What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability
In an effort to differentiate themselves from competitors, many SEO/SEM firms come up with interesting unique selling propositions (USPs). Some SEO/SEM firms emphasize search engine advertising and create quite useful tools to help manage PPC campaigns. Some SEO firms specialize in training, again creating tools that help newbie and experienced SEO professionals optimize existing Web pages. For the past two to three years, I have been watching SEO/SEM firms increasingly focus on the user, specifically offering website usability services.
Although I laud the evolution of SEO/SEM firms to increasingly focus on the user, I admit that I find some of their conclusions and methodologies rather troubling. Recently, I worked with a company who was happy with their SEO firm, but when they showed me the heuristic analysis? I was dumbfounded. The SEO firm actually told this company to remove the primary call to action on product pages because it interfered with keyword density. There were countless other mistakes in the heuristic analysis, and it is that report that inspired me to write this article.
Website usability and user-friendly design are certainly great terms to use during the sales process. However, do SEO professionals really "get" website usability, and is it a benefit for website owners to hire such firms to promote their company or organization sites in the commercial web search engines?
Rather than give my personal opinion, for this two-part article, I decided to ask some of my well-known colleagues about the usability industry’s opinion of search engine optimization. My question to them was a simple one, "What should SEO professionals know about usability?" I hope both website owners and SEO professionals take their answers to heart. Enjoy.
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