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. ☯
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October 12th, 2006 at 4:19 pmAbsolutely right you are on all fronts. Search technology is becoming increasingly more sophisticated in response to those attempting to “game” the technology for artifical placement. What I would reiterate from the SIGIA thread is that the best place for SEO is at the outset of any Web project, not the end. Search Optimization is about “aboutness” and the clearer that message can be in the code, in the content, in the association through linking, the better. In order to achieve this, the site owners should be clear on what their message is early on so that it can be woven into the site itself. I believe that this is an exciting time for Information Architecture, Interaction Design, and Search Optimization as the technology is now looking closely at site structure, content aboutness, and honest associations to direct users to the information that they want and need.
October 14th, 2006 at 6:49 amA hot topic in my world is online copy writing. Content writers need to possess skills beyond the creative/brand part, SEO for example. My opinion is to look for a writers who know how to write in a traditional sense but also understand SEO, understand Experience Design, understand HTML and understand how to work within a CMS. Other believe it’s a process where different people perform different tasks. Thoughts?
October 16th, 2006 at 1:30 pmMy general feeling is that small teams made of highly skilled all-arounders trump highly specialized (and therefore segmented) teams. Think visually, of each person’s skill set as a capital ‘T’. Super deep skills in one area, with solid knowledge across a broad scope of other disciplines.
With that in mind, a good interaction designer should also be skilled at writing copy (see above), and understand how the stuff s/he is designing works. Engineers should have a good interaction design sense. Designers should be able to talk shop with developers to a certain level. And writers should have a good grasp of SEO, metrics-driven projects, etc.
The recipe for any team also depends on the type of work you’re doing. Content-heavy sites probably need a different set of people than a web-based application development shop.
October 16th, 2006 at 6:30 pm