SEO - Does it Wreck the Customer Experience?

At the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference held earlier this month, two themes were repeated in various ways by different panels of speakers that I felt were strong messages to keep in mind. The first item is understanding that search engines sincerely want your content. This is not an excuse to manipulate them. Rather, the message was simple. Clearly state on every page the topic or theme, and the search engines can take it from there. Even if your page has FLASH components, images, or JavaScript, there remain a number of options available for getting usable, descriptive content onto a web page. The second message I came away with comes from the world of Podcasting; specifically, optimizing videos and radio shows for search engines. What the experienced panelists were hoping to get across is that there's no reason to ignore the value of search with the new media formats. Rather, convert them to text. For example, transcripts. Every show should be transcribed into text. Every video title should be descriptive. Instead of "December 12 Session #412″, make it "Interview with [insert name] on [insert theme] dated [insert date]." Add a descriptive meta description, on page text summary and appropriate title tag and you have a page search engines and people will understand, that links to your program. This is basic stuff. What if you want to persuade, sell, inform, drive traffic and otherwise lure in someone with that page they've found in the search engine? Could you possibly be chasing them away and not realize it? Are basic on-page optimization techniques enough nowadays? Why are so many people still not finding what they want in everyday searches? What's wrong? New Book Due January 2007 Search analytics tell a story about how your website is being found and perceived. Can you use this data to improve the customer experience? How can search assist with this? There is a new book forthcoming that may help answer some of these questions. It's called

"Search queries are gold: they are real data that show us exactly what users are searching for in their own words. This book shows you how to use search analytics to carry on a conversation with your customers: listen to and understand their needs, and improve your content, navigation and search performance to meet those needs."