Community Discussion: UX & SEO – Your experience?

[FeliciaCrawford]

We've been looking at the relationship between SEO & UX a bit more closely lately on the blog. Our good pal Cyrus started the wheels turning with a tweet: https://twitter.com/CyrusShepard/status/748296076411625473

...and that morphed into a Whiteboard Friday idea, which was filmed and posted here: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/ux-vs-seo-whiteboard-friday

We shared the story of one site that enjoyed rapid growth and that subsequently battled with managing that UX/SEO relationship on Thursday.

And it's hard, right? UX and SEO teams often operate independently of one another, and may make decisions that affect one another's work. Sometimes it's a "hindsight is 20/20" situation. Sometimes the answer is so radical and impactful that you may want to settle for a "safe" alternative.

I'd imagine many of you have encountered some big issues with user experience and search optimization in your day-to-day over the years. What's the most difficult situation you've encountered with this? How did you resolve it? (I'd bet money on there being some really creative solutions out there :). Is there a particularly challenging situation you're struggling with now that you'd want to share & crowdsource ideas for?

[RobCairns]

I think the topic has been explored fairly well thus far, but I would add in my two cents because I think it is a topic that will become more and more prominent in digital marketing discussions in the years to come.

SEO & UX

Years ago, these were two completely separate items that warranted different discussions. Technical SEO was king with user experience taking second place to quality content and website design.

As search engines have become more prevalent and popular, however, major search engines have really tried to alter their algorithms to support content and user experience (Panda and Hummingbird updates come immediately to mind) and technical SEO has been reduced in importance (see: Penguin update).

I think this trend will continue as search algorithms become more complex and better at understanding what humans look for when researching a product, service, business or anything else on the web.

However...

ARE WE MOVING TOWARDS UX TOO QUICKLY?

While there are a few die-hards that believe technical SEO is still the way to rank websites, it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that there are 2 schools of thought:

Technical SEO's who believe the algorithm is the end-all and be-all of search
Digital Marketers who feel user experience and marketing are the way to gain success

The difficulty of this debate arises with how quickly you alter your approach to digital marketing to coincide with the changes occurring in search algorithms and user intake channels.

HOW HARD TRANSITIONING CAN BE

I worked as an SEO consultant with 2 agencies who fell on opposite sides of the spectrum for this debate at roughly the same time. Here's what I found:

1. If you choose UX over SEO, you receive fewer visitors to your website, but they are more likely to convert into customers or users.

2. If you choose SEO over UX, you receive more visitors to your website, but fewer convert into customers or users.

Both businesses opted to take a more mid-stream path and focus equally on SEO and UX, but we found the transition was much easier for the agency that had focused on UX first. The website architecture was set up, the visuals were in place, sales funnels were established - the foundations of a successful campaign. All they had to do was some minor on-site optimization and conduct a decent link building campaign and they were off to the races.

On the other hand, the business that had focused on SEO undertook some pretty expensive web development projects to get caught up and still had to perform their SEO all over again. They were ranking well but no one was opting in to their service. They had an extended period of down time and faced some pretty difficult choices with regards to their bottom line and staff.

In other words, if you are focusing only on SEO, things are going to get worse before they get better if you decide to build your UX. If you are only focusing on UX, chances are things will only improve with SEO.

THE BEST PATH FOR DIFFERENT BUSINESSES

You might think that the best solution is to move towards the middle of the UX/SEO spectrum, where you get a decent number of visitors and a decent number of conversions, but I have not found this to be the case. It is almost always situation-specific.

For example, if you are working on behalf of a corporate law firm, there are typically not enough people searching for your services to make SEO necessary beyond basic local targeting and a bit of link building. On the other hand, UX is enormously important to these clients, who want simple, quick, effective solutions to their problems.

On the other hand, if you are attempting to gain awareness for a new product or operate a money-making mobile app, perhaps user experience on your website is less important than getting people in a position to opt-in to your business venture.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

For me, the lessons I have learned for UX vs. SEO are:

1. Always start with UX

Your UX is the foundation of your digital campaign and will be the way that you make your profits. Don't skimp on planning and resources for this since it will dictate your success down the road. It doesn't matter how many people find your site if no one opts in for your products or services because they can't navigate your website or don't like the look of your business.

2. Use SEO to accentuate your UX

SEO is a great tool for bringing people to your website. I equate SEO to a loudspeaker and UX to your store - you can announce your presence to the world with SEO and people will start coming to your store. However, they need to be impressed once they find your store (your UX) or they will leave without buying anything.

3. We work in a transitive world

Search engines are not stationary. They are constantly changing and we as digital marketers have to change with them. To this end, UX is becoming increasingly important in search while SEO is beginning to lose its power. That being said, we are still years away from a day when SEO is useless, so we need to think hard about how we are going to implement it.

4. Establish communication channels between UX and SEO professionals

Since you will likely need to incorporate UX and SEO into your digital marketing campaign, it is very important that you start off with established lines of communication between both groups. If you want one group to take the lead, make sure everyone is on board. If you want a more democratic approach, that's fine, but make sure both groups are in constant contact to ensure there are no accidents that set you back. For the most part, both groups should be making suggestions that help each other, but there will be times when you have to make a choice.

When those decisions come up, think about whether you want to bring more people to your site or improve you sales numbers. That will determine which group you choose to support.

5. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS  conduct A/B testing

I cannot stress this point enough. The beauty of our industry is that we get the chance to go back and erase our mistakes and try something new if our strategy doesn't work. That being said, we want to make sure that our choices are made on real-world numbers and stats. If your teams can't agree on a course of action, run a split test and see which results you prefer. Then incorporate those changes.

Hope this has helped some of you - I know I wish I knew this when I first began my digital marketing career. Would've saved a lot of face palms and heartache.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I see this daily - the struggle is real!

You have one department arguing that SEO and content is where the good money is spent, and then the UX and designers screaming at them to please change the placement of the CTA button.

The fact of the matter is, both are equally important and I tend to find the best way to resolve these conflicts, is to A/B test and let the numbers speak for themselves. At that point, someone has to concede and should do so gracefully, because they should all be focusing on what is best for the company.

Failing all else, a boxing ring and last man standing gets the budget.

-Andy

[FeliciaCrawford]

Wow, this reads like it could be its own team org plan -- awesome story! Lots of really intriguing points, especially the final takeaway. Makes me wonder if even the simple act of having the folks who manage SEO and UX sit together could go a ways toward boosting mutual understanding and overlapping work; it can be so difficult to have an awareness for what you don't know you don't know. Thanks for sharing this!

[FeliciaCrawford]

"An act of poetic acrobatics" -- I love that description, so apt! It's really interesting to consider all the overlap between different work, teams, and roles (even those that don't immediately come to mind) and to keep in mind that there is a cohesive story to be told, in the end. Excellent insight, thank you for sharing!

[KBolsinger]

This is a story I tell quite often. My job is website optimization and customer experience. In most companies it would be incredibly unlikely that those two roles would sit in the same department let alone the same team. In our maturing Digital Marketing team however it makes a great bit of sense. I'm able to advocate for decisions on our website on behalf of both the user and the engines - which more and more overlap by quite a large margin. While not strictly UX - we do have UX designers on our production team within Digital - CX looks an awful lot like UX in many instances particularly when concentrating primarily on digital engagement and interactions. As I continue to build out my team I'll grow up specialists in the disciplines somewhat separately but there will continue to be a great deal of overlap as they will be marching to the same objectives and goals. From a challenge perspective it all comes down to measurement. The ways in which you communicate CX and SEO wins are different and telling them in a cohesive story has proved an active of poetic acrobatics but we're working on it

[abernhardt]

This is a great topic! I'd like to share a story about how our team grew together to incorporate both practices at the right times. This is related to my time building and running the eCommerce Team at AutoAnything. We were a top ranked Internet Retailer site that got acquired by AutoZone in 2013.

SEO within Marketing with UX in IT

As an in-house focused organization, both of these fields were run internally (without third party support) but were certainly silo'd at first. I ran the SEO Team and would frequently coordinate with UX/UI designers depending on what was being developed or modified on the front-end. Many times, projects were builds on behalf of SEO forecasts and priorities within the greater dev backlog. I would cringe during discussions when there would be battles about where the "SEO content" should go. Even when interfacing with designers.  That's one of the worst phrases for any SEO to hear. It takes a lot of communication and coordinating on projects until both parties see how each others' activities and needs go hand in hand. Which usually takes several years for organizations depending on how agile you truthfully are (or aren't for most).

SEO and UX in the Same Team

By simply having SEO in the Marketing Team and UX in IT, there already was a divide that we needed to overcome together. So we migrated the SEO Team into our IT Team where I managed them and reported to the CTO, and then started managing UX simultaneously. This comes with all sorts of new challenges which you'll need to welcome because the science and history behind both UX and UI design runs far deeper than most SEOs can truthfully connect with naturally. You have to immerse yourself in UX with thought leadership, AB Testing, really solving different user product design challenges, etc. This process took me roughly 3 years to really hone in on as well from a leadership perspective. Consisting of hiring and ending designer relationships until you find the right personnel fits for your users and organization.

Voice of Reason for SEO and UX - Web Analytics

The final ingredient that pulls both parties together in an ideal way is to have a Web Analytics Manager or specialist of some sort. This role beautifully connects marketing channel data, web behaviorial data, conversion funnel data and AB testing insights to feed both SEO and UX/UI with what they both need to continually improve. Decisions can be backed by data whenever possible which alleviates slanted debates from either party's perspectives. When I was close to the end of my run with AutoAnything/AutoZone after an 11 year ride, I had an office that consisted of my Web Analytics Manager, SEO Manager, Senior UX Designer and myself - we each loved it! That is how I'd shape a leadership team for large scale in-house needs. Plus add a Content Marketing Manager and have them in the room if possible. I ran that part too but wasn't able to do the role the right amount of justice due to all of the team support needs. Had it in recruitment rotation at one point though to build a dream team.

Moral of the story, the Senior most SEO leader and Senior most UX/UI leader need to work together on the same team and coordinate consistently so that both support each other as much as possible.