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 ranking and advertising to 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.

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? Below are the opinions from a well-known SEO’s about “What should SEO professionals know about usability?”

Usability testing and SEO

“The word usability serves as a boundary object that invites diverse communities of practice to share experiences and negotiate solutions,” said Peter Morville, President of Semantic Studios and author of the renowned books, Information Architecture for the WWW and Ambient Findability. “For instance, as an information architect who consults with major corporations, it’s vital for me to understand usability heuristics and perform usability tests, but it’s equally essential that I go beyond usability.”

Heuristic analysis and SEO

The goal of a heuristic evaluation is to usability problems early in the design of a Web site so that improvements can be made as part of the iterative design process (Source: http://www.usability.gov/methods/heuristiceval.html). Though Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich came up with some outstanding guidelines in the early 90s, their research and others’ continues to evolve, as web site usability is an iterative process.

Conclusion

Both website usability and SEO/SEM are iterative processes, meaning that methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a work in progress (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterative_design). At the heart of iterative design is the objective observation of interaction between users and an interface: not focus groups, not web analytics, and not an SEO professionals’ personal opinion about website usability.

[via Searchengineland] Shari Thurow is the Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactive and the author of the book Search Engine Visibility.