The SEO Dangers of Website Re-Design: Enquiro Retro Post

We have been getting a lot of questions about website redesigns lately.  Specifically as a site re-design relates to SEO and improving website usability with a website re-design.  Many people are unaware of the "dangers" that you can place on your website when performing a site re-design that is not planned out.  You must be aware of potential SEO issues when you plan a website re-design.  As a result of the numerous questions that we have received recently, we have decided to visit our vaults for past articles that we have written that address issues with website re-designs and the impact that they have on SEO.  For instance, take this piece written by former Enquiro team member Brenda Wright.  

• Does not ask you about your business
• Does not ask you any questions about your Search Engine Marketing and Optimization programs
• Begins the new design without discussing with you the goal of your website
• Begins the new design without discussing with you who your target audience is
• Puts visual impact ahead of the usability of the web site
• Recommends a Splash entry page (Search Engines cannot normally ‘see’ Splash pages. This is a dated feature that tends to put off site visitors – who will often simply leave the page (and the website) before it has had a chance to load)
• Recommends your entire site be in Flash (Search Engines cannot ‘see’ Flash pages)
• Recommends putting your site in Frames (Search Engines have great difficulty ‘seeing’ Frames pages – there are workarounds for using Frames but they are a costly retro-fit. A good designer will recommend using tables rather than Frames if you have your heart set on a Frames look)
• Does not realize that the <title>, <meta name="description">, and <meta name="keywords"> tags should be different on every page

• How to optimize a website for Search Engines,
• How to design a website that will be user friendly for your target customers, and
• What you want to achieve with your website.

Every site owner and Webmaster has either contemplated or participated in a website redesign at some time in the history of their sites. Unfortunately the vast majority do not factor in the search engines and SEO when completing their website redesign. How many times have we seen people come to us after they have performed a site redesign only to see their search engine rankings tank? If I had a dollar for every time this has happened…

• The needs of your target audience
• The hierarchy of your site content (sub-folders vs. sub-domains)
• Your URL structure
• The transition of your existing content to new pages / Page Redirection
• Your current external link inventory
• Maintaining/Transferring of your existing titles and meta data
• Future Scalability
• CMS Compatibility
• A/B testing of Landing Pages / Calls to Action
• Interlinking of Site Pages
• Legacy Issues
• Cost of the Website Redesign
• Timing of the Website Redesign
• Time it takes to complete the redesign

1. Don’t Implement a Site Redesign for the sake of having a redesign – Anytime you perform a redesign of your site, you run the risk of losing existing rankings in the search results. Why jeopardize your rankings if you don’t have to.
2. Identify the Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Existing Site – which areas does your website perform well in? Which areas need improvement?
3. Define Your SEO Needs – Do you need to improve your URL structure? Do you need to improve site navigation? Identifying your SEO needs will help with the planning on your website redesign.
4. Pay Attention to Existing Rankings – be sure that you understand which pages are currently ranking well in the search engines. You can greatly minimize the risk of a drop in rankings by understanding which site pages are performing well in the search engines.
5. Identify Your Top Referring Pages – prior to redesign your website, you should determine which site pages drive the most traffic. Of course you will want to ensure that these pages remain somewhat intact during your website redesign.

A while back we had a series of posts regarding key performance indicators as they pertain to various types of sites.  These sites ranged from lead gen sites to content based sites to e-commerce based sites.  We identified a number of key performance indicators including:

• Average Page Views: the number of pages the visitor visited can indicate the strength of your visitor's connection to the information you provide
• Percent Returning Visitors: percentage of retained visitors returning to your site
• Cancellations: the likelihood your subscriber cancels their subscription through an unsubscribe form
• Average subscription length
  
• Active subscriber base (based on different time weekly, monthly, etc depending on model)
• Visits per month (or quarter or week).
• RSS Syndication
  
• Blog Stats: (ie. Technorati, Digg etc)
• New account sign-ups
• Contact Us form completions
• Number of PDF or brochure downloads
• Article views
• Press Release Views
• Case Study downloads
• Online Sales
• News Letter Signups
• Page Views
• Returning Visitors

Fast forward 18 months and today the talk is about Web 2.0.  The question becomes are the same key performance indicators that we identified then still going to be important with Web 2.0?  Or are there any new metrics that you should be using to measure your online success?

For the most part, many of the KPIs that we identified will still be applicable and useful when measuring your online goals.  However KPIs that relate to items such as site stickness, time spent on site and page views become even more important.  As the search engines move to personalized search and incorporate things like Google's Universal Search, measuring your online success will mean identifying new metrics to measure and track your online goals.  Here are a few other metrics that you may want to consider when measuring your online success in the Web 2.0 World.

Web 2.0 may mean some new KPIs are incorporated into your metrics.  Things such as:

• number of times your widget has been embedded on a visitor's site
• number of users who have joined your online community
• number of users who have subscribed to your blogs' feed
• number of positive listings for your brand in the search results pages (think online reputation management)
• number of positive user ratings that your videos have received

Of course there are many others to consider, but the point is that to measure your online success, it's not going to just be about on-site conversions (although ultimately that is what you may be striving for) it's going to involve tracking a number of metrics specific to user activity on your site.  The consumer is the one who will ultimately determine the success of your site.  Understand your user and identifying the proper key performance indicators is a great step in achieving online success.

Website usability is all about user engagement.  It's about interception points and understanding your users.  For years now webmasters and site owners have been using metrics such as path analysis to track user interaction on their sites.  So what happens when you determine that user engagement on your website needs improvement?  How can you improve website usability on your website?

There are some fundamentals that webmasters and site owners need to consider when looking to improve their website usability.  First (and probably the most important) is to always keep it simple.  Those who have a design background don't always follow this rule and it shows when you look at a number of poorly designed websites out there.  With website usability, simple is better.  Simplicity is and always will be a better way to entice better user engagement than say complex, dynamic sites.  When it comes to having more features and bells and whistles on your site, vs. keeping the site simple, I am in complete agreement with Jakob Nielsen, lean towards simplicity.

Seven Simple Steps to Improve Website Usability

1. Understand the current level of engagement - you may want to consider conducting some eye tracking studies to see how users currently interact with your site.  Why do they click on one link vs. another?  Are they even noticing your conversion triggers?  Why are they ignoring an image vs. reading the text copy on the page.  Eye tracking can be a tremendous tool in understanding the user's behavior on your website.

2. Provide informative, relevant and quality content - to improve user engagement, be sure to feature content on your site that users cannot find anywhere else.  Try to display the content in the language of your user.  Using corporate jargon and marketing buzzwords is not necessarily what your users are looking for.
3. Simplify your site navigation - make the site easy for people to use.  There is nothing worse than a homepage that is so busy that the user doesn't know where to begin.  How do you expect them to find what they are looking for if you are bombarding them with images, flash, advertising, lengthily paragraphs and a whack of features that do not speak to the user?  Again simplicity is the key.  If you have to show users how to use your site, chances are you have a problem with website usability.
4. Offer a unique experience - try offering content found no where else on the Web.  Speak to the user by using their language.  Offering a unique experience and changing the perception of the user so that they feel satisfied with a "unique" experience can go a long way in generating repeat visits.  At bare minimum offer a unique experience over that of your competition.
5. Provide clear value on the homepage - don't confuse the user as to the value of your site as it relates to your product or service offering.  Understand the needs of your user and communicate the value that your product/service provides to address the user's needs.  The value proposition needs to be clearly conveyed on your homepage.
6. Personalize your website - offer widgets or other tools that help increase user engagement.  Keep the user wanting to come back to update their personalized features by providing new "add-ons" on a regular basis.  Think of a painter that goes into a hardware store to buy paint.  If the staff that serves the painter can provide a personalized experience, the painter will be more likely to come back and not only purchase more paint but purchase their paint brushes, cleaners, and additional paint supplies from them again.
7. Give the user something to come back (to your site) for - With the success George Lucas had with the release of Star Wars, fans flocked to see the next release of Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and later the three Prequel episodes. While webmasters can only dream of such success, there is something to be said for releasing updated content, new blog posts, new podcasts. Controlling supply and demand for your content can be a great way to improve return visits and use of your site.

Website usability should be part of a continuous improvement process that involves mapping out the intent of your users.  Gathering data from your users about what they’re doing today will help you understand what they’ll need tomorrow.  Ensuring that your website addresses the needs of your user can determine how successful you will be today and how successful you can be tomorrow.

• Acquisition costs are rising and conversion rates are decreasing
• The power switch from Push to Pull Marketing
• The change from mass marketing to personalized marketing

There are so many factors to consider when behaviorally targeting users - so which ones should you consider? The factors and metrics are completely site specific, however below are a few factors that you should consider when developing profiles for your various visitor segments:

• Referring Sites
• Referring Keywords
• Internal Search Queries
• Pages Viewed (type/category of content)
• Preferred method of communication: Email vs. Phone vs. Webinar
• Purchase Patterns based on seasonality
• Demographics: Age, Sex, Education, House Hold Income, Marital Status
• Recency
• Frequency
• Products added to cart
• Time Zone
• Time of Day on website
• Offline Influencers: TV/Radio/Magazines

Here is an excellent example of how you can leverage on-site behavioral targeting for your website, let me paint a little picture for you: Your organization operates a travel website where you can research/book cruises, hotels, and trips to various tropical locations.  Besides textual content, users can watch videos, subscribe to your newsletter and get the daily weather report via podcasts. 

Now Imagine being able to offer customized web experiences to all of your users.  For instance, you know that 'Jonathan Bowers' spends a lot of time on cruises to Hawaii, he often does his research in late November, he uses your site search tool for finding out more information about pricing, his preferred method of communication is by email and from his online profile you know he is married, has 2 kids, makes 200K/year and lives in Portland Oregon.  As soon as Jonathan signs into his profile in November you show him family cruise deals to Hawaii and business class flights from Portland.  You offer Jonathan a personalized experience and now is more likely to book a vacation using your website.

The scenario above is an optimal situation however personalized experiences can still be offered based on the content visitors view, content which they neglect, products they add to their shopping carts, and seasonality.  Web Analytics plays a big role in behavioral targeting because it allows you to cookie your visitors so you can track their trends/patterns on your website.

Resources for Behavioral/On Site Targeting:

- Omniture TouchClarity
- WebTrends Marketing Lab 2
- BlueLithium - Anil Batra: Behavioral Targeting 101
- Kefta
- Clickz: Target Behavior on the Site Level
- Avinash Kaushik: The Promise & Challenge of Behavior Targeting (& Two Prerequisites)
- Offermatica

As with any reputation issue, there are numerous factors that can affect your online reputation. External factors on your business as a result of rumors or gossip can have a negative impact on your online visibility. Here is a look at some of the most common factors that can affect your online reputation.Factors Affecting Your Online Reputation

Questionable Business Operations - This is where corporate activity adversely impacts on stakeholder groups. Examples include the Enron dilemma and more recently the World Wrestling Entertainment having to defend themselves against allegations that the use of steroids is rampant with their performers in the wake of the Chris Benoit murder suicide. From a PR disaster viewpoint, in Enron's case they were unable to recover resulting in the downfall of the company.

Corporate Moves - With things such as acquisitions, mergers or takeovers, there's plenty of room for dissatisfaction and even scandal, such as when a jury found Martha Stewart guilty on all four counts of obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a well-timed stock sale. Other examples of corporate downfalls include the Bre-X scandal when in 1997, Bre-X collapsed and its shares became worthless in one of the biggest stock scandals in Canadian history, and the biggest mining scandal of all time.

Legalities / Court Proceedings - When issues are debated in court, then reported in the media - such as the much publicized McDonald's 'McLibel' case, the potential for PR disasters can be enormous. Many labeled the McDonald's libel case as 'the world's biggest corporate PR disaster'.

Rumors - Gossip can be highly damaging for brand reputation. For years Procter & Gamble were linked to rumours of Satanism. The rumours started in part by a competitor plagued the company for decades forcing an international logo redesign and extensive reputation management and damage control efforts.Staff - the story of two former Walmart executives—Julie Roehm and Sean Womack—accused of engaging in an affair while hunting for new ad agencies for the retail giant. Another well publicized PR blunder involving staff took place in 2001 when New York's Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11, staff at one of the city's Starbucks charged rescue workers for bottled water they needed to treat victims of the attack. When word got out 'virally' about this incident, the PR fallout was highly damaging.

Scandal - Financial, sexual or personal exploits generally capture the media's attention, such as when Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was recently found to be involved with a dog fighting ring. After the media caught wind of the story, Vick's lucrative sponsorship deals (Nike, Reebok) and image of rags-to-riches became jeopardized.

Reputation disasters can emerge from almost any area including your business dealings or from the private lives of employees. These reputation mishaps can be difficult to predict, prevent or recover from. Offline PR blunders can affect your online visibility. The factors listed above are but a few factors that can affect your online reputation.

To recap, Universal Search is a term coined by Google in which results from different vertical search engines (images, video, news etc…) are integrated into Google's regular search results.  The idea is that textual listings may not necessarily be the most relevant result for a user's query.

But when will these different search results show up? For example, what causes a video of a scene from Star Wars to appear within the organic search results for the query: "Darth Vader." Obviously it has to do with Google's sophisticated algorithms which can correlate the right content to a user's query, however here are some factors that I think can help influence the Universal Search results:

1. Number of Searches per Individual Search Silo - This theory is based on shear volume for a given query on a given vertical search engine. For instance if the query "scenic mountains" has a high number of searches within the image search, perhaps this influences the top images to appear within Universal search for the same query.  
2. Performance through ratings and views - This applies mostly to Video Search because on YouTube and Google Video both ratings and the number of views are kept track of. Could the ratings/views affect the appearance of videos with Universal Search?
3. Clicks per listing - Google applies this same type of algorithm on both AdWords and organic search results therefore it's something that can help Google gauge the relevance of non-text based results.
4. Time Spent - With the Google Toolbar installed on so many users' computers as well Google Analytics installed on so many websites, Google can start to understand how engaged users are with a website (after a user clicked on a listing) by measuring time spent.
5. Return Visits - If a user clicks on a result listing, visits a website/image/news listing, returns immediately and clicks on another listing and continues this cycle, will Google start decreasing the quality of the websites/image/news listings that were selected?
6. Usability - While at Searchology I found out that Google performs rigorous usability testing using eye tracking to further understand users' search behavior and reactions to different types of search results.

How Can You Leverage Universal Search?

Universal Search requires a wide-range content strategy in addition to simply text.  Here are some tactics worth looking into in terms of Universal Search:

• When using images in your web pages consider adding related keywords to both the name of the image (filename - ie: imagename.jpg) and the alt text
• When uploading videos to YouTube and Google video take full advantage of adding a full description about your video.
• Promote your uploaded videos on your blog or through press releases.  The higher your ratings and the number of views, the more authoritative your video.
• Apply to be a Google News Source. If this doesn't work, submit your latest content to sites which are Google News Sources.
• Keep visitors on your site longer by adding enticing content which compares competitors, offers pricing and gives them something tangible to take away (whitepapers, data sheets).

Original Post: Web Analytics World

Marketing matches the benefits of my product with the needs of my customer.  The question is: who is my customer?  What is her role in her company, what are her professional aspirations, how does she communicate with others in the company and what kind of a problem solver is she?  The better I can answer these and other related questions, the more successful I will be at developing my product and showing her how its benefits can meet her needs.

One of the most memorable exercises I undertake with my marketing students, usually in the very first lecture, involves several pairs of scissors, a pile of colorful newspapers, and a healthy portion of imagination.  Half of the students are instructed to cut out ads, define the product or service offering and its benefits.  The other group goes about finding pictures of interesting people and pastes those images next to a vivid description of what they imagine that person to be.  The more detail, the better.  And it always certainly includes a name and a face.

Picture a Persona

Derived from the Latin word for "mask" or "character", persona refers to a fictitious description of a person.  The development of personas for marketing purposes is relatively wide spread according to a 2006 research paper by MarketingSherpa.  For example, it states that 40% of business technology hardware marketers use personas for their marketing.  Best Buy went through it to improve its in-store experience, and SAP did the same while designing its call center software.  How these companies create personas and communicate their identities internally varies, but the results are the same: they are better able to understand abstract customer data if they can picture it, and picture it with a face.  Humans empathize with humans.  And we tend to think in pictures.

Pareto Principle and Marketing to Personas

Can we justify marketing to just one or two personas when we know our customer base is made up of a large variety of persons?  Are we excluding the rest, or even prejudging our customers before we meet them?

Focus is the key, and the Pareto Principle can be used as justification.  Named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, it states that 20% of our effort will likely result in 80% of our rewards, i.e. 80% of sales will come from 20% of our clients.  The better we understand the top 2 of our 10 client types, the more successfully we can market to them.  

The walls are coming crashing down at Google. They're in the middle of tearing down silos and aggregating content. But that aggregation will likely come with a very unique viewpoint some day: yours.

Last week at Searchology (an event I couldn't attend, due to a conflict) Google unveiled universal search, along with a few other assorted tidbits. David Berkowitz covered this in Tuesday's Search Insider, so forgive me if some of this is redundant, but I think we're covering unique ground in our approaches.

Mixing up Google's Buckets

The key for universal search? Results that come from a number of different sources: the web, blogs, video, news, images, maps, local, product, to name a few, all presented on the same results page. And yes, ads. Because, in the words of Marissa Mayer, "sometimes an ad is the right answer". So, in effect, Google is no longer a search engine. It's an "idea portal", aggregated from Google's vast web reach around a specific query, on the fly and brought together for the user. And Google, in its infinite wisdom, will apply a universal ranking algorithm across disparate content to pull what it feels is the most relevant to the top of the page.

Universal search, in one fell swoop, makes the idea of vertical search irrelevant, because Google is making it all horizontal. They'll assemble a smorgasbord of content from their various buckets, prepared right in front of your eyes in 0.23 seconds.

Does One Score Fit All?

But here's the challenge. The task of applying a content agnostic relevancy score is daunting, and according to Google, it's the reason they're only now introducing universal search, after a number of years in the lab. In fact, it's so daunting, you'll probably only see other types of content creep onto your results page in the most obvious of cases. For example, a search for a specific video that's suddenly very hot will bring back the video clip near the top. For most searches, the net impact of vertical search will be the appearance of some additional links to other vertical "buckets" near the top of the results set. Like most things that can impact the user experience, Google is treading carefully here.

Just Add Two Dashes of Personalization

So why bother? Because universal search becomes much more interesting when you combine it with personalization. In a recent interview I did with Marissa Mayer, she said she didn't see a strong vertical angle for personalization in the near future. I can't help but think that personalization will drive universal search. In fact, I don't think universal search works very well without personalization. In both cases, we're looking at an on-the-fly algorithm that works over and above the base Google algorithm, reordering results for you. Google will be able to be more confident in offering a much richer and more diverse set of universal results when you can tap into previous search and web history. It will give them a lot more background to help them put context around your query. With personalization, every search becomes your customized portal, centered on what's on the top of your mind right now. And that's pretty interesting, both for the user and the advertiser.

And One Cup of Assorted Advertising

Obviously, Google's mind is straying down this path as well, because at Searchology, Marissa did a pretty intense back pedal from her previous position that display or rich media ads would never appear on the search results page. The official position is now: "potentially..possibly..probably". Google's statements used to be much more unequivocal, but lately, they're sounding much less adamant and much more political. No door shall remain unopened, even if it's just a crack, because chances are, Google may have to squeeze through it in the future.

Increasingly, the puzzle pieces of Google's empire are falling into place. When you take personalization, universal search, enhanced ad serving capabilities and outreach into the most popular web communities and bring them together, you start to see a pretty compelling network emerge, and it's all centered on the user, one user at a time.
 

Being as most of the Search Insiders are in Bonita Springs this week, chances are that you'll be hearing a lot of what’s happening down here in the Florida Everglades (other than the brush fires which appear to have us surrounded). Aaron Goldman shared his Buzz-o-meter with us on Tuesday, where he measures the words that seem to be dropped with the greatest frequency. It appears that my opening remarks set a tone that has been picked up in a number of sessions, and two words breaking into the top 10 are Connection and Community. He added a third C: Content.

Search Engines Go Under the Hood

To me, they sum up a transition that’s happening in search. Expect the activity of searching on a search engine to gradually disappear, to be replaced with the functionality of search as an underpinning to the workings of many things on the web. Search will become the engine that drives the semantic web, which Esther Dyson talked about in her keynote. She’s looking for search to move beyond "search and fetch" to her ideal, "deliver, act and transact". Search will be the connector between what we want and what best matches our want out there on the web. And rather than a singular task (i.e. go look for this query) it will become a self guided series of tasks, with intelligent agents in between to set search on its new direction. An entire trip, include flight reservations, hotel bookings, ground transportation, notifications of friends in the area and restaurant reservations could all be handled by intelligent web agents, powered by search. And as came up in a panel discussion with the Search Insiders, when the presentation of commercial messaging appears in this context, it’s not advertising, it's a helpful recommendation.

The piece that drives this is personalization, and that's why Google’s moves are potentially so important. They take us much closer to the semantic web that Dyson envisions. This is the first C:

Connections.Redefining Community

The other C speaks to the very transformation of our society: Community. The way we relate to each other is being totally rewired by the internet. By sheer physical necessity, communities have previously been defined by geography. We shared a common space, which enable communication, which created community. But today, the internet has made physical distance irrelevant. Our communities are now defined by commonly held ideas or interests. Communities form around ideas, and search connects us to those communities. Every time we do online research for a product or service, we step into a community. In the course of a day, we can belong to several different communities. They are constantly shifting, as people move in and out of them, depending on the longevity of the engagement with the idea that forms the community.

Content Trails

And a third C, content, is the trail that the other members of that community leave behind
through their conversations. These are the telltale signs that someone has already gone this way, and left a permanent record of their engagement with the community. Every Wikipedia
entry is part of a community, as are many MySpace pages, blog posts and other virtual
outposts. Search is the thread that loops them together at the user’s initiative. In fact, the algorithm of the engine is the de facto definer of community with each given search. The
engine goes out, defines the landscape of community, and connects you with the citizens of
that community and the content trails they leave behind.

It's a fascinating world, which is being born as we speak. It's a sociological experiment of vast magnitude in the making, and, I don’t think we know what the repercussions will be. Whatever they are, it’s too late to turn back now. Technology moves fast, but people move slowly, and not in one mass. Small degrees of technological change can create seismic shifts in the sociological landscape. And we’re subjecting ourselves to a degree of technological change unparalleled in history. Who knows what we've unleashed?