Issue #013- More Than Search and SEO Plus Usability

It's All About the Content

Does your copy sell? Or is it just there, filling the page? Karon Thackston's Step-by-Step Copywriting Course can help you hone your writing skills by giving you simple, easy-to-follow lessons on effective copywriting for the web.

Successful Website Marketing Needs More Than Great Search Listings

By Scottie Claiborne© 2005

Visit any webmaster forum, tutorial site, blog or seminar and you are likely to find dozens, if not hundreds of recommendations on how to optimize your site for search engines. Search traffic appears to be the Holy Grail, the answer to making an online business successful and the path to great riches.

I'm here to tell you, it ain't always so.

Pull Marketing and Demand

In order for search marketing to be an effective marketing strategy, people have to look for what you sell. This seems to be an obvious statement, but it's surprising how many business owners overlook this detail. They've heard the stories of people who've made fortunes once their site was listed at the top of the search engines; they might even have had a hard sell from an SEO who's convinced them that the #1 listing is the key to success. It seems clear to many that the way to get business is to be listed high in the search engines.

Unique Products Don't Drive Search Traffic

I recently advised a potential client who was confused as to why his site wasn't performing well. He had reached #1 for a dozen keywords (which he checked daily). He had his site professionally copy written by a top notch SEO copywriter. The pictures were appealing and the descriptions were great. He came to me as a last-ditch effort to find out what was wrong, assuming there must be a usability issue.

A quick glance at the site told me nothing was wrong. I did a webstats analysis for him and found that visitors were staying and exploring his site, returning 2 or 3 times, and conversions seemed to be very high as a percentage of traffic. I asked him specifically what his issues were with the site, and he said the sales just weren't meeting expectations.

I asked him about his marketing strategy. He told me about all their #1 listings in Google and Yahoo. I asked him about his other marketing efforts. There was silence at the other end of the line. He admitted they pinned all their marketing focus on search traffic.

This particular client sold special panels that turn your refrigerator into art.* They were hand painted and very clever; I'd say there is definitely a market for them in home décor. Based on the number of purchases he did get from visitors once they found his site, it was clear that visitors were enticed to buy. However, very few people were actually searching for "refrigerator art panels".

Online Push Marketing Creates Demand

Traditional marketing efforts are more of a "push" technique. They get their product in front of the target audience by placing it in front of them on a regular basis, through broadcast and print media as well as outdoor advertising, sponsorships, and public service.

It's even easier to do "push" marketing online because you can clearly target the people who might be interested in your products.

To return to the refrigerator-art example, we set up a marketing plan. We started out by writing some really descriptive press releases about the introduction of each new "style" and fanned those out over several months. The releases were practically feature articles in themselves and got picked up via newsfeeds on a wide number of home décor-related news and resource sites.

By following the links from those press release sites, we found sites that offered affordable online advertising through banner and text ads. We started campaigns on those sites and soon, qualified traffic was increasing.

Many of these sites had newsletters and blogs and were constantly looking for fresh ideas to pass on to their readers. Before long, several feature articles were written and archived about this neat idea. The key to it all was that the concept was introduced to a large number of people interested specifically in home décor, through opt-in newsletters and blogs.

NOW, people were searching for the phrases that had been optimized and all the effort into SEO, writing, and usability was paying off.

Great Search Terms, Low Sales

Conversely, I've worked with sites that have gone after that broader term of "kitchen décor ideas". Even though they only have a few specific items to sell, they target the broad terms and spend lots of money and time chasing those rankings. When they get the rankings and the traffic at great cost, they still don't get the sales.

They would have been more effective simply buying advertising on the site that already WAS at #1 for "kitchen décor ideas". And with the money they spent on optimization for the terms, they could have bought ads on the top 10 sites for "kitchen décor ideas". When the rankings changed, they could have easily switched their advertising to the new top sites; instead they scrambled to regain their footing in the listings.

Local Sites Need More Than Search

I've worked with local clients such as a "landscape designer in Portland, TN*" who wasn't likely to see search results from his efforts for a long time, simply because people weren't used to searching for those services locally yet. However, by integrating their website into their offline marketing, we were able to drive people to the site where they could learn more about the vendor, use specialized tools and forms to help them decide on what they needed, and even book an appointment online- all of which increased sales and decreased phone support time.

The more they marketed themselves offline, the more people in their area started to search for them. And there they were! Often, you have to create the buzz that stimulates the search traffic. But… the point isn't that people used search to find the site. The point is that business increased, costs decreased, and the search was simply the part of the marketing plan that enabled people to find the business once the demand had been created.

Fit the Strategy to the Site

There is so much more to online marketing than search optimization! While it is a critical tool in your box of strategies, it's only one tool and it may not be the most effective or efficient tool to use at the beginning of your marketing efforts.

Should your site be search-friendly and optimized for targeted keywords? YES. Absolutely. There is no reason not to have a search friendly site, and as demand grows for your products, you want people to be able to easily find you.

Should you spend your entire advertising budget on linking strategies? Probably not at first, unless you are in a field where the search traffic is high. Spending your time and money resources on linking is only effective when there is an existing demand for what you sell and you really do need to be on that first page of results.

Should you spend every day suffering over the minor changes in your search engine listings and tweaking the content, watching for spider visits? NO. Even if you do have a highly competitive market, tweaking for search engines on a regular basis is too much. Instead, spend your time creating new content or researching new alliances with sites that have complimentary products.

Should you spend your budget on links that send you qualified traffic and enhance your brand awareness? YES. Always. That is marketing that enhances your brand awareness, qualified traffic, AND helps with link popularity.

Sometimes Search Alone is Enough

For many businesses, being listed in the Yellow Pages is enough. They simply need the biggest and best ad, and business will follow. For many businesses, a listing in the search engines is also enough to drive the traffic needed to sustain the business. Sometimes it can even be more than the company can handle!

However, most businesses need to get out there in front of customers AND have a listing in the Yellow Pages/search engines. When you are determining your marketing budget, make sure to put your efforts into the strategies that will drive the most business, in the order that you need them. Sometimes, search is the last part of the equation instead of the first. Remember that marketing is an ongoing process and your strategy should be layered to reflect the growing awareness of your business.

*Client references have been changed to unrelated products and terms that still demonstrate the same concept.

Scottie Claiborne is the Web Marketing Strategist for The Karcher Group and the facilitator of the Successful Sites Newsletter. She is a speaker at the Search Engine Strategies conferences and the High Rankings Seminars as well as the administrator of the High Rankings Forum.

High Rankings Web Marketing Seminar- March 31-April 1, 2005

Learn all the aspects of web marketing that you need to know in this 2-day, hands-on seminar that includes practical work on your own site. You won't just learn theories, you'll learn how to implement them with consulting from the experts.
Featuring Jill Whalen, Debra O'Neill Mastaler, Christine Churchill, Karon Thackston, Matt Bailey, Dan Theis, and Scottie Claiborne.

Why Search Engine Marketing Has A Passion for Web Site Usability

Written by Kim Krause Berg © 2005

How different, I wonder, is this from finding something in search engines? You have ads on the sidelines and pages to push through while trying to get to your goal. If you happen to find something that looks like what you want, you click on it and race down the field in a blaze of glory, until you realize you’re lost. Worse, you were just sacked by a web page piled high with gobs of stuff and tiny text soldiers are jumping on your head.

It’s Not the Search Engines’ Fault

Believe it or not, search engines and user centered web design have a common goal. They want to provide the best experience for their web site visitor. Even better, they want that experience to be productive, satisfying and memorable.

For their part, search engine technology changes often as they find ways to better understand the subject of each web page. Not only that, they have a keen interest in how you think and how you search for things.

A user centered web site designer is thinking the same sweet thoughts on your behalf. They lie awake at night worrying about putting form fields in the proper order and placing links or call to action buttons in places where they’ll help someone with a task. They, like search engine developers, know you want specific, accurate information at the push of a button. You want it preferably without running around the site in circles. You want it now.

Enter Coach SEO

On the other hand, most web site owners want other things. They want sales, traffic, popularity, requests for quotes, newsletter signups, and number one rank in search engines. In the 1990’s there was this weird belief, based on a baseball movie, that if you build it, they will come. The rude awakening that other people built a web site, selling the same product, gave birth to search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO.

The job of an SEO professional is to make your web site easy for search engines to find it, add it to their database for retrieval, and make it appear near the top of search results pages by helping robots understand the topic of each page.

Initially this was simple, because there was less competition. Fewer people were using the Internet to buy cars and books. We weren’t so greedy either. In those days, a web site with 18 point glassy blue text in all caps against a wood-grain background with animated spinning logo was happily tolerated to learn how to get rich quick.

Therefore, the craft of making web pages rank well in search engines was the number one the goal, not making a web site that people would enjoy using.

Then Came the Human Factor

On the heels of SEO came search engine marketing (SEM). Search engines and directories permit paying for rank and keyword bidding. SEM tackles this marketing arm by guiding companies through the maze of options.

Competing industries determined to be number one in searches also created a technique that forced submitting web pages designed only for search engine robots and another version for people. Some SEO methods manipulate content intended for robots to make sense of - not people.

Of course, this wild web page bonanza was going to backfire, and it did. While some SEM companies promised rank guarantees, smart web site owners were noticing something peculiar was happening. People were leaving their web site as soon as they arrived. When you pay for every keyword click thru, and it’s not generating revenue in return, the accounting department notices.

Slowly, quietly and smartly, some SEO’s began to look for people in the usability industry to help them. Clients were unhappy with results that were not the SEO’s fault. They demanded financial figures to prove SEO would bring a return on their investment. What they didn’t understand was that though the SEO battled the war for that coveted spot, they had no control over the visitors’ journey afterwards. That’s up to the design team.

7thpixel.com (www.7thpixel.com) saw the light. “Practicing SEM without addressing usability issues is like buying ad space during the Super Bowl and then turning the lights off. It's hard to do business when your customers can't find what you're selling,” says company President, Gregg Banse.

Mirror Mirror…Who Has the Best Web Site of Them All?

Once upon a time, few people cared about search engine optimization and the web site visitor experience.

Then suddenly web sites stopped being online brochures. They started to do stuff, like let you choose the make, model, color and floor mats for your next car. Or, sell your living room couch or bid for Elvis records. Suddenly, Internet software applications are everywhere and they not only must function, but also be ready for use by a huge variety of people, including special needs customers.

Today’s top web design companies offer search engine optimization and marketing, as well as usability testing and skilled user centered design staff. They’re hired to construct a web site that achieves business requirements, while also surviving an uphill battle in search engines. Their usability specialist is a bonus for a client’s long term success because their input increases conversions. Pioneering user experience design skills include persuasive design, copywriting, information architecture, and creating an emotional connection with web site visitors. It’s not just about colors anymore.

7th Pixel provides SEO/SEM services, and they’ll bring in a usability specialist, “For our client's sake, “ adds Gregg. “Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we're too close to the project. A fresh pair of eyes without predisposition can help us evaluate and correct something we either overlooked or dismissed as inconsequential. That helps us provide a better product to our clients and that's good for business.”

Landing Pages

Another hot demand for user centered design that focuses on a specific task is “landing pages.” Not all Internet advertisements point to a home page. Today’s trend is to send the visitor to a page inside the web site that helps them achieve their task quickly and effectively.

For example, a college site is searchable by its name, or they may purchase a Google Ad intended to come up on a search for “college catalogs”. When the ad appears, instead of taking the visitor to the homepage, where they have to hunt for the course catalog and learn the web site, the “landing page” will take them directly to where they can download or order it. Even more, a user centered landing page will direct the visitor to other points of interest they may not have thought of, such as admission schedule dates, campus life highlights or adult night class options.

Christine Churchill, President of KeyRelevance, (www.keyrelevance.com) helps companies purchase keywords and ads, as well as create productive landing pages. She feels, "From my perspective usability and optimization are so intertwined I can't look at a site and not wear both hats. Improvements we make to help a user navigate the site also improve it for search engines. A search engine spider crawling the site is the ultimate usability test."

The Proof Is in the Profit

User testing and poor conversions drive some web site redesign projects, where the site is pulled back into the shop. Customer needs and business objectives are re-addressed. Matt Bailey, Web Marketing Director for The Karcher Group (www.thekarchergroup.com), describes a recent series of redesign projects.

"All were redesigned using usability principles and testing, all have experienced some crazy success in sales simply in going live with the new site - even before any rankings were touched."

Getting inside the mind of the searcher is something they do at Enquiro (www.enquiro.com/research.asp). This marketing firm performs “search behavioral research”. For them, it’s more than a matter of search engine positioning. They strive to understand their client’s business and their target market.

Studies such as these, and other usability research, raised the bar. Now that you have a web site visitor’s attention, how do you keep them on the web site until they accomplish what they came there for?

Scottie Claiborne, owner of Right Click Web Services, (www.rightclickwebs.com/) in her article, “SEO Without Usability -- An Exercise in Futility" (http://www.rightclickwebs.com/seo/seo-usability.php) wrote, “Search engine optimization is still in its infancy, and is a constantly changing discipline. As the search engines get better and better at rewarding the best/most complete sites, usability will become even more important.”

What it boils down to is making a web site useful. Online marketers, who understand that the key to their client’s success is a customer centered web site, won’t even start the game until everyone on the team is playing towards that goal.

Kim Krause is the Administrator for the Cre8asite Forum, author of the Cre8pc blog, and owner of Cre8pc Usability and Search Engine Optimization. She's a contributing writer for the High Rankings Newsletter, Search Engine Guide, ISEDB.com and WebProNews as well as other publications.

Wrap Up

New York, New York...

If I can make it there... I did make it there actually, and I was only 3 hours late! As I sat in DC's Dulles airport listening to all the northeast-bound flights getting cancelled, I just knew I was going to be spending the night in the airport. Luckily, we made it out before things got too bad, although I did miss the trip to see David Letterman's show taping. :-( My buddy Jill got to go and said it was a blast. Bug her for details on how to get in, if you are headed to NY anytime soon!

The conference was excellent. I think it was the highest-attendance SES to date. I know the site clinic I did with Mikkel De Mib Svendsen was packed and most of the sessions I attended were standing room only.

A big HELLO to those of you I met at the Karcher Group individual site clinic! Glad you could make it and I hope you got some practical advice out of it. I know we enjoyed doing it!

I certainly didn't expect to be visting Mars for dinner while in NYC. The trip to Mars was only $2, but I have to admit I was surprised that they mostly eat pizza and burgers on Mars..

Check out the conference pictures (including snaps of the interior of Mars) here: SES NYC 2005 Photos

High Rankings Seminar -Seattle

Spaces are filling up fast, since the conference is only 3 weeks away! (Goodness, I need to get a sitter lined up now!) Keep in mind that registration is limited to 40 participants to ensure that everyone gets personal attention.

We aren't just teaching theories, this seminar is designed to walk you through the process and give you real-world advice and strategies, using your own site (or a client site) as an example. The cost for two days is only $1125; you could spend that on consulting fees alone and still not understand what you need to do to help your site.

If you are in the Seattle area but not interested in attending the seminar, you can still join us for dinner at Ivar's Salmon House (401 NE Northlake Way) on March 31st at 6:30 PM. We'd love to meet you!

No Follow Tag

Be on the lookout for my article on the nofollow tag in this weeks' High Rankings Advisor. If you are considering adding it to your pages, you need to ask why you need it. I'll be reporting on what the search engine reps related about the tag and adding my own logic.

See you next edition! -Scottie

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