Blogger tells me that my email address does not exist. The truth of the matter is that I simply entered my password incorrectly.
It continues to amaze me that after 12 years (or more) of entering user names and passwords online, designers still can’t get this simple interaction, and its simple error cases, down pat.
Search Engine Optimization and User Experience are topics that come up in my work life on a daily basis, and most often in the context of being at odds with one another. At times the argument even seems to be an extension of the silly age old Designer vs. The World hairball. Not only are user experience and SEO not enemies, but when used in conjunction and done with taste and skill, the result can be a better overall user experience.
Someone asked recently on the SIG-IA list:
Subject: SEO versus Experience design versus usability
I have a client who has read a lot about search engine optimization, which I am poor at. So he resists any type of solution I put forth in terms of usability and experience design. He is just concerned about the number of his links and such… I was wondering if any of you masters can give me an advice about how to match the optimization and usability/experience design.
I’m no SEO master, but I do work with good friends in high SEO places, and here is my report. (By the way, many of the things you are about to read are direct quotations from folks who wish to remain anonymous.)
For starters, let me reiterate that SEO and The Good User Experience™ are not mutually exclusive. Sure, we’ve all seen the examples of hidden FREE SEX HORNY BABES DUDES keywords hidden in sites that result in temporary traffic spikes; we all know the link farm style pages that are too long and unusable, but the reality is such tactics aren’t really honest, ethical or sustainable.
Honest SEO is the way to go.
Top SEO is acquired by getting real and valuable links - not givng them. How do you obtain links from other sites? Provide unique and valuable content coupled with a quality experience, that’s how!
SEO should happen behind the scenes.
I constantly fight this battle with my friendly coworkers and clients. My stance is that a user shouldn’t ever have to arrive on a page that looks like a link farm… even down at the bottom of the page. There’s simply no need for it if the content you are providing is truly valuable to people. Here are some high-impact low-effort ways to increase SEO without diluting the experience:
Use that meta tag!
Describe the page for crying out loud! Search engines might not care about meta tags but they sure will display them. A good description in the title tag and a good meta tag description looks sweet and sets your users’ expectations of what they’ll get from you compared to the other jokers in the search results. The result for you? More traffic. And if your content is actually useful, a return customer.
Site Maps:
This is the nod to the robots and spiders. Just hide it away. Google has a special format that I’m not going to bother explaining here. Frankly, I don’t care because that’s what developers do. 
Write clean code:
Don’t let your hack job developer write any page-busting JavaScript, tuck non-essential images away in CSS, and so on. Working with good developers is such a pleasure; and a necessity!
You need to learn how to write
This goes beyond writing code, and as I write it, I feel ridiculous: just keep in mind what you want the user to do on your site.
Do you want someone to read content? Contribute recipes? Spend some dough on music or video games? Sign up? Buy fishing lures? Here is one example from an aforementioned SEO master friend:
“On my own site I have people searching for ‘Buy *some game title*‘ or ‘Get Activation Code for *some game title* ‘ or ‘Unlock *some game title* ‘. Based on that search behavior, I wrote descriptive text something like “Buy Now and Get an Activation Code to Unlock Full Game”… which allowed that to show up in searches for those terms. These days, each one of those searches usually results in a purchase.”
Another easy example I can cite is Flickr. No person in their right mind could argue that Flickr’s user experience is overloaded with SEO garbage; Flickr’s experience is quite fantastic, in fact. And yet, I can search Google for ‘Rivendell Rambouillet‘, which is the type of bicycle I ride, and Flickr photos of my Rivendell show up on the first page of Google’s results.
Let me say it again, LEARN HOW TO WRITE. Copywriting for the web is user experience design; copywriting for the web is also user interface design. If anyone tries to tell you differently, well, they’re wrong.
Much of what my friends and I discussed, and what I’ve reported here has to do with mining the torso and tail of whatever curve it is you’re on. The head, with regards to search engine optimization, is determined by the quality and uniqueness of the content and the stickiness of your product for your user base (or your potential user base) rather than any technical trickery. If you want to be a permanent member of The Head Club, make something useful.
So the next time someone on your team brings up the dichotomy of SEO and User Experience, hopefully I have given you enough ammo to teach others that the two can, in fact, live in peace; and that when done well, user experience can in fact be better with SEO than without SEO. ☯
IDEA 2006, at least in theory, may be the most interesting, useful and innovative conference for Interaction Designers to date. Organized by my colleague from years long gone by, Peter Merholz, IDEA promises to be a thought fest stuffed with presenters from a colorful array of backgrounds. Here is how IDEA opens its web site:
IDEA 2006 brings together a diverse set of designers, creators, and researchers addressing a fundamental challenge we’re facing today - how to let everyday people take true advantage of the overwhelming mass of information that floods their lives.
There are currently many different kinds of folks working in this space, but they typically don’t talk with one another. For this event, we’ve made an effort to invite presenters across a stunning array of disciplines - museum design, information visualization, librarians, environmental design, user research, engineering, interaction design, product strategy, and more.
It’s important to recognize that this is not airy-fairy theoretical stuff. These presenters are practitioners, people actually doing this cross-channel, cross-media work with complex information. A primary goal of this conference is to give you the confidence to cross boundaries and engage with a wide range of problems.
Any time a leader from the United States National Park Service Interpretive Design Center is going to share information about why their materials and experiences are so tightly integrated, I’m all ears. There will be speakers from the BBC, the Seattle Library, Maya Design, and more; Linda Stone and Bruce Sterling are presenting.
Oh, and to top it off, the conference is happening at the new Seattle Library; the ultimate in neoarchitecture information space geekery! Will I see you there?
I have to point you to this ABC.com video coverage of Yahoo! Trip Planner. Too cool. Of all the press we’ve received since releasing Trip Planner, I feel like the ABC piece is the most articulate - without talking about features.
It is no secret that Yahoos are involved with regularly occurring Hack Days. When I first started at the company, I participated in a Y! Travel Hack Day - yes, we designers (and all team members) are just as involved in designing the hacks as the engineers that code them. The hack that came from my first Hack Day endeavor was a Yahoo! Widget (a.k.a. Konfabulator widget) for FareChase.
My team of three spent about three hours designing it, four or five hours coding it, and that was that… we thought. Not bad for a day’s work.
The hack was passed around to various people in the company, and it quickly snowballed into a request for a real, living breathing widget. So after six months of politicking, red tape, tweaking, and backend engineering, Yahoo! released the FareChase widget Version 1.0.1a without much fanfare on July 8. We have had a couple thousand downloads at this point, and would love your feedback!
What does it do? The Widget finds the lowest air prices from dozens of travel sites for you and brings them right to your desktop. Hey, we are a lazy bunch, and prefer things to come to us - and now you can benefit from our laziness as well!