are related, and just as important, skills, tactics, practices and procedures each profession can do to enhance value.

For example, despite complaints that information architecture is dying and SEO is already dead, the truth is that long-term success online (and now, with mobile devices), information architecture is critically vital and, in my humble opinion, the ancient methods of organic SEO is as necessary as eating vegetables for good health.

Why wouldn’t giant company departments with managers and staffs with trained people consider some sort of unified testing approach during the development phase? One answer is time. Those of you who work in intense development environments understand managers that are breathing down your neck and superiors forcing impossible deadlines.

It’s easy for mistakes to be made in these situations, and this was the case of the big brand that lost a day’s worth of sales. They didn’t factor in time to test the results of changes and when several departments are rolling out their own set of updates at the same time, something is bound to conflict.

If large companies with multiple websites face severe situations like this, what does it mean for the rest of us? The solution is the same for everyone.

Hire an outside, objective company to handle all testing or create an in-house QA testing department ready to handle all aspects of front and back-end design testing.

This includes search engine marketing, which brings in areas such as site architecture, domain structure, content implementation and works with the usability person on persuasive navigation, target market analysis, mental models and much more.

Tools &  DIY Testing

Many website owners and companies with an online presence lack enough objective information to decide what type of testing their site needs. Many of you are aware of methods you can do on your own or by reading a how-to article, such as split testing, click tracking and making sense of Google Analytics and your server logs.

There are heat maps, gaze maps, feedback forms, surveys, user generated product feedback and color contrast software. Add to this all the free SEO tools and free or low cost mobile device emulators, and you can spend hours gathering information on your website’s performance.

But will you understand what all that data is showing you? Do you have access to case studies that explain why certain types of people make the choices they do?

Eye tracking software is cool but unless you can get verbal feedback from the user about why they looked at something somewhere and then looked at that thing over there, you can only guess.

Would the results of eye tracking tasks be different if the test subject started from a search engine result rather than just being shown a page layout? What color choices and navigation styles work best for your target users?

Real website testing via audits and reviews can consist of a mish mash of the above tools, but if you don’t have an interpretation of the findings, what use is this to you? User testing is helpful but unless the test participants represent your target user demographic, the results aren’t solid. They can find broken links, but so can software. They can tell you if they understood the content, but so can software.

The bigger your website, the more you will need to invest in all out testing from every angle. It can mean performance testers who record expected user activity and each time a change is made to any code, the tests have to be run again or changed to adapt.

One of the first lessons a website designer or owner learns is that any change to the design or addition of scripts or content leads to changes in how a search engine may crawl the site or index a page. Something as simple as changing a word in text navigation can affect search results and also confuse regular users.

Search engines expect changes to webpages but people don’t. They simply want “the thing to work” and they want it to work just like it did the last time they were there. Every Twitter or Facebook user will bend your ear on how changes to the user interface upsets their daily, harmonious social activity. Each Beta roll out comes crawling out knowing that testing is being done live and they must face the repercussions if there are any. And, there will be.

What To Test

Despite the long term value of investing in creating an in-house testing environment, which pulls from every contributing profession to website development and brand marketing, most companies won’t consider it.

Even some QA companies themselves don’t include human factors, user experience design, persuasive architecture, information architecture, social media marketing and search engine optimization. They strictly focus on functionality and some basic usability standards. Rarer still would be any QA testing department or usability testing company that includes accessibility standards testing. This may still be a specialization singled out like information architecture and mobile device testing is.

In addition to a fear of investing in hiring website testing and not understanding why tests are needed, many site owners don’t know enough about why they even own a website. Obviously, most site owners want to generate revenue or be a leading source for information, but they don’t have a plan for how to do this online. They may have created a business plan but not a website requirements plan.

This is how you decide whom to hire for website testing, audits, reviews and analyzing marketing data. Whomever you hire should ask for the requirements for your website. Who is it designed for? What do you expect search engines and people to do with it? Who is your competition and why? What makes your company so special?

Website usability, user interface, SEO and search engine strategy testing can present you with reams of data to fill up spreadsheets and make pretty charts, but how helpful is any of it unless you know specifically what to test for?

Photo Credits: “Businessman Pressing Risk Button, stock image from http://www.freedigitalphotos.net, used under license, contributed by user “mack2happy”.

How well do you know Web searchers? How do you know which data sources are best for understanding searcher goals and behaviors?

I created this short quiz to make sure that all players on your SEO team are on the proverbial same page. (Answers are at the bottom of the page…no cheating!)

1.  The word “login” is strong indicator of what type of Web searcher intent?

1. Navigational
2. Informational
3. Transactional
4. Commercial
5. All of the above

2.  If a Web searcher types in the keyword phrase “benjamin franklin pics” (without the quotes) into a search box, that type of query intent is classified as:

1. Navigational
2. Informational
3. Transactional
4. Commercial
5. All of the above

3.  What type(s) of webpages can naturally satisfy informational searcher goals?

1. Category page
2. How-to pages
3. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
4. Product reviews
5. All of the above

4.   True or false?

A low bounce rate coupled with multiple page views per visitor is a strong indicator of a positive searcher experience.

5.   According to information architect Peter Morville, which of the following attributes are not a part of the searcher experience?

1. Desirable
2. Useful
3. Findable
4. Valuable
5. Profitable

6.  Which of the following data-gathering methodologies provide information about the goals and the intentions behind searcher keywords?

1. Keyword research tools
2. One-on-one usability testing
3. Large-scale log analysis (log file data)
4. Diary studies
5. Website analytics data
6. All of the above
7. B and D
8. A, B, and D
9. A, B, D, and E

7.  True or false?

Both finding and re-finding searcher goals involve recognition and recall.

8.  Of the following items on a webpage, what do eye-tracking usability tests not reveal?

1. Where people spend their time looking
2. What people do not look at
3. Perception through peripheral vision
4. How people separate (or ‘chunk’) information
5. Sequence in which people look at items

9.  What type of search query is a “fishing expedition” (finding all relevant documents about a topic)?

1. Site finding search
2. Ad hoc search
3. Entry page search
4. Known-item search
5. None of the above

10.  True or false:

Web searchers always exhibit orienting behavior whenever they view search engine results pages (SERPs).

Answers To Searcher Behaviors Quiz

1.   A – Navigational. In order for a person to login, he/she must go to a specific website in order to login to it. This word often appears with other keywords, such as the official company or organization name, or all or part of a domain name.

2.   C – Transactional. Even though the searcher might want to see a variety of pictures or photographs of Benjamin Franklin, the words words photographs (and its derivatives) and pictures (and its derivatives) indicate that the searcher wants to engage in the activities of look, see, or view. Not all transactional keywords are verbs.

3.  E – All of the above. A category page normally contains a list of items. A how-to page answers a question about a topic. FAQs pages typically answer multiple questions about a topic. And the word reviews indicates that a searcher wants to read multiple reviews about a product and/or service. Reading, knowing, and learning goals are informational goals.

4.  False. Unfortunately, there are no cut-and-dry conclusions that can be derived from bounce rates and page views per visitor. The answer depends on searcher context.

For example, if a Web searcher’s goal is to find the store hours of his preferred pharmacy, and he finds that information (quick fact) immediately, then his searcher goal is complete without having to view multiple pages. On the flip side, viewing multiple pages can indicate that the Web searcher is lost on a website, especially if pogo-sticking click paths are followed.

5.  E – Profitable. Even though website usability is balancing business goals with user expectations, a website should provide value to searchers/users. Search engine spam, for example, does not provide value to either search engines or Web searchers.

6.  G – Both B and D. Keyword research tools, log file data, Web analytics data, and even site search analytics can reveal what people search for and how people search. They can also reveal how searchers interact with search engine results pages (SERPs) and other web pages. Ultimately, direct human-researcher interaction with web searchers is needed to determine the whys of searcher goals and behaviors.

7.  False. According to researchers at Virginia Tech, finding goals and behaviors are more exploratory in nature and have a degree of uncertainty, whereas re-finding is more directed. Web searchers know that desired content is available because they have probably seen it previously; therefore, re-finding relies on both recognition and recall.

8.  C – Perceptions through peripheral vision. According to usability guru Jakob Nielson and Kara Pernice in their book Eyetracking Web Usability, users get desired information with peripheral vision. They might not focus on a page element because they believe the element is not needed for the immediate task at hand (search bar, ads, items that look like ads, etc.)

Additionally, usability expert and author Dr. Susan Weinschenk said that people sometimes choose to not fixate on an item because their peripheral vision indicated that the item was not easily decipherable. And she said that it is possible for people to be looking at one thing and actually pay attention to something nearby.

9.  B – Ad hoc search. A known-item search is similar to an ad hoc search but the target of the search is a particular document, or a small set of documents, that the searcher knows to exist in the collection and wants to find again. Site finding is similar to known-item searching because the searcher is looking for a particular website.

However, with a known-item query, the searcher has already visited the site previously. With site finding, the searcher might want to go to a known or an unknown website. With an entry page query, web searchers’ desired content is a central page of an organization—a page that functions as the portal of information.

10.  True. Orienting is a behavior whereby users/searchers determine their position in a website with reference to another point—establishing a sense of place. It occurs naturally during the browsing and searching processes. Web searchers quickly scan the top screen of the results page (from top to bottom) to ensure that they have been delivered to the most appropriate page (orientation) before reading individual search listings (ads, organic, and blended listings).

How did your SEO team do? Are there any questions or answers you think should be added, deleted, or edited? Fill out some comments below and let me know.

Super Bowl

It began with the TV commercials during the Super Bowl. Usually my favorite part of this final game of champions is watching the new commercials that are made especially for launch during the Super Bowl, but this year, they were so uninspired and boring that I couldn’t wait to get back to the football game.

The only brand that stuck in my head later was Volkswagen and that’s because of “Bolt”, the dog who got himself into shape so he catch the new VW Beetle as it sped by his house. (Watch here: The Dog Strikes Back: 2012 Volkswagen Game Day Commercial.)

Why would a dog who works out be such a great commercial for a car? It was an idea based on something we already know, but don’t think about that much, and that’s that dogs love exercise (and many love to chase cars.)

Interestingly there is a short and long version of that commercial, where in the longer one, we’re taken a Star Wars bar filled with aliens and Darth Vader, who are watching the commercial and commenting on it. That section doesn’t get much air play and my feeling is that it’s because we understand and relate with the dog behavior far more than we identify with alien behavior.

Oscars

Ratings for the Oscars and Grammy’s were up this year. What seemed to strike a chord with their audiences was the most simple of moments. We may have tuned into the Grammy’s to hear Adele sing publically for the first time after her throat surgery.

Meanwhile, Katy Perry created a wild and colorful stage presentation, and Lady Gaga seemed out of place in her typical off-beat garb even while sitting in the audience.

In the end, what blew everyone away was Adele simply standing alone on stage and starting out with an acoustical first line, “We could’ve had it all.”

By the end of her song, I was all misty eyed and happy for her. Her triumph, poise, grace and awesome blue eyes was all it took to make her performance unforgettable. She was the performer who looked the most like us.

During the Super Bowl, Madonna envisioned and created an elaborate show filled with drama and lots of sounds and movement. Her being there was criticized before the game, but after her show, she proved her 53 year woman body and soul could still sing, dance and perform like a star.

She reminded people who she was during the cocky 80’s and who she had become, as well as simply looking like she was having real fun up there.

Both Adele and Madonna did something that Angelina Jolie would also do during the Oscars when she presented her right leg and struck her now (in)famous pose on stage.

She left an impression on us and gave certain people, mostly women, something they could relate to or perhaps have the nerve to do too. It’s a subtle thing to convey confidence and make those who watch you connect with that confidence.

This is what marketers strive for. This connection with customers is driven by research and focus groups and demographics data.

The same is true for usability heuristic driven web design, in that studies that include mental models, user personas, marketing data and user generated feedback help designers understand first and then design to make those connections between what they see on their monitor and how it makes them feel.

Old Is New Again

When “The Artist” won for Best Picture, I thought this was also fascinating because it is a silent black and white film that took us back to the days of tap dancing, face powder and lipstick and of course, the required funny scruffy dog.

This movie had no descriptive title that offered any clue that it was different from today’s graphics driven colorful action packed movies. With no information scent to go by, “The Artist” drove in audiences by word of mouth. Why did audiences love this movie?

I think its success lies in its simplicity, the same as the genuine presence of Adele with her simple hairdo and pretty dress or the peek of Angelina’s slender leg poking out from the side of a dramatic black gown.

While watching a black and white, soundless film, the focus of our attention changes so that our brains can see more details. Our brains actually work harder while watching, but we’re relaxed because we know there will be no loud booms from bombs or machine guns or screams from people dying in battle or plane crashes.

Since our daily lives are filled with sounds and images of despair and pain, what offers us relief from the chaos wins the prize.

This is a lesson web designers are still learning, or perhaps re-learning. We used to go to websites to find information on pages that loaded fast and were easy to figure out how to use.

Today, servers put together hundreds of bits and pieces of images, content and scripts from various sources to compile the page you see on your monitor. The more technical the programming, the larger the page size and longer it takes to load.

Watch how people react to news stories or blog posts that come in video only and you’ll quickly learn that not everyone wants to wait for the thing to load, nor do they care to be entertained while getting the information they’re searching for.

Humans need choices. It’s just how we are and rightly so, since we’re each unique.

We fuss with our new computer and mobile devices but the truth is, we’re tired of the constant upgrades, enhancements and the latest new gadget that will somehow make our lives easier.

All we really have is more bills coming each month so we get a TV signal, our computers will work and our phones can accept text messages. If you step outside the marketing and technology worlds, you may discover that people yearn for some peace and quiet or at best, a chance to slow down.

Eye Tracking Vs. Task Analysis

I’ve been asked for my thoughts on eye tracking and to be honest, I’m not a devotee. Part of the reason is based on the study in 1999 called “The Invisible Gorilla”, where test subjects were asked to count how many times the players wearing white shirts passed a ball to each other.

Only 50% of them ever saw the person in the gorilla costume walk through the group of ball players. You’ll see lots of examples of what is referred to as “Intentional Blindness” or “Selective Attention” on Facebook when your friends show images that illustrate this same phenomenon.

I’ve witnessed myself the difference between watching a person look at and respond to a webpage versus giving them a task to do on that page.

In a majority of cases, unless they are given a specific task to do, they have no idea where to start when they arrive to the webpage.

This is troubling because so much money is spent on advertising to drive people to webpages and yet the user interface itself confuses them when they arrive.

Eye tracking can show where the eyes are gazing and for how long, but unless the test subject is speaking out loud, you can’t learn why they look in certain places or the point where they decide to leave the page.

Marketers, web designers and web application developers like to copy ideas and technologies that are known to work already. They may put their own spin on it but the idea isn’t original and sometimes their attempt doesn’t achieve the same results as the original.

Google Plus has copied Facebook and no matter how hard Google tries to bribe and cajole users into switching over to their social networking site, a large number of people are fine with what they have.

In fact, I feel that Google is trying so hard to mimic what’s already being done elsewhere that their original product, which was a search engine, is losing fans that are fed up and switching over to Bing.

An incident during the Oscars illustrates this. Not long after Angelina Jolie presented an Oscar on stage by throwing her head back, bearing a huge “I’m the Queen of the Universe” smile and thrusting her bare right leg out in front from the thigh high slit in her gown, a man who had won an award a few minutes later copied what she did when he got up on stage.

It was only funny if first, you understood why he was standing and fussing with his leg and head, and the fact that his leg was covered up. Unfortunately, while the audience and TV camera was watching him mock Angelina Jolie, it took our attention away from the person making the acceptance speech.

Some ideas are just plain distracting and because we’re curious by nature, we may stray off.

This is similar to banner ads placed near important content. Site visitors are searching for your products and information, not that other thing that just slid over the page asking them to take a survey or sign up for your newsletter.

We don’t come to websites to be distracted by something totally unrelated or which we didn’t expect to find.

Again, we respond better to simplicity and are happiest when we find what we came to see.

No Pain, No Pain

If the people in the Gorilla Study who were playing with the ball had reacted to the person in the gorilla costume who joined them, the test subjects who were watching would have likely noticed he was there. Their reaction would startle the test subject, distract them from counting ball passes and they would try to discover what interrupted them.

Humans must be better understood for technology to be accepted. This is one reason why search engines want to know everything about us. They want to develop products and services that people want to use and to do that, they must understand what makes us feel safe, what sites we favor, where we live and what we purchase. Sadly, they’ve lost credibility and user trust because of how they approach us for this information.

Advertising campaigns, PPC and social marketing strategies and search engine optimization also want the same information for better ad targeting. Website visitors may tolerate some banner ads, but the moment they come across creatives that prevent a page from loading or the ad or form slides on top of the content the user came to get, the human response is to be frustrated, angry and disappointed.

What did the VW dog, The Artist, Adele, and Angelina Jolie provide us that made what they did so successful? What was the tidbit of surprise and what unexpected gain did we get from each of them?

They sold their product without inflicting any pain on us. This is the ultimate secret to successful marketing, innovation and user interface design. It’s the one thing we all share.

People like surprises that don’t hurt.

Photo Credits: “Distressed Man”, stock image from Kozzi, used under license. Photos from The Ultimate Secret For Successful Marketing & Web Design at Search Engine Land, used with permission; from Beacon Radio, used under Creative Commons license.

Normally, I teach SEO professionals about information architecture: what it is and is not, how to determine the best IA for websites, and so forth. At this event, it was the other way around. I was educating, or perhaps re-educating, information architects about SEO.

Search engine optimization has never been sprinkling magical pixie dust on a website.

Teaching SEO can be frustrating because one must deal with negative stereotypes (“snake-oil charlatans”) and erroneous, preconceived notions about SEO.

How many times are we faced with a prospect who thinks SEO is about sprinkling magic fairy dust on a website so that it ranks #1 in Google all of the time for every targeted keyword phrase?

Oh, apparently we have the magical ability to make this happen…last week.

To be perfectly honest, I often prefer to work with people who are completely ignorant about SEO so I don’t have to deal with the stereotypes, preconceived notions, and Google gullibility.

Nevertheless, I have to acknowledge that the stereotypes, SEO myths, and gullibility exist. Acknowledging and challenging the negative stereotype is par for the course.

SEO Awareness

I have said it before. And I will say keep repeating until the world grasps this fundamental SEO concept: SEO is optimizing a website for people who use search engines.

Like the term “website usability,” the term “search engine optimization” is easily misunderstood. People honestly make statements such as, “I am the user,” and “Optimize for the average searcher,” and “People use my website all of the time; therefore, it is user friendly.”

Usability is about task completion and involves the following items:

• Efficiency
• Effectiveness
• Learnability
• Memorability
• Error prevention
• User satisfaction

It is easy for people to believe that search engine optimization is optimizing a website for search engines only. Too easy, I think.

In reality, SEO has always been about searchers and search engines. Ignoring one at the expense of the other is a mistake…a big mistake.

So how do we make people aware of what the SEO process really is? I posed this question to one of my clients. Here is his 2 cents:

“Even though staff learned about SEO responsibilities that were not directly a part of their jobs, at least they have an awareness about how their contributions can positively or negatively affect SEO. That awareness is invaluable.”

I believe his comments show great insight. Don’t expect everyone to know how to do SEO after a short presentation. Don’t expect everyone to instantly become an SEO expert after a few hours in a certification course. Expertise comes from knowledge and experience.

Nevertheless, I think it is reasonable to expect a fundamental awareness of SEO, knowing that SEO involves meeting the needs of both searchers and search engines. And also knowing that SEO is not the process of sprinkling magical pixie dust on a website.

I expect that fundamental awareness from anyone working on a website: designers, developers, usability professionals, user experience designers, writers, advertisers, information architects, and so forth.

That awareness is invaluable.

SEO Knowledge & Aptitude

Here is a proverbial tough pill to swallow: not everyone has the aptitude for SEO or different aspects of SEO.

SEO professionals should understand how people search as well as why people search.

Search engine optimization has a human element as well as a technical element. Some SEO professionals are gifted technical SEOs. This is the group to turn to for assistance in managing duplicate content.

Some SEO professionals are expert copywriters. Some SEO experts are skilled at usability testing and might be the group to turn to if a site has search engine traffic and low conversions. Some SEOs are knowledgeable about how people search. And some SEOs are knowledgeable about why people search.

I wouldn’t ask an search engine optimizer who specializes in copywriting to program redirects. Nor would I expect a developer/programmer to be skilled at information architecture and usability testing.

I expect SEO professionals to have more than awareness. I expect them to have aptitude and knowledge.

If an SEO professional does not have a specific SEO skill needed for a project, I expect that person to reach out to an SEO who does…without feeling threatened. SEO should be a group effort. Everyone is on the same team.

I know. I know…easier said than done. Stereotypes, myths, and misconceptions can be difficult to debunk. So what did I share with the audience of information architects?

Part of an SEO’s job is:

• Labeling website content so that it is easy to find (unique aboutness)
• Organizing website content so that it is easy to find
• Ensuring search engines have access to desired content
• Ensuring search engines don’t have access to undesirable content (or at least limiting access)
• Accommodating searchers’ navigational, informational, and transactional goals

Information architecture decisions can positively and negatively impact SEO on web search engines as well as site search engines. Information architects have a role in SEO. Have the awareness.

Even better? Have the knowledge to hire an SEO professional when one is needed. Have the knowledge and humility to recognize that you might not have the aptitude and talent for optimizing. Understand that SEO knowledge does not necessarily mean SEO aptitude. Understand your role in the optimization process. Be knowledgeable enough to recognize a “snake-oil charlatan.”

Information architecture guru Peter Morville wrote the following in the foreword of When Search Meets Web Usability:

“Shari Thurow is among the few specialists brave enough to jump the gap between search engine optimization and web usability. As a result, she has learned how and where to place stepping stones and build bridges. She can speak the language of link analysis and relevance ranking algorithms, while also understanding user psychology and information seeking behavior.”

Yep, I build bridges. But I cannot make anyone cross a bridge. Awareness is the first step. Take that first step, information architects. You won’t regret it.

Along with the freedom the Internet provides humans, it is unfortunately humans who also created barriers to our free flow of information. It’s uncanny the amount of search engine marketing money spent to bring people into websites, only to chase them back out because they must prove they are indeed, human.

Spam helped create the need for Captcha. To defend ourselves from the onslaught of unsolicited and unwanted information that comes in the form of blog comments, log in, purchasing tasks and forums discussions, we must first solve a puzzle.

What Is Captcha?

Captcha stands for Completely Automated Public Turing (tests to tell) Computers and Humans Apart.

We commonly see them in the form of letters, sometimes mixed with numbers, which are presented in wavy, bold and italic fonts that try our patience.

You may come upon a registration form that will not accept your information until you solve a math problem like 2 + 7 or answer a question such as “Who was buried in Grant’s tomb?” Images and video are also used for Captcha.

The purpose of Captcha is to find a way to prove that you’re a human being and not a computer with abuse on its agenda. However humble and helpful the original goal, today there is software available to bypass Captcha’s, as well as humans paid to solve Captcha for companies who wish to do harm. Some regular website maintenance now includes regularly changing existing Captcha’s because it doesn’t take long for machines to figure out what sites use what form of Captcha.

Other reasons for wanting Captcha include preventing identity theft and fraud, computer viruses, spyware and hackers, phishing and bogus online transactions. Research shows that simply relying on passwords is not helpful for security because of password dictionaries and the overwhelming tendency to create easy, common passwords.

Do we really need additional help beyond passwords? Yes.

According to various sources such as the CSI, FBI and the Computer Security Institute, the costs of Internet crime and security breaches run in the billions of US dollars. Companies loathe going public with breaches for fear of the negative public reaction and stock market response. No wonder we’re forced to tolerate Captcha’s.

Usability Issues With Captcha

So much effort goes into making secure Captcha’s machines can’t possibly solve, studies show that people can’t solve them either. One of the worst Captcha presentations is when only one option is offered. Should it not be readable or easy to decipher, the form can’t be completed. It’s important to allow your users to refresh the screen until they find one they can understand.

One source noted the average person has between 7 and 25 accounts they log into every day (source). Because of the severity of the lack of trust, companies force users to authenticate who they are. In the course of one day, you may find yourself facing a Captcha field many times.

Other findings from various research include:

• When we presented image Captcha to three different humans, all three agreed only 71% of the time on average.
• Audio Captcha are much harder than image Captcha.
• Some Captcha schemes are clearly harder for humans than others.
• Non-native speakers of English take longer to solve Captcha, and are less accurate on Captcha that include English words.
• Humans become slightly slower and slightly more accurate with age.
• Ph.D.’s are the best at solving audio Captcha.
• Image based Captcha is not accessible to blind users.
• Poor accessibility for Captcha includes those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
• Splitting the image into regions which each contain a single character, called “segmentation”, and is found to be the most reliable for humans.

• Spammers pay about $0.80 to $1.20 for each 1,000 solved CAPTCHAs to companies employing human solvers in Bangladesh, China, India, and many other developing nations.
• Contrary to the common belief, text-based CAPTCHAs can be difficult for foreigners.
• The use of color in a CAPTCHA can have an impact on its usability, security or both.
• Distortion has a clear impact on the usability of CAPTCHAs. Users find it difficult or impossible to
• recognize over-distorted characters.

Tools To Implement Captcha

For the time being it appears as though we’re forced to live with Captcha.

The following are some suggestions for tools and ways to create your own.

• ReCaptcha (from Google)- http://www.google.com/recaptcha

• How to Create a CAPTCHA Code – http://www.ehow.com/how_7335023_create-captcha-code.html
• Securimage – Free PHP code http://www.phpcaptcha.org/

Captcha confusion may be overlooked when analyzing web site or Internet application performance. We don’t often see a tick box nearby that might alert a site owner that a user could not submit the form because of its Captcha setup.

A wise reader of this column suggested this topic and for good reason. When conversions are at stake, Captcha is worth understanding and investigating to be sure it doesn’t create a negative impact on your site’s success.

Additional Reading:

• Password Authentication from a Human Factors Perspective: Results of a Survey among End-Users; Peter Hoonakker1, Nis Bornoe2 and Pascale Carayon1, 3; 1 Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement, 3 ISyE Department University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA 2 IT University, Copenhagen, Denmark
• How Good are Humans at Solving CAPTCHAs? A Large Scale Evaluation; Elie Bursztein, Steven Bethard, Celine Fabry, John C. Mitchell, Dan Jurafsky
• Data Monday: Login & Passwords; by Luke Wroblewski
• Wikipedia on Captcha
• Usability of CAPTCHAs Or usability issues in CAPTCHA design; Jeff Yan and Ahmad Salah El Ahmad

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.

The first item we need to address is updating the copyright year in the footer of our website. Not only does this show that somebody is home maintaining the site but it signals to search engines that life exists there and to keep visiting.

Website Resolutions

This, like a new determination to lose weight, could be the first and last resolution you set for yourself. Not quite a ritual is it? And who wants to wait until beach season to see the results? What other practices can you add to your annual website resolution ritual? Is there a goal you want to set for the New Year?

There are two important goals to work into your resolutions list. It’s a new season. If last year was a bust, can you make up for that and create a more prosperous website property in 2012? Sure you can.

Let’s target two goals:

1. Increase website conversions. This can be sales, sign-ups, subscriptions, and new ads on your pages, a renewed PPC program, increased participation in forums and blogs, and much more. You have specific tasks on your website. This goal is focused on creating more interest and momentum so that your site visitors complete those vital tasks.
2. Increase search engine exposure and searcher response. If you feel your search engine rank or inbound clicks are flat, you may wish to try fresh ideas to give your search engine listings a boost.

Website Resolutions Checklist

New Year = Fresh Start

New Year’s resolutions are begun with the best of intentions but we can sometimes set the bar so high that we let the whole idea fizzle out.

This is especially true when we don’t see or feel any immediate results.

The following 10 items are chosen for their ease of implementation and known traceable results.

The list is short because this ritual is supposed to be doable and repeatable each year.

We also want to carry out our ritual resolutions once and when we see results, feel inspired to keep going or tweak if need be.

1.  While you’re in the footer changing the year, be sure to add at minimum the town or city, state or province and country of origin for the website. A zip and postal code are helpful too. A full business address is perfect but not every web site needs one. Why do this? Much depends on the type of site you’re operating.

For a local site that wants to do business locally, the address is helpful for local searches, as well as potential customers wanting to do business locally. An address or place of origin helps communicate where sales are accepted.

If your website is based in the UK but you accept sales from outside your country, the footer is a good place to note that. It can be as simple as adding “International sales accepted.” An address also indicates credibility.

2.  Go through the title tags for your homepage, landing pages, top level pages of importance, product pages, and PPC landing pages. In each title tag, add a value as an incentive to searchers who are reading SERPS (search engine results pages) to click into your page and not a competitor’s.

Examples: “free shipping”, “free membership”, “clearance”, etc. Avoid bland terms such as “best”, “greatest”, “leading”, etc. Don’t copy what your competitor puts in their title tag. Create your title tag to be more inspirational.

3.  Review each landing page for PPC and banner ads to be sure that whatever the ad claims is supported on the landing page. Repeat the same incentive or promotion on the landing page. This tells the human brain it has been taken to the correct place. Absolutely no bait and switch!

4.  Similar to item two, each product page needs its own Meta description that specifically addresses the product it pertains to. No cookie cutter descriptions. If you place the product name and manufacturer and your brand in the title tag, your Meta description should follow up the unique selling proposition and a brief product description. Again, ask yourself what would make someone want to go to your product page instead of the other company who is selling the exact same product?

5.  Clean up your text. Are your pages jammed with endless paragraphs that repeat the same information? Is your text written well, with no grammatical errors or broken English? Is it compelling? Perhaps this year it is time to hire a marketing copywriter who can improve your conversions and search engine results with their skilled writing.

6.  Run link checking software. This is often overlooked or a boring maintenance job. Let’s do it now and cleanup any issues.

7.  Upgrade software, plug-ins, blog themes, forums software, and any back-end applications you rely on. Sometimes, as in the case of some forums software and blog themes, all kinds of new things are added such as new photo galleries, better spam defense, added social networking integration and improved user interface both for the front and back-end.

8.  Review your website requirements or write new ones. The point of this exercise is re-evaluate why your web site exists and to inspect its performance. Perhaps you’ve never drawn up a written plan or you have added more employees or team mates who don’t understand your original goals and visions. It doesn’t hurt to document your goals for search engines, social marketing, usability, conversions and overall site performance.

Maybe you want to add a new goal such as improving the overall accessibility for the site. With technology and new user interface ideas coming out, it doesn’t hurt to pause. Maybe there are new things you can try and have been so busy you didn’t consider it. Now is the time to explore.

9.  Start out the year with a fresh look at your logs and analytics. If you use SEO tools, take them for a spin or have your SEO do it. Get updated data and inspect it for areas where traffic is falling off, conversions have sunk or bounce rates have increased. Create new funnels and track your main tasks or revise existing ones. Research new possible keywords or question searches such as “how do I” and “where is” types that may lead directly into your site.

10. Get organized. There’s nothing like a fresh start and new beginnings. Perhaps you need to budget for help with usability and conversions or search engine results. Blog owners may want to create an editorial calendar so that your writers or you keep the blog alive and active.

This is also a good time to schedule any conferences you want to get to, or local events. Maybe you wish to teach. Look into your local chambers of commerce to see if you can provide workshops. Some schools offer adult education courses. Don’t forget local youth organizations. (I once taught a Girl Scout troop how to make a webpage and how to FTP the files to a server. They loved it!)

There are twelve months ahead of you. Some will be positive and some a real bummer. By adding an annual New Year routine for your website, you’re improving your chances for the positive times. Go forth and conquer! And Happy New Year.

“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.